My BBC radio interview: Devon's worst disasters

Really interesting to be interviewed (again) by Pippa Quelch on BBC Radio Devon on the subject of Devon's worst disasters. 

Here are the shipwrecks of the Coronation and the Ramillies, how pilfering of gunpowder led to the Amphion blowing up. The great fires of Tiverton and the blaze that destroyed Exeter's Theatre Royal, the Blitz in Plymouth and the Lynmouth floods. More about all of them in my book A Disastrous History of Britain.

You can hear the interview here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0bmmdxj

The shipwreck that launched the shipping forecast

Dogger, Fisher, German Bight…..the Shipping Forecast is 150 years old today.

Its weather warnings began life as a response to the wreck of the Royal Charter off Anglesey on 26 October 1859, in which 450 people lost their lives. The disaster happened during what is considered the worst storm of the 19^th century in the Irish Sea. Altogether, 69 ships were wrecked at a cost of nearly 800 lives.

The iron-hulled steam clipper was bringing emigrants and gold back from the goldfields of Australia to Liverpool. As the ship reached Holyhead, it ran into 100 mile-an-hour winds.

The captain tried to anchor the vessel, but at half past one in the morning, only hours from the end of its long voyage, the Royal Charter was dashed onto rocks and broke in two just 50 yards from land.

As people watched from the shore horrified, an able seaman, Joseph Rogers, leapt into the waves. Three times he was beaten back, but on his fourth try, he was able to tie the vessel to a rock. Twenty-eight local men formed a human chain and managed to rescue 41 of those on board.

For more, see A Disastrous History of Britain.

History's most lethal storms

Doris has just reminded us how lethal storms can be, causing deaths in Wolverhampton, Swindon and London, but mercifully it was much less deadly than other tempests in our history.

As my latest book Storm: Nature and Culture reveals, the worst storm ever to hit the UK was the Great Storm of November 1703 which claimed about 125 lives on land and perhaps 8,000 around our coasts, where many vessels, especially Royal Navy ships, were sunk.

The deadliest storm of all was probably what became known as the Bhola Cyclone which also struck in November, this time in 1970. The world has seen many stronger storms, but this one was particularly lethal because it hit the Bay of Bengal where the land was densely populated and just a few feet above sea level.

Estimates of the number of people killed go as high as a million. The cyclone also played a significant role in history. The land it struck was then East Pakistan, which was already longing for independence. The dilatory response of West Pakistan to the disaster was the final straw, and after a bloody civil war, East Pakistan became the new country of Bangladesh.

Friday the 13th: is it really unlucky?

On Friday, 13^th November, 1970, the deadliest storm in history devastated Bangladesh, with some estimates putting the number killed at as high as a million. And that was just one of the disasters that happened on this feared date.

On Friday, 13^th October, 1307, scores of members of the elite military Knights Templar order, who had played a crucial role in the Crusades, were arrested by Philip IV of France and accused of heresy, blasphemy and vice. After the authorities extracted confessions by torture, the order was dissolved in 1312.

On Friday, 13^th November, 1972, a Fairchild FH-227D on charter from the Uruguayan Air Force crashed in the Andes. 29 of the 45 people on board died. It took more than two months to rescue the remaining 16, some of whom had to survive by eating the dead. Their story was told in the feature film, Alive.

Then on Friday, 13^th January, 2012, the Italian cruise ship, Costa Concordia, (pictured) struck a rock and capsized off a little Tuscan island with the loss of 32 lives. All nasty things to happen, but statistically enough to brand Friday the 13^th as any worse than any other date? Well, funnily enough, a study in the British Medical Journal in 1993 apparently concluded that you might expect a higher than average rate of road accidents on Friday, 13th.

What sank the Yangtze cruise ship?

What caused the Eastern Star cruise ship to capsize in the Yangtze River with the loss of more than 440 lives? Meteorologists confirmed that a ‘sudden, strong and violent’ storm hit the area, and the transport ministry said the Eastern Star was a ‘grade B vessel’ that might be vulnerable to it.

But others are asking how it could be overturned in seconds, without being able to send out a distress signal, when no other vessels in the area seem to have been affected. It is known that the ship was investigated for safety defects in 2013.

Of the 456 people aboard, only 14 have so far been rescued, including one man who spent ten hours in the water, but hopes are fading that any more survivors will be found. The captain and the chief engineer are in police custody.

China’s worst peacetime shipwreck of the twentieth century came in 1948, when the passenger steam ship Kiangya (pictured) sank in the mouth of the Huangpu River 50 miles south of Shanghai with the loss of up to 3,900 lives. It is believed it struck a mine left behind by the Japanese after World War Two.

The Lancastria - a forgotten disaster

On May 19, I blogged about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff during World War Two, which resulted in the deaths of around 9,000 German civilians, soldiers and sailors. Now a campaign has been launched in the UK to properly commemorate the sinking of the British liner, Lancastria (pictured) off the French port of St Nazaire in June 1940.

The ship was carrying up to 9,000 British soldiers and French and Belgian refugees when it was attacked by German bombers the day before France surrendered to the Nazis. It is thought that about 4,000 drowned.

Today people such as General Lord Dannatt, former head of the British army, the actress Joanna Lumley and the author Louis de Bernieres say the British government should do more to preserve their memory, describing the loss of the Lancastria as a ‘forgotten disaster’.

They want the government to designate the wreck an official war grave, and they refer to reports that some documents relating to the disaster are still being kept secret. The government says the wreck is already protected under French law, and that all ‘contemporary’ documents have been released. 

The Wilhelm Gustloff - the worst ever maritime disaster

The Narrow Escapes of World War Two series on the Yesterday tv channel this week featured the worst maritime disaster in history. On the night of 30 January 1945, the German cruise liner, the Wilhelm Gustloff was carrying more than 10,000 refugees, soldiers and sailors, packed like sardines, trying to escape the advancing Red Army.

The vessel was heading along the Baltic coast from Gdynia in what was still occupied Poland towards Kiel when it was hit by three torpedoes from the Russian submarine, S-13, about 20 miles off shore.

The captain had reluctantly put on the ship’s navigation lights in order to avoid a collision with German naval vessels in the area, and this had made it a highly visible target for the submarine. In the resulting nightmare with icy Baltic water pouring into the ship, some passengers simply decided to end it all, and shot themselves.

A few people managed to get into lifeboats, and about 400 were picked up by a German destroyer, but altogether it is thought that no more than 1,000 people survived. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Ferry disasters - al-Salam Boccaccio 98 nine years on

On this day............9 years ago, the al-Salam Boccaccio 98, a roll-on, roll-off ferry, set sail from Duba in Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea to Safaga in southern Egypt, carrying 96 crew and 1,312 passengers. It would never get there.

A couple of hours into the voyage, a fire broke out among the 220 vehicles on the car deck. Repeated attempts to put it out failed, and at about one o' clock on the morning of 3 February, 2006, the ship began to list alarmingly.

Within a few minutes she sank, without any of her bigger lifeboats getting launched, and people had to get away as best they could in rubber dinghies. More than 1,000 perished. For the full story see A Disastrous History of the World.

IHS Maritime and Trade Intelligence says that over the last ten years, 4,784 lives have been lost in accidents involving large ferries.  The worst year was 2011, when IHS says 1,642 people died. On September 10 of that year, the Spice Islander 1 sank off Zanzibar, with a death toll estimated at up to 1,500.

 

Korean ferry disaster trial - villains and heros

The captain of the South Korean ferry, Sewol, that sank in April with the loss of more than 300 lives (a memorial is pictured above) is now starting a 36 year gaol sentence (see my blog of April 20). Lee Joon-seok, on trial with 14 crew members, was convicted of gross negligence. He was cleared of homicide.

The chief engineer got a 30 year sentence, and the other 13 got gaol terms of up to 20 years. A separate trial is taking place for employees of the firm that operated the ferry, but the billionaire chairman fled after the disaster and was later found dead.

The sinking was blamed on a number of factors - illegal redesigns of the vessel, overloading, failure to secure cargo and the inexperience of the crew member steering. They led to her overturning as she made a tight turn. Lee was filmed leaving while many passengers were still inside the ship.

At least 3 crew members, though, perished trying to save those on board, including an engaged couple, and the youngest, who gave her lifejacket to a passenger. The Korean government was heavily criticised over the rescue effort, and the coast guard is due to be disbanded and replaced.

Mediterranean boat people

More than 3,000 migrants have died so far this year trying to cross the Mediterranean – the highest total on record. The official figure for 2014 so far is 3,072, though some claim the true number is three times as high.

Across the world, the official figure is 4,077, meaning three in every four of those who perished were trying to get to Europe. Since 2000, 40,000 migrants are said to have perished worldwide – more than half of them trying to get to Europe.

The worst incident of 2014 was the apparently deliberate ramming of a ship earlier this month by people traffickers off Malta, which resulted in 500 people being drowned.

The ship had been carrying Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese, and survivors said it was rammed after a ‘violent confrontation’ on board.

Bloomsday disaster

‘Heart-rending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing.’ Thus did James Joyce’s great novel, Ulysses, describe the wreck of the General Slocum which happened on this day 110 years ago.

The steamer happened to meet disaster the day before ‘Bloomsday’ – June 16, 1904, on which all the action of the novel takes place, so the characters read about it in the newspaper. The ship had chugged up New York’s East River carrying parents and children on an outing organised by a German Lutheran church.

A bale of straw on board caught fire, and the crew of 22 were unable to put it out, partly because their rotten fire hoses burst. As the flames were fanned by the ship’s motion, the crew attempted to launch lifeboats, but these were tied down and the life jackets were no good either.

By the time the ship beached at North Brother Island she was burning from end to end, and many of her passengers had drowned as they had tried to escape by jumping into the waters. Altogether, 1,021 people perished, making it the city’s worst disaster apart from 9/11. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Far eastern ferry disasters

The agony goes on for those with loved ones aboard the South Korean ferry, Sewol, that capsized off the island of Jindo three days ago. About 200 ships, 34 aircraft and 600 divers have been taking part in the search operation, but conditions are difficult, and so far only 26 bodies have been recovered.

The official death toll is still only 58, but another 244 people are missing, and it will be regarded as a miracle if any are found alive. 174 are known to have survived. About 350 of those on board were from a school in Seoul and were on their way to the holiday island of Jeju.

The 69 year old captain and two other crew members have been arrested, including the third mate, Park Hyun-kul, who he had left in charge of the ship. She has been at sea for just one year, and has never before navigated the complex cluster of islands where the ship went down.

Coastguards have pointed to a sharp turn that she made as the cause of the disaster. The captain has also been heavily criticised for delaying an evacuation of the ship.

The deadliest peace time maritime disaster ever came just before Christmas 1987 when the Philippines ferry, Dona Paz, collided with a tanker, caught fire and sank. Up to 4,375 people perished.

Boat people - Haiti

There have been many sad stories about migrants in recent months – dying of thirst in the Sahara desert or drowning off the coast of Italy (see my blogs of Oct 4 and 31). In those cases, the victims were Africans, but a lot of Haitians are also desperate to leave their country, regarded as the poorest in the western hemisphere.

This week a vessel carrying migrants from Haiti capsized off the Bahamas. Up to 30 people may have been killed, and US coast guards reported 100 were clinging to the hull of the upturned boat. Rescue services have dropped food and life rafts, and a number of people have been winched up to helicopters.

In June of last year, eleven Haitians were drowned when their boat capsized also off the Bahamas, while in 2011, at least 38 died when their vessel sank off Cuba.

One of the worst incidents off recent years came in 2009 when about 70 migrants from Haiti were lost when their boat capsized off the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Boat people 2013

More than 200 people are still missing after the boat on which they were trying to escape Eritrea and Somalia sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa. So far 155 people have been rescued and 111 bodies have been found.

The 66 foot boat began taking on water as it neared the island, then it is said that some of the passengers started a fire to try to attract attention. As the flames spread, everyone moved to one side of the vessel, causing it to capsize.

On Lampedusa, a hangar has had to be turned into a makeshift mortuary, and Italy has declared a day of national mourning. The boat’s skipper has been arrested.

Since 1988, nearly 20,000 people have died trying to get into Europe, more than 2,350 of them in 2011 alone. (See also my blogs of April 2, 2009 and December 16, 2010.)

*Piece from a Spanish website about my Historia Mundial de los desastres. http://www.cookingideas.es/el-pais-que-surgio-de-una-tormenta-20130809.html

It's the poor that gets the disaster

We are used to the idea that it is usually the poor who suffer most from natural disasters.   They tend to live in less sturdy dwellings in more dangerous places, have poorer access to telecommunications for warnings etc

But we have had a reminder this week that they are also more likely to be victims of man-made disasters.   At least 53 people are known to have been killed in a crash between a bus and a lorry about 60 miles north of Zambia’s capital, Lusaka.

The accident happened on a busy road as the bus was reportedly swerving to avoid an oncoming vehicle.    Roads in Zambia are often poorly maintained and vehicles overloaded, but this is believed to have been one of the worst accidents in the country’s history.

Meanwhile in Bangladesh, a ferry capsized on the Meghna River, near the capital, Dhaka, plunging scores of passengers into the water.    Only two bodies have so far been recovered, but up to 40 are still missing.  Ferry accidents are common on the country’s vast river network.    In March last year, more than 112 people drowned when a ferry collided with an oil tanker and sank also in the Meghna.

*My account of the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840’s from A Disastrous History of the World has been reproduced on this website.    http://stravaganzastravaganza.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-irish-potato-famine_9376.html#!/2013/01/the-irish-potato-famine_9376.html

Women and children last?

When the Titanic sank in 1912, there was a lot of controversy about whether some men had elbowed their way into lifeboats ahead of women and children, but a new study from Sweden suggests the evacuation of the liner was a model of chivalry compared with what happens in most shipwrecks.

About 70 percent of the women and children on board Titanic were saved, compared with just 20 percent of the men, but the researchers from Uppsala University also examined another 15 sinkings since the 1850’s involving around 15,000 passengers and crew from more than 30 different countries.

They discovered that men generally had twice as good a chance of surviving as women, and that children fared worst of all.   Crew members did better than passengers, and while Capt Edward J Smith went down with the Titanic, only 8 of the other 15 skippers met the same fate.

Nor was there any evidence overall that British crews were more selfless than those of other nations.    The most crucial consideration appeared to be whether the captain gave a clear order to give priority to women and children.    On Titanic such an order was given, and there were reports of officers shooting at any men who disobeyed.

Ferry disasters

A search is still on for survivors from a ferry that capsized during a storm on the Brahmaputra river in India's Assam state.    At least 103 are believed to have been drowned, and another 100 are still missing.

Police said the ferry broke in two after capsizing, and many of the victims were swept away by the river’s strong currents.    One survivor said he managed to cling on to a log and was then rescued by local people.

Many ferries on the river are considered to have poor safety standards and accidents are common.    According to one police officer, the ferry was overloaded with people and goods, and it carried no lifeboats or life jackets.

Probably the worst ferry disaster, and the worst peacetime maritime disaster ever, was the sinking of the Dona Paz in the Philippines in 1987, in which up to 4,300 people drowned.  (See also my blogs of Aug 7, Sept 6 and 26, Nov 18 and Dec 30, 2009.)

Costa da Morte

Just back from the beautiful coast of Galicia in north-west Spain.  Below you can see me at the memorial to the many ships wrecked off the ominously named Costa da Morte.   It got its name in 1890 when a Royal Navy torpedo cruiser, HMS Serpent, came to grief here.

She was en route from Plymouth to Sierra Leone on November 10, 1890 when in fog and drizzle, she lost her way.   Then a fierce storm broke and the ship was dashed against the treacherous rocks, though at first the crew seemed to think they had just been hit by a very powerful wave, and there was a delay in closing watertight doors.

Just three survivors from the crew of 175 managed to reach the shore and sound the alarm in a nearby village.   A search party went out but was able to find only bodies.    The British government later sent letters of thanks to local people, and the mayor was presented with a shotgun and the parish priest a gold watch.

It is said that the survivors owed their lives to wearing lifebelts, which was unusual at the time, and that the incident led to their being used much more widely.

Pic by Anne Clements.  See her other lovely work http://www.flickr.com/photos/clemypix/page1/

Russian disasters

Up to 110 people, including 50 children, have been drowned after an overloaded tourist boat sank on the Volga River in Russia.   The vessel’s official capacity was only 120, but it was said to have been carrying 208 people.

The 55 year old Bulgaria went down in minutes after being caught in a storm, while it was en route from Bolgary to Kazan, and the Russian authorities have launched a criminal investigation into the disaster amid reports that one of the vessel’s engines was not working.  

President Medvedev has ordered safety checks on ‘all means’ of passenger transport, saying the Bulgaria was in a poor state, and that Russia had too many ‘old rust tubs’.

Back in the 1980’s after a series of dreadful accidents in the former Soviet Union, including Chernobyl and a gas explosion by the Trans-Siberian Railway, President Gorbachev complained that too many resulted from ‘negligence, irresponsibility and a lack of proper organisation’.    It looks as though his successor believes that problem is far from being solved.

London's Disasters - my new book

Sorry about the lack of blogs over the past few days. I’ve been working on publicising my new book – London’s Disasters: from Boudicca to the banking crisis, published by the History Press. http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/Londons-Disasters-from-Boudicca-to-the-Banking-Crisis.aspx. It is an update and expansion of my Disastrous History of London which was first published seven years ago as Capital Disasters.

I was interviewed this morning on Time 107.5, the local radio station for Havering, Barking, Dagenham and Redbridge http://1075.timefm.com/ about the sinking of the Princess Alice on September 3, 1878 on the Thames close to the Barking Creek sewage treatment works.

About 640 people drowned after the pleasure steamer collided with a collier on a lovely evening. It is perhaps not surprising that this was the worst shipwreck in London’s history. When you think of the fierce storms that strike our coasts, and the treacherous rocks around them, it is more surprising when you realise this was one of the worst shipwrecks in British history.

One of the consequences of the disaster was a tightening up of the rules of navigation on the Thames. Confusion over how vessels should pass each other was one of the factors that caused the accident. For the full, dramatic story, see London’s Disasters.