Glasgow And Ships Of The Clyde

Sailing vessel PLADDA collides with Steamer EAGLE off Arran

From: Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald 7th September 1973

The Perils Of The Sea SAVED BY THE SHEEP

With the Clyde being one of the busier waterways of Europe for longer than living memory, there has been a fair number of shipping disasters, accidents or curious incidents in its waters - or connected with the ships built in the Firth.

Some are still remembered or spoken about - the CHUSAN disaster and the HJORTNES tragedy at Ardrossan, the wreck of the TRELAWNEY off Stevenston; others are long ago forgotten.     The greatest loss of life was probably incurred in the DASHER during the past war when she sank in mid channel: but other founderings around local coasts have had their quotas of catastrophe.

One stormy Monday night - November 28, 1850 - the steamer EAGLE left Greenock at 9 p.m. bound for Londonderry with 80 passengers and a cargo of 200 sheep. The weather was fine at first but became dark an squally as the ship headed down the firth, and the skipper, Captain Eaglesham, hugged the Arran coast.

RAMMED About midnight, as the steamer was passing Holy Isle, the lights of another ship were seen off the port bow.      To avoid her the EAGLE turned hard a port, but while the other ship - the PLADDA, a sailing vessel loaded with timber, homeward bound from Quebec - took similar action but she did not answer her helm swiftly enough and her stern rammed the EAGLE amidships on the starboard side.    The size of the PLADDA is not known, but she was apparently waterlogged, making her difficult to handle.    On the collision, the EAGLE’s funnel collapsed, and the aft compartments filled with water which rushed into the engine room and extinguished the boilers. The ship rapidly began to sink by the stern.    

A passenger described the scene: “I was sitting in the cabin with two or three others, the other passengers reposing peacefully in their beds, when a fearful crash startled us: the large mirror was smashed in fragments and the whole of the fittings of the cabin came down upon us like rubbish.

The passengers in the cabin rushed on deck, many entirely naked.    The cries of the passengers were horrendous.

The vessel was rapidly sinking.    The stern descended, while the bow rose out of the water, till the vessel was almost as perpendicular as a steeple.

“Great numbers of the passengers must have been seriously injured as those who were in the bow, having lost their hold, fell down the dizzy height on to other parts of the steamer or into the water

 A tugboat named RESTLESS was a short distance away and made for the scene.      The master later described his difficulty in reaching survivors from the EAGLE, as in the darkness of the night he had great difficulty in distinguishing the faces of the sheep, of which there was about 200 floating about, from the faces of human beings.

A macabre situation as he also had bother distinguishing the cries of the humans from the bleating of the animals.    Forty persons from the EAGLE - passengers and crew were drowned, but one survivor at least was saved with the assistance those same sheep, he grabbed one under each arm and swam with them as lifebelts to the shore of the Holy Isle.

NOTE: EAGLE sank in Lamlash Bay, Isle of Arran    HM Customs sold cargo, boots and Gratings belonging to ship