The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn
The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn
By Harry Collingwood
27 Sep, 2019
It happened on our seventh night out from Cape Town, when we had accomplished about a third of the distance between that city and Melbourne.
Excerpt.........The ship was the Saturn, of the well-known Planet Line of combined freight and passenger s
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It happened on our seventh night out from Cape Town, when we had accomplished about a third of the distance between that city and Melbourne.
Excerpt.........The ship was the Saturn, of the well-known Planet Line of combined freight and passenger steamers trading between London, Cape Town, and Melbourne; and I—Eric Blackburn, aged a trifle over twenty-three years—was her fourth officer.
The Saturn was a brand-new ship, this being her maiden voyage. She was a twin-screw, of 9800 tons register, 100 A1 at Lloyd’s, steaming 14 knots; and she had accommodation for 432 passengers, of whom 84 were first class, 128 second class, and 220 steerage; and every berth was occupied, the steerage crowd consisting mostly of miners attracted to Australia by the rumour of a newly discovered goldfield of fabulous richness. The crew of the ship numbered, all told, 103; therefore, when the catastrophe occurred, the Saturn was responsible for the lives of 535 people, of whom about 120 were women and children. Less
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