Haworth's Titanic Disaster.

SS London

                                                                      Foundered in the Bay of Biscay with about 230 souls, 11 January 1866.
                                                            Image from the John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

This interesting story I received of J W Hartley who is living in Haworth

Next to the parsonage garden wall there is a tabletop gravestone that can only provide a memorial to one of the family members inscribed who remains missing but not forgotten. William Hartley was Haworth’s postmaster who sat on the committee of the Haworth Operative Conservative Society with Branwell Bronte and John Brown the church sexton. They were also friends and enjoyed a drink together, in fact William Hartley and his family are buried next to John Brown and his family. Reading the inscription on Willian Hartley’s gravestone gives an insight into a harrowing story of the time. 

His daughter Elizabeth Hartley worked as a maid for the Thomas family from Huddersfield. Her job as a maid offered up new and exciting opportunities as her employers the Thomas family were going to Australia and Elizabeth was invited to join them to continue her duties as maid or possibly for a holiday. She accepted the offer and on the 13^th of December 1865 they boarded the Steam Ship London at the Gravesend Thames Estuary in Kent destined for Melbourne Australia and a new life. 

The Steam Ship London was a vessel of its time when technology moved in nautical engineering from wind power to engine power. This is evident in the ships design as it was a hybrid of both steam power and wind power combining three masts rigged with sails and a two hundred horsepower steam engine that alone could propel the ship at 9 knots. This made the ship fuel efficient as well as more reliable. The ship delayed by bad weather left England late on the 5^th of January 1866 with 345 tons of iron for the railways, 263 passengers and crew onboard including six stowaways, with the experienced Australian navigator Captain Martin at the helm.

For the next two days the SS London encountered heavy seas and bad weather, so bad that on the 7^th of January divine service was cancelled. For the next couple of days, the SS London ploughed into a gale under the power of steam at two knots in the Bay Of Biscay. On January the 9th the ship taking crashing seas over the bows and had a lifeboat washed away forcing the captain to turn around and return to England. 

Captain Martin was now unknowingly heading into the eye of a storm and on January the 10^th still in the Bay of Biscay the sea carried away another lifeboat, the jib-boom, the fore topmast, all the rigs and gear leaving the SS London with steam power only. On January the 11^th an immense wave crashed on deck leaving water pouring down the hatches and extinguishing the fires. The ship was now rolling badly and wallowing helplessly, and the captain made the decision to abandon ship. The remaining lifeboats launched were immediately swamped bar one saved for crew members. Their efforts to cover up the engine room hatches with anything they could and bail the water with pumps failed and as the water level in the engine compartment was still rising. Captain Martin told his men “boys, you may say your prayers”. Soon the SS London was sinking rapidly, and Captain Martin ordered Mr Greenhill the ships engineer and eighteen others into the last lifeboat telling him “your duty is done, mine is to remain here”. The captain was asked again to board the lifeboat, but he replied “NO! I will go down with the passengers, but I wish you God speed” he then threw a compass into the boat and shouted their course “North North East To Brest!”. 

The lifeboat drew away from the SS London as the passengers stood on deck singing the hymn Rock Of Ages and when the lifeboat got about 70 metres away the stern (back) of the SS London went under and the bows (front) rose high until the ships keel was visible throwing the passengers on deck into the water to be dragged down with the ship by the vortex. Greenhill and the eighteen others onboard the lifeboat were finally rescued by an Italian vessel, the Marianopole and taken to back to England.

There were just 19 survivors from the 263 passengers onboard with a death toll of 244 including Mr James Thomas, Mrs Sarah Anne Thomas, their two children Annie Mary Thomas and William Bradbury Thomas and their maid Elizabeth Hartley of Haworth. Other passengers onboard included Gustavus Vaughan Brooke a famous Irish Actor, John Debenham the son of the founder of Debenham department stores, the wife and three children of Henry Brewer Chapman an attorney general who introduced the secret ballot and John Woolley the first principal of the University of Sydney Australia. Frederick Chapman whose mother, brother and sisters were onboard the SS London when it sank to the depths in the Bay of Biscay wrote of his mother having just inherited “a mass of diamonds” from his Great Aunt Fanny that were with her on that fateful day.

An inquest found that the SS London was overloaded and with heavy cargo that blocked the scupper holes preventing drainage of seawater and made the ship too low in the water. The disaster received global publicity in its time with numerous accounts, survivor testaments, newspaper articles, a poem by William Mcgonagll and some artistic interpretations. The case drew the attention of Samuel Plimsoll who campaigned for compulsory standards in marine safety and in 1876 had the Plimsoll Line (a marking on the ships side specifying the maximum load) made compulsory for British ships. Samuel Plimsoll’s campaigning for the compulsory provision of lifeboats however was not introduced until the Titanic catastrophe of 1912 after Samuel Plimsoll’s death in 1898.

The newspaper Liverpool Mercury printed the following obituary on Tuesday the 25^th of January 1866

THOMAS, HARTLEY, Jan 11^th, lost at sea on board the steam ship London, James Thomas Esq, late of London, formally of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, together with Sarah Anne his wife and two children Annie Mary and William Bradbury, also Elizabeth Hartley, for many years a most faithful and devoted servant of the above.

Elizabeth Hartley’s memorial inscription on her family’s gravestone next to the Parsonage garden wall in St Michael And All Angels graveyard Haworth reads

Also the memory of Elizabeth their daughter who was lost in the Steamship London which was bound from London to Australia and foundered in the Bay of Biscay January 11^th 1866 aged 37 years.