Bartholomew Eliot George Warburton

His father was Major George Warburton, Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary for Aughrim, County Galway. His mother was Anne Maria Acton of Kilmacurragh, County Wicklow. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge,[2] and was called to the Irish Bar in 1837. He contracted lasting friendships with Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) and AW Kinglake, author of Eothen, which he admired. He decided to give up his practice as a barrister for travel and literature.

His first travel articles were published in the Dublin University Magazine, where the editor, Charles Lever persuaded him to make them into a book. This became his first book, The Crescent and the Cross, an account of his travels in 1843 in Greece, Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, and which fairly divided public attention with Kinglake's Eothen, which appeared in the same year, 1844. Interest in England was centred in the East at the time, and Warburton had popular sympathy with Kinglake in his advocacy of the annexation of Egypt. But, apart from this consideration, the spirited narrative of Warburton's adventures and the picturesque sketches of Eastern life and character were more than sufficient to justify the success of the book. It was a huge success and went into 18 editions.[1]

In 1847 Warburton wrote Zoë: an episode of the Greek War, derived from a story he had heard while visiting the Greek islands. He donated the proceeds of the book to Irish famine relief. His most substantial work was a Memoir of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers (1849), enriched with original documents, and written with eloquent partiality for the subject. This was followed in 1850 by Reginald Hastings, a novel, the scenes of which were laid in the same period of civil war, and, in 1851, by another historical novel, Darien, or The Merchant Prince. He was also for a time the editor of The Gentleman's Magazine.[3]

He was planning to write a history of the poor, and on his last visit to Dublin visited slums and poor areas of the city. However, in 1851 he was sent by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to explore the isthmus of Darién and to negotiate friendly relations between the company and the local Indian tribes. He sailed on this mission aboard the steamship RMS Amazon, and died along with about 110 other passengers and crew when the Amazon caught fire and sank on 4 January 1852 in the Bay of Biscay.[3]

His brother, Major George Drought Warburton (1816–1857, named after his uncle George Drought of Glencarrig, County Wicklow), collaborated with him on Hochelaga, or England in the New World (1847), and The Conquest of Canada (1849). Another brother, Thomas, studied law at Trinity College, Dublin, while a sister, Sidney, was also a writer.

Building

By 1851 iron-hulled screw ships were increasingly common, but RMSP conservatively continued to buy new paddle steamers. The Admiralty supervised those UK merchant ships contracted to carry mail, and insisted that they all have wooden hulls.[1] Therefore RMSP ordered that Amazon and her four sisters be wooden-hulled paddle steamers.

R & H Green built Amazon at Blackwall Yard, London. Her keel was laid on 1 September 1850 at and she was launched on 28 June 1851. Seaward and Capel of Limehouse built her engines.[2] They were a pair of side-lever steam engines, developing 800 hp[3][clarification needed] at 14 revolutions per minute.[citation needed] No figure for her gross register tonnage is recorded, but it was in the order of 2,900 GRT. Maiden voyage and loss

Amazon was the first of the five sister ships to enter service. In December 1851 she reached Southampton to prepare for her maiden voyage. She carried 1,000 tons of coal for her bunkers and loaded several hundred tons of cargo. Her strong room contained 500 bottles of mercury for use as a mining explosive in Mexico and £20,000-worth of specie.[3] The mercury was worth over £5,000 and the total value of the cargo was estimated at about £100,000.[citation needed] In common with many ships undertaking trans-oceanic voyages in that era, the ship carried livestock on deck and bales of hay to feed them.[3]

On Friday 2 January Amazon, commanded by Captain William Symons, loaded mail, embarked 50 passengers and late that day she sailed for the Caribbean. In the next 24 hours she twice hove to as her engine bearings overheated. She entered the Bay of Biscay and about 1240 hrs on Sunday 4 January smoke was sighted rising from a hatch ahead of her forward funnel. Captain Symons and his chief officer, Roberts, were quickly on deck and organised crewmen with buckets and a hose to fight the fire. Men started to move hay away from the fire, but after they had moved only two bales all the remainder caught alight.[3]

Symons ordered that the engines be stopped and boats launched. The mail boat was lowered containing 25 people. In a heavy sea and with the ship still under way the boat was swamped and all of its occupants drowned. The fire was now such that the engine room could not be reached and so the engines could not be stopped.[3] Symons turned the ship so that the wind was at her stern. This helped to slow the spread of fire toward her stern, but also maximised her speed and thus the difficulty in launching her boats.[4]

The pinnace was lowered. Before its occupants could unfasten its forward tackle the heavy sea swung it around and tossed its occupants in the water. A second cutter was lowered but swamped by a wave that washed away all but two of its occupants. The starboard lifeboat was successfully launched and 16 people got away in it. The dinghy was successfully launched carrying five people.[5] Contemporary engraving of the loss of Amazon

The fire spread out of control. The starboard lifeboat rescued the five occupants of the dinghy and tried to approach the ship to rescue more people, but came in danger of being swamped and so abandoned the attempt. Amazon was still under way, rolling in the heavy sea while Symons and his crew still tried to keep her course steady.[5]

By 0400 hrs the fire brought down the ship's foremast and mainmast. At 0500 hrs her magazine exploded and her mizzen mast was brought down. Her funnels glowed red-hot[6] and about half an hour later she sank about 110 miles (180 km) west-south-west of the Isles of Scilly.[citation needed]

At 1030 hrs the brig Marsden, bound from London to North Carolina, rescued the 21 survivors in the starboard lifeboat and landed them at Plymouth.[6] At first these were feared to be the only survivors.[7] However, the Dutch galliot Gertruida rescued seven passengers, 17 crew members and a foreman from Seaward and Capel and landed them at Brest on 5 January.[8] A second Dutch ship, Hellechina, rescued 13 survivors and transferred them to the HM Revenue cutter Royal Charlotte, which landed them at Plymouth on 16 January.[citation needed]

At the beginning of February a section of Amazon‍ '​s timbers, partly charred by the fire, drifted ashore at Falmouth.[9] Deaths and aftermath

Reports of the total number of dead vary from 105 to 115.[6] They included the popular travel writer and novelist Elliot Warburton.[citation needed] A national appeal, championed by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, raised money for widows, orphans and survivors.[6]

An enquiry into the ship's loss failed to establish a cause of the fire. The repeated overheating of the engine bearings has been cited as suggesting that the fire may have started in the engine room.[6] However, such overheating might also be expected to cause the engines to seize, whereas they continued to run as the fire spread.

Whatever the cause, the fire caused the Admiralty to reconsider its insistence on wooden hulls for mail ships. The next ship that RMSP ordered, RMS Atrato, was built with an iron hull.[10]