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loss of the Kent East Indiaman. The 500 hopeful human 

 beings speeding their way to begin life again with bright 

 prospects in a new world, were suddenly offered, on the 

 trackless deep, without means of escape, the terrible alter- 

 natives of death by fire or water. They could only have 

 had time for a short shrift, and a compendious sentence 

 closes the history of their lives. A message from Madeira 

 curtly announced, " The Cospatrick burnt at sea ; only three 

 of the crew saved." Disasters at least equally appalling to 

 this have occurred since that date. In September 1878 

 the saloon steamboat Princess Alice was returning to 

 London at eventide, freighted with 700 men, women, and 

 children, who had been indulging in a day's excursion trip. 

 The pleasure-boat was struck in the river, opposite Wool- 

 wich, only a few yards from the river-bank, by a screw- 

 collier, the Bywell Castle, and sank immediately, leaving 

 the whole of the men, women, and children, who had 

 covered the entire deck and saloon roofs, struggling in the 

 water. The struggle was short ; the helpless creatures 

 perished miserably, asphyxiated by the loathsome Ne- 

 penthe, rather than drowned. These citizens of the 

 "greatest city in the world" had their last and fatal 

 bath in the sewage London contributes to its "noble 

 river." They perished miserably close to the seats of 

 imperial and municipal wisdom and power. The ultimate 

 agent in their destruction enforced upon the victims a 

 hideous substitute for what, under almost any other cir- 

 cumstances, they would have exhibited beauty, "the 

 rapture of repose." 



The owners of the Princess Alice made no pretence of 

 providing boats or life-saving appliances. If the great fragile 

 floating shell got cracked or broken, those who trusted 

 to it must scramble out of the Stygian flood as best they 



