Wreck of the Roman Empress (From The Northern Echo)

Wreck of the Roman Empress

11:51am Saturday 12th February 2011 in Chris Lloyd By Chris Lloyd, Deputy Editor

"THE sight, the shrieks, the moans, the anxiety of mind will never be forgotten – it was heart-rending,” said an eyewitness who, 150 years ago, saw a storm tear across the North-East, flooding the Tees Valley and sinking more than 200 ships on the sea.

At Whitby, “the lifeboat was manned by 13 as brave hearts as ever battled with the ocean’s tempest”.

Twelve died, and tomorrow there is a service of commemoration at St Mary’s Church in the town.

The lifeboat was putting out for the sixth time that day – February 9, 1861 – when it overturned 20 yards from the shore where thousands watched in dismay.

“One poor man got on the bottom of the boat,” the eyewitness wrote in the Darlington and Stockton Times. “He had his arm down one of the air tubes. His arm broke, but he held on a minute or so longer, and at last he was washed off and drowned.”

These days when you go down to the sea, there is only a handful of large container ships crawling along the horizon. In those days, the shore was alive with sail, much of it carrying coal to market.

That day at Redcar, spectators watched “in great suspense” as the crew of the Roman Empress, a brig carrying coals from Shields to Naples, struggled against the storm.

“At length the men could hold on no longer, they gave it up and aimed for the shore.”

Now the crowd, dragging Redcar lifeboat with them, followed the brig down the coast as she crashed over rocks, ploughed through sandbanks and smashed through the wreckage of other ships, with her crew lashed to the rigging so they couldn’t fall off.

One-and-a-half miles later at Marske, the Roman Empress became stuck on the sand and the lifeboatmen, showing great bravery, rowed their way out to save her crew.

Hundreds of other sailors were not so fortunate.

The Redcar reporter stood on the beach, collecting the flotsam and jetsam of their lives. A nameboard was washed up showing the Veendam had come to grief.

Cargoes and possessions came ashore.

“Some of the printed books, I suppose, would indicate the readings of some of those poor fellows who had so suddenly met with a watery grave,” said the article.

The most poignant was a letter to a 24-yearold lost captain from “a very respectable female”

whom he was about to marry.

“She speaks of the commencement of the storm, wonders how he is going on, and if he is safe; hopes he may have a quick turn from Hartlepool, and asks his opinion about her going back again to the Sunday School, which she has been solicited to do by the clergyman,”

wrote the reporter.

His next, and final, line said: “Three bodies have this day been cast ashore.”

ON Wednesday, going to talk to Thirsk Probus Club, my usual route into the town along Kirkgate was closed by roadworks.

I was diverted in a roundabout way until I stuttered into Stammergate – a street named, presumably, in deference to The King’s Speech, the film which is all the rage currently.

The erudite Probus members put me right.

Stammergate is believed to have begun life as Stoney Moor Gate because it led to a moor, covered in stones, on the east side of town.

And so I was staggered by Stammergate.