The passenger-carrying sailing ship Stephen Whitney is wrecked on West Calf Island off the southern coast of Ireland on November 10, 1847 with the loss of 92 of the 110 passengers and crew aboard.
The 1,034-ton ship leaves New York City on October 18 for Liverpool, England, carrying passengers and a cargo which includes corn, raw cotton, cheese, resin, and twenty boxes of clocks. On November 10 in thick fog, the captain, C.W. Popham, mistakes the Crookhavenlighthouse for the one at the Old Head of Kinsale and the lighthouse on Cape Clear Island is obscured by fog compounding the error in navigation. At around 10:00 p.m., the ship strikes the western tip of West Calf Island, completely breaking up within about ten minutes. Conditions in the area are distressing as it is the height of the Great Famine.
The loss of the ship triggers the decision to replace the Cape Clear Island lighthouse with one on Fastnet Rock. This decision is also because the lighthouse on Cape Clear is often shrouded in fog or low level clouds, which make it hard or at times impossible to see.
(Pictured: West Calf Island, the most westerly of the three Calf Islands that lie at the heart of Roaring Water Bay, West Cork)
Bonny’s father, William Cormac, first moves to London to get away from his wife’s family, and he begins dressing his daughter as a boy and calling her “Andy.” When Cormac’s wife discovers William has taken in his illegitimate daughter and is bringing her up to be a lawyer’s clerk and dressing her as a boy, she stops giving him an allowance. Cormac then moves to the Province of Carolina, taking along his former serving girl, the mother of Bonny. At first, the family has a rough start in their new home, but Cormac’s knowledge of law and ability to buy and sell goods soon finances a townhouse and eventually a plantation just out of town. Bonny’s mother dies when she is 12. Her father attempts to establish himself as an attorney but does not do well. Eventually, he joins the more profitable merchant business and accumulates a substantial fortune.
It is recorded that Bonny has red hair and is considered a “good catch” but may have have a fiery temper as, at age 13, she supposedly stabs a servant girl with a knife. She marries a poor sailor and small-time pirate named James Bonny. He hopes to win possession of his father-in-law’s estate, but Bonny is disowned by her father. He does not approve of James Bonny as a husband for his daughter, and he kicks Anne out of their house. There is a story that Bonny sets fire to her father’s plantation in retaliation, but no evidence exists in support.
Sometime between 1714 and 1718, Bonny and her husband move to Nassau, on the island of New Providence, known as a sanctuary for English pirates called the Republic of Pirates. Many inhabitants receive a King’s Pardon or otherwise evade the law. It is also recorded that, after the arrival of Governor Woodes Rogers in the summer of 1718, James Bonny becomes an informant for the governor. He reports to Governor Rogers about the pirates in the area, which results in a multitude of these pirates being arrested. Bonny dislikes the work her husband does for Governor Rogers.
While in the Bahamas, Bonny begins mingling with pirates in the taverns. She meets John “Calico Jack” Rackham, and he becomes her lover. He offers money to her husband if he would divorce her, but her husband refuses and apparently threatens to beat Rackham. She and Rackham escape the island together, and she becomes a member of Rackham’s crew. She disguises herself as a man on the ship, and only Rackham and Mary Read are aware that she is a woman until it becomes clear that she is pregnant. Rackham then lands her at Cuba where she gives birth to a son. She then rejoins Rackham and continues the pirate life, having divorced her husband and married Rackham while at sea. Bonny, Rackham, and Read steal the ship William, then at anchor in Nassau harbor, and put out to sea. Rackham and the two women recruit a new crew. Their crew spends years in Jamaica and the surrounding area. Bonny takes part in combat alongside the men, and Governor Rogers names her in a “Wanted Pirates” circular published in The Boston News-Letter.
In October 1720, Rackham and his crew are attacked by a sloop captained by Jonathan Barnet under a commission from Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica. Most of Rackham’s pirates put up little resistance, as many of them are too drunk to fight. They are taken to Jamaica where they are convicted and sentenced by Governor Lawes to be hanged. According to Johnson, Bonny’s last words to Rackham are: “Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog.”
Read and Bonny both “pleaded their bellies“, asking for mercy because they are pregnant, and the court grants them a stay of execution until after they give birth. Read dies in prison, most likely from a fever from childbirth. A ledger from a church in Jamaica lists her burial on April 28, 1721, “Mary Read, pirate.”
There is no record of Bonny’s release, and this has fed speculation as to her fate. A ledger lists the burial of an “Ann Bonny” on December 29, 1733, in the same town in Jamaica where she was tried. Charles Johnson writes in his book: “She was continued in Prison, to the Time of her lying in, and afterwards reprieved from Time to Time; but what is become of her since, we cannot tell; only this we know, that she was not executed.”
Other sources have stated that she may have returned to the United States after her imprisonment, dying in South Carolina in April 1782.
On the morning of May 6, RMS Lusitania is 750 miles west of southern Ireland. By 5:00 AM on May 7 she reaches a point 120 miles west southwest of Fastnet Rock off the southern tip of Ireland, where she meets the patrolling boarding vesselPartridge. By 6:00 AM, heavy fog has arrived and extra lookouts are posted. As the ship comes closer to Ireland, Captain William Thomas Turner orders depth soundings to be made and at 8:00 AM for speed to be reduced to eighteen knots, then to 15 knots and for the foghorn to be sounded. Some of the passengers are disturbed that the ship appears to be advertising her presence. By 10:00 AM the fog begins to lift and by noon it has been replaced by bright sunshine over a clear smooth sea. The RMS Lusitania increases speed to 18 knots.
U-20 surfaces at 12:45 PM as visibility is now excellent. At 1:20 PM something is sighted and KapitänleutnantWalther Schwieger is summoned to the conning tower. At first it appears to be several ships because of the number of funnels and masts, but this resolves into one large steamer appearing over the horizon. At 1:25 PM the submarine submerges to periscope depth of 11 metres and sets a course to intercept the liner at her maximum submerged speed of 9 knots. When the ships have closed to 2 miles RMS Lusitania turns away. Schwieger fears he has lost his target, but she turns again, this time onto a near ideal course to bring her into position for an attack. At 2:10 PM with the target at 700m range he orders one gyroscopic torpedo to be fired, set to run at a depth of three metres.
The U-20‘s torpedo officer, Raimund Weisbach, views the destruction through the vessel’s periscope and feels the explosion is unusually severe. Within six minutes, RMS Lusitania‘s forecastle begins to submerge.
On board the RMS Lusitania, Leslie Morton, an eighteen-year-old lookout at the bow, spots thin lines of foam racing toward the ship. He shouts, “Torpedoes coming on the starboard side!” through a megaphone, thinking the bubbles come from two projectiles. The torpedo strikes RMS Lusitania under the bridge, sending a plume of debris, steel plating and water upward and knocking lifeboat number five off its davits. A second, more powerful explosion follows, sending a geyser of water, coal, dust, and debris high above the deck. Schwieger’s log entries attest that he had only launched one torpedo. Some doubt the validity of this claim, contending that the German government subsequently alters the published fair copy of Schwieger’s log, but accounts from other U-20 crew members corroborate it. The entries are also consistent with intercepted radio reports sent to Germany by U-20 once she has returned to the North Sea, before any possibility of an official coverup.
At 2:12 PM Captain Turner orders Quartermaster Johnston stationed at the ship’s wheel to steer “hard-a-starboard” towards the Irish coast, which Johnston confirms, but the ship can not be steadied on the course and rapidly ceases to respond to the wheel. Turner signals for the engines to be reversed to halt the ship, but although the signal is received in the engine room, nothing can be done. Steam pressure collapses from 195 PSI before the explosion, to 50 PSI and falling afterwards. RMS Lusitania‘s wireless operator sends out an immediate SOS, which is acknowledged by a coastal wireless station. Shortly afterward he transmits the ship’s position, 10 miles (16 km) south of the Old Head of Kinsale. At 2:14 PM electrical power fails, plunging the cavernous interior of the ship into darkness. Radio signals continue on emergency batteries, but electric lifts fail, trapping passengers and crew. Bulkhead doors closed as a precaution before the attack can not be reopened to release trapped men.
About one minute after the electrical power fails, Captain Turner gives the order to abandon ship. Water has flooded the ship’s starboard longitudinal compartments, causing a 15-degree list to starboard.
RMS Lusitania‘s severe starboard list complicates the launch of her lifeboats. Ten minutes after the torpedoing, when she has slowed enough to start putting boats in the water, the lifeboats on the starboard side swing out too far to step aboard safely. While it is still possible to board the lifeboats on the port side, lowering them presents a different problem. As is typical for the period, the hull plates of RMS Lusitania are riveted, and as the lifeboats are lowered they drag on the inch high rivets, which threatens to seriously damage the boats before they land in the water.
Many lifeboats overturn while loading or lowering, spilling passengers into the sea. Others are overturned by the ship’s motion when they hit the water. RMS Lusitania has 48 lifeboats, more than enough for all the crew and passengers, but only six are successfully lowered, all from the starboard side. A few of her collapsible lifeboats wash off her decks as she sinks and provides floatation for some survivors.
There is panic and disorder on the decks. Schwieger has been observing this through U-20‘s periscope, and by 2:25 PM, he drops the periscope and heads out to sea.
Captain Turner is on the deck near the bridge clutching the ship’s logbook and charts when a wave sweeps upward towards the bridge and the rest of the ship’s forward superstructure, knocking him overboard into the sea. He manages to swim and find a chair floating in the water which he clings to. He survives, having been pulled unconscious from the water after spending three hours there. RMS Lusitania‘s bow slams into the bottom about 330 feet below at a shallow angle because of her forward momentum as she sinks. Along the way, some boilers explode, including one that causes the third funnel to collapse. The remaining funnels collapse soon after. The ship travels about two miles from the time of the torpedoing to her final resting place, leaving a trail of debris and people behind. After her bow sinks completely, RMS Lusitania‘s stern rises out of the water, enough for her propellers to be visible, and then goes under.
RMS Lusitania sinks in only 18 minutes. It takes several hours for help to arrive from the Irish coast and by that time many in the 52° F water have succumbed to the cold. By the days’ end, 764 passengers and crew from the RMS Lusitania are rescued and land at Queenstown. Eventually, the final death toll for the disaster comes to a catastrophic number. Of the 1,959 passengers and crew aboard RMS Lusitania at the time of her sinking, 1,195 have been lost.
In the days following the disaster, the Cunard line offers local fishermen and sea merchants a cash reward for the bodies floating all throughout the Irish Sea, some floating as far away as the Welsh coast. In all, only 289 bodies are recovered, 65 of which are never identified. The bodies of many of the victims are buried at either Queenstown, where 148 bodies are interred in the Old Church Cemetery, or the Church of St. Multose in Kinsale. The bodies of the remaining 885 victims are never recovered.
seamus dubhghaill 