3-085-792 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The steam-ship "Channel Queen" in Fowey Harbour, 1898. 'The most melancholy shipping disaster of the year has been the foundering of the steamer Channel Queen off Guernsey on Feb. 1, by which twenty people lost their lives. The Channel Queen, a steel steamer,...was owned by the Plymouth, Channel Islands, and Brittany Steam-ship Company, and was engaged in the service between the Channel Islands and the coast of Brittany...[She left] Plymouth...with a crew of sixteen, and forty-seven passengers, of whom forty-four were French onion-sellers returning to St. Brieuc, after a tour in this country...during a dense fog, the vessel struck on the Black Rock, a dangerous ridge of rock between Hansis and Lihou Island...the rocks are so sharp that they cut right through the steel plates, and in less than ten minutes there was water in the engine-room...Heavy seas broke over the vessel, and it was then that the ill-fated passengers lost their lives. For three hours the survivors clung to the wreck...one after another the survivors were taken off...One of the most melancholy incidents of the disaster was the washing away of the baby of a Mrs. Pollard, as she was being lowered into a boat'. From "Illustrated London News", 1898.