Gothic Pursuit [antikvár]

PROLOGUE The Cospatrick caught fire at night on November 17, 1874, somewhere south of the Cape of Good ffope. She was a three-masted London emigrant ship of the Shaw Savill Line, with more than four hundred voyagers bound for Auckland, New Zealand. In those creaking clippers of an extinct era, fire at sea was a terror always in the thoughts of passengers and crew. This one started in the bosun's locker. The standard procedure when such a disaster happened in the forward part of the ship was to get her head before the wind to prevent the natural draught from spreading the flames. At first this went well. The pumps were started and the crew began to douse the fire with water. Then, somehow, by mistake, the Cospatrick's head got into the wind, fanning the blaze. The bosun's locker was full of oakum, rope, paint and varnish. Roaring flames burst out in terrifying gusts from below decks and ran up the tarred shrouds. Billowing clouds of choking acrid smoke enveloped the whole ship in confusing, blinding thickness. It became obvious that she was doomed. The emigrants panicked. A starboard quarter-boat was lowered but, in their terror, a mob overfilled it and it capsized, spilling them into the ocean. The bow of the longboat caught fire as it was swung out over the rail, putting it out of action. Amid the shrieks and dreadful fear of 429 passengers and 44 crew, only the port and starboard lifeboats got away, with 42 and 39 people on board respectively. These lifeboats stayed near the unimaginable horror of the burning hulk for two days, until November 19, when the main and mizzen masts of the blackened, charred and smoking vessel fell on to the crowded after part of the ship.