Loss of the Anglo Saxon

DESCRIPTION: "Gently o'er the swelling deep The noble vessel rolls... Within her bosom safely sleep 500 living souls." In the fog, the ship goes aground. The ship quickly goes aground. Those who reach "the cold, salt shore... send up their prayer of thanks"
AUTHOR: James Murphy?
EARLIEST DATE: 1904 (Murphy, Songs of Our Land, Old Home Week Souvenir)
KEYWORDS: ship wreck disaster death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Apr 27, 1863 - Wreck of the steamer Anglo-Saxon near Cape Race, Newfoundland
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: James Murphy, compiler/publisher, "(Old Colony Song Book: Newfoundland)," James Murphy, 1904 (available from the Memorial University of Newfoundland web site; the cover is missing, but I suspect it is a copy of "Songs of Our Land"), p. 62, "Loss of the 'Anglo Saxon'" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Old Mayflower" (theme of wreckers) and references there
NOTES [805 words]: Murphy's text is printed without an attribution, and it's about a wreck which happened forty years before he published his book. He seems to want us to think it's a traditional piece. Yet I can find no other hint of the poem, and it doesn't sound like a folk song; the GEST songs site suggests that Murphy wrote it, and I suspect GEST is right. But because it is presented as anonymous and possibly traditional, I list it here.
I do find it interesting that the poem is absolutely generic; it never mentions the Anglo-Saxon or any other specific details.
Murphy claims that 155 of 445 aboard the Anglo Saxon were lost, but this may not be right. The ship was fairly new, having been built in 1860 and using both steam and sail. On her final trip, she carried a crew of 86, 48 cabin passengers, and 312 emigrants (Galgay/McCarthy, p. 17). She sailed from Liverpool to the Americas; her captain was named Burgess (Parsons, p. 38).
Greene, p. 290, says that many ships visited the Cape Race area to drop off news for "news boats"; it claims that the Anglo-Saxon was in a great hurry to transmit its news as fast as possible. The ships, according to Parsons, pp. 33-35, dropped off the news in "message cylinders" with flags attached; the news boats would take them to Cape Race so telegraphers could transmit the date. This was done for only a few years, from the time Newfoundland was connected to the mainland in 1856 tothe running of the Atlantic Cable in 1866; for that, see the notes to "The Atlantic Cable (How Cyrus Laid the Cable)"),
There was heavy fog as the Anglo-Saxon sailed near Cape Race (the area was infamously foggy), but the captain still had steam up and a full load of sail. (Galgay/McCarthy, p. 17. Parsons, p. 38, contends that the Anglo Saxon was not going at full speed, but all agree that there was no time to stop when a lookout spotted breakers. (There was a lighthouse at Cape Race, but it did not revolve, making it hard to spot in fog, and no foghorn; the first steam whistle was installed in 1872, according to Parsons, pp. 40-41.) According to Galgay/McCarthy and Parsons, the ship went ashore on Twin Rocks near Clam Cove, Newfoundland (just north of Cape Race near the southeast corner of the island), although Greene, p. 290, says it was at Chance Cove near St. John's. Baehre, p. 43, also says it was Clam Cove.
Attempts to hold the ship on the rocks with cables apparently did little good (Galgay/McCarthy, p. 18). Burgess soon had a hawser ashore, and passengers started to go ashore using baskets from the cable (Parsons, pp. 38-39). Some of these walked to Cape Race to pass out word of the disaster, and ships eventually arrived to rescue those they could. The lifeboats were launched, but there were too few and some were wrecked (Galgay/McCarthy, pp. 18-20). About an hour after hitting the rocks, the ship's structure disintegrated, with many people still aboard (Galgay/McCarthy, p. 20; Parsons, p. 39, says that such lifeboats as were in the water rescued a few of them).
Fox, p. 264, without saying how many were aboard, says that 237 were lost. Parsons, p. 39, says that "approximately 237" died. Galgay/McCarthy, p. 21, agrees with this figure, reporting that 209 people survived the wreck and 237 (including Captain Burgess) died. The total aboard almost agrees with Murphy's total for those on the ship (446 versus 445), but the number of casualties is obviously much higher. Greene's version says that 307 of 444 were lost, which is an even higher rate of loss but again almost agrees with the number of people aboard.
Even into the twentieth century, the Anglo Saxon wreck was considered to be the worst ever off of Cape Race, one of the most wreck-prone areas in the world (Parsons, p. 212).
"Reporting in sensational style, the Montreal Witness claimed that 500 wreckers had come to the scene and carried away every useful item. Even a local newspaper, in an article that was subsequently cited abroad, complained of the inhumanity of the Cape Race fisherfolk. Yet official evidence contradicted the press reports. Even if many people did come down to the shore at Cape Race to witness the wreck -- and the exact number remains unknown -- this group apparently also included officials and professional salvage workers. Moreover, the official record shows that, when the authorities arrived soon after the event, they found no desecration of the dead, but rather the decent burial by local people of over a hundred bodies interred in the frozen ground, with stones placed at their heads and feet.... Their courage in aiding the victims and their propriety toward the survivors and the dead were subsequently confirmed by dispassionate observers" (Baehre, pp. 43-44).
There is a book by Arthur Johnson, The Tragic Wreck of the Anglo Saxon. I have not seen it. - RBW
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File: JMOC062

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