For previous segments, see: Part 1 (the bottle), Part 2 (the letters), Part 3 (the map), or Part 4 (Weather Watching).
Around noon on March 1, 1825, William Muir, the Kent’s third officer, descended into the Kent’s afterhold. In the report on the disaster, the reason given is that Muir had heard the thud of loose cargo below, in an area reserved for the soldiers’ alcohol. It is possible, of course, that there was no loose cargo: that Muir and his companions were secretly helping themselves to the spirits stored below.
Why was there so much alcohol below? In a pre-germ
theory world, clean, reliable sources of water were hard to come by. Daily alcohol
rations helped keep the armies and navies (relatively) healthy as they moved around
the globe. The Royal Navy was famously issued a daily ration of “grog” – a mix
of rum and water (its effects give us the word “groggy”). Soldiers stationed in
India at this time could each expect to receive a pint of raw spirits per man
per day. Predictably, the alcohol ration contributed to discipline problems, including
on board the Kent.
“Fire,” wrote Captain John Davie in 1804, “is the most
dreadful catastrophe” that can take place on board a ship. Fires grow
exponentially, and they are particularly dangerous in enclosed spaces, where the
CO and CO2
in smoke is deadlier than flames. As Muir and the sailors tried to douse the
fire they’d accidentally started, thick, suffocating smoke began to spread
through the compartments below decks. Within a matter of minutes, “several of
the sick soldiers, one woman, and several children” would die of smoke
inhalation.
News of the fire quickly spread around the ship. Joanna Dick was
told by a manservant that the ship was on fire, news that
Joanna found “so sudden and unlooked for, I could hardly take it in.” Soon
afterward, Joanna and Elizabeth shared this grim news with Mrs. Fearson, who
brought her two children to the cabin after being alarmed “by a stove falling
over, which had nearly killed little Charlotte.” The Kent was on fire, and the
danger posed to the passengers was only increasing.
David Pringle, one of the survivors of the disaster, records spending the morning in the cabin he shared with friend Grant. The two young men had been mocking each other’s efforts to stay upright in the storm-tossed room. David was “enjoying my laugh at [Grant’s] consternation, [when] on turning my eyes to the deck I saw smoke issuing from the afterhold.” Even though he had heard that at sea “the cry of Fire… Is almost synonymous with death” David did not at first realize “the danger of our situation.” The “number of troops on board” made it easy to “procure water” from the sea and dump it down the afterhatch. Soon, however, the desperate orders around him made David realize how dire their situation really was. The ship was sinking in addition to burning. In an era without radio, with no means of calling for help, the people on board the Kent were almost certainly doomed.
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