History on our doorstep - The Voyage of the Steamship Sirius

When you’ve lived in a place for a certain time, you tend to get caught up in the mundane everyday trappings of life and lose focus of some of the more extraordinary stories that may have taken place just outside your door. Even events that changed history may pass you buy unnoticed as you race past a small unassuming plaque on a house on your way back from a lunch break that has once again taken far too long. Here in the Cork area, these tie-ins are legion. From the house of one of the most ground-breaking mathematicians of all times to the streets walked by an anti-slavery activist, to a journey that caused the western world to shrink dramatically, many of these places, steeped in history, may elicit nothing more than a sideward glance.

The small Maritime Museum housed in a single-story building in Passage West is one of the only links to the town's maritime past.

Today, the town is little more than a suburb and dormitory town for Cork.

One of these places is Passage West, on the lower reaches of Lough Mahon in Cork Harbour. Today, it is a sleepy commuter town, linked to the city by one of Bus Éireann’s many questionable bus lines. A small but well curated maritime museum is the only clue to this town’s varied and important history. That, and the former railway line that links it to the city centre, part of which has been converted into a greenway. However, up until the middle of the 19th century, Passage West was as far upstream as it was possible to go for deep-draft vessels on the River Lee. The channel further upstream was blocked by a collection of shoals and sand bars could only be passed by lighter vessels. By the 1830s, this had caused Passage West to balloon into a flourishing small port town sporting not only ample quays, warehouses and anchorages, but also two shipyards. It is from one of these deep-water quays in the year 1838 that a journey would begin that would change the world.

From Sail to Steam

Paddle steamer Sirius signed and dated 1842. Park Place 1791, Park Vista, Greenwich

The steam ship Sirius was not a giant by any stretch of the imagination. However, this fifty-meter-long paddle-wheel steamer was a miracle of technology in 1838, having been launched only a year earlier in Leith near Edinburgh. She was not only equipped with the then brand-new steam engine, but also sported what was then a novelty in marine engines, a condenser to recover fresh water from the steam exhaust, allowing the engines to run for far longer than if they were simply fed with sea water. Despite all her innovations, Sirius was a familiar sight in Passage West by the spring of 1838, being a regular sight on the Cork to London steam packet route for which she had actually been designed in the first place. However, by early 1838, the stars had aligned to see this little steamer embark on a journey into the history books, all due to corporate ego.

In the late 1830s, the emerging steam engine technology had triggered a commercial arms race between shipping companies. Trade between Britain and both her remaining colonies in the Americas as well as the new and not-yet-quite United States of America was a highly lucrative business, both in terms of cargo, passengers, and immigrants trying their luck in the vast untamed wilds of North America. However, the sailing ships of the day were subject to the whims and vagaries of the weather, which made it challenging at best to keep up anything even remotely resembling a regular sailing schedule. The promise of an engine that would allow a ship to operated independently of prevailing winds was enough to loosen the purse-strings of many of the investors in the City of London, and the hulls of two highly advanced and massive steamers began taking shape on the slipways of shipyards in London and Bristol. 

Engraving of the SS Great Western at sea.

On one hand was the behemoth SS Great Western, the latest fever dream of legendary engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Her construction was financed by the Great Western Railway who were betting on the fact that a reliable shipping service from Bristol, timed to allow seamless onward connection to and from the train services on the Great Western Mainline would be the most convenient and efficient way to travel from London to America. Competing against Brunel and the Great Western was the newly formed British and American Steam Navigation Company, who were building a massive steamer of her own on the lower reaches of the Thames, the SS British Queen. Both ships were almost identical, with the British Queen being slightly longer at 76 meters, compared to the 71 meters of the Great Western. Both originally displaced around 1300 tons and both were side-wheel paddle steamers with iron-reinforced wooden hulls, the peak of technology in the 1830s. That any of these ships would live up to the expectations of their investors was far from a foregone conclusion. This was cutting edge technology, still experimental to a certain degree, and centuries of sailing ships had ingrained in many people a cowed reverence for the Atlantic. Only two years ago, a well-respected lecturer had equated the likelihood of a successful steam-powered Atlantic crossing to a journey to the moon. Even the American steamship Savannah, which had crossed the Atlantic as early as 1819, had done much of its crossing under sail. And no one had dared to book a passage on her.

Hand-coloured wood engraving of the British Queen (1838) and the paddle steamer Sylph sitting alongside, starboard view of both, PY0213

Furthermore, there was trouble brewing for British and American. Construction on the British Queen was running nowhere as smooth as anyone would have liked. The ship had seen significant redesigns while still in the planning stage to make sure she would end up larger than the Great Western, “mine is bigger than yours” apparently being as much a staple amongst 19th century shipping investors as it is amongst 21st century space-going billionaires. Worse was to come however when the company contracted out to build the British Queen’s steam engine went under before work on the engine was completed. While a new engine manufacturer was found, both this debacle and the redesigns delayed the launch of the British Queen by eighteen months, meaning she would only launch after the Great Western had already entered service.

Clearly, this would just not do. All ego aside, a lot of money was at stake here as well, especially for British and American. Consequently, the management started looking around for a suitable ship that could be chartered to fill in for British Queen for eighteen months, until she was ready. Unfortunately, while steam ships were already entering service in the late 1830s, they were mostly designed for coastal journeys. What’s more, given the new technology, these ships were often the pride of their owner’s fleets, making companies rather reluctant to part with them, even for a one-year charter. One ship stood out though. Granted, she was only two thirds of the size of the British Queen, with about half the displacement. She could never make the whole journey from London to New York. However, if the ship topped up her coal bunkers somewhere in the west of Ireland, say, Cork Harbour, she could just about make it. And so, in early 1838, an agreement was reached between British and American Navigation Co. and the Saint George Steam Packet Co. of Cork that would see the SS Sirius be chartered for an initial two transatlantic crossings in Spring 1838. With the ship ready, it was time to find a suitable captain. And the management at Saint George Steam Packet already had someone in mind.

Richard Roberts

Richard Roberts’ early life bore no hint that he would ever so much as set foot on the planks of a ship. Born in Ardmore, Passage West in 1803, he grew up in comfortable circumstances, his father being a justice of the peace and his mother stemming from landed gentry of French Huguenot descent with significant holdings in Clare and Limerick. After receiving private education at the hands of a personal tutor, Richard joined the Royal Navy as a “Gentleman Volunteer” while still in his early teens. I’m not sure if the 19th century counterpart to “It’s not a phase, Mom!” was uttered in the Roberts household when he made his decision. Whatever the original motivation, Richard seems to have taken a liking to life in the navy, as by the 1820s, he found himself in the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron, which was involved in one of the navy’s longest, bloodiest, and least known combat operations, the campaign against the African slave trade.

Britain had more or less stumbled into the abolition of slavery by accident. Propelled by shifting majorities and an unusually progressive prime minister, the British parliament had voted for abolition in 1807, proving in the process that even a thoroughly corrupt, nepotistic and incompetent clock can be right twice a day. Enforcement of the Abolition of Slavery Act outside the home islands fell to the Royal Navy, who stood up the West Africa Squadron in 1808, while still embroiled in the Napoleonic wars. At least that’s the official story as Royal Navy captains were already hounding slaving vessels in the region under the guise of the fight against Napoleon. Some might even argue that both the abolition in 1807 and the establishment of the West Africa Squadron simply provided legal and organisational backing to the established facts on the ground. Whatever the truth is, by the 1820s, the West Africa Squadron numbered a dizzying number of warships and Royal Marines. For the crews assigned to this station, life could be nothing short of hell. Tropical diseases were rampant among the fleet and the slave traders seldom went down without a fight, often using the many inlets, river deltas and shallow bays to either evade or outright ambush Royal Navy warships. As the campaign continued, slave traders switched to faster ships, mostly US built Baltimore Clippers, in order to simply outrun the lumbering British frigates. Even if a slave vessel was caught, the slavers would usually just throw some of their “cargo” overboard, leaving the Royal Navy with the quandary of either rescuing the poor souls in the water or hunting down the slaving ship and leaving those slaves to die. This abject cruelty more often than not enraged the British sailors and marines, and bloody reprisals against captured slavers were not unheard of.

It was this cauldron of disease, frustration, cruelty and blood lust that Richard Roberts found himself in towards the end of the 1820s. He had steadily worked his way up the ranks in the navy, and by January 1829, was senior mate, effectively the ship’s XO or first officer, aboard a converted slaving vessel, commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Black Joke, with the grim sarcastic humour you’d expect from a force involved in what was basically the 19th century counterpart to Vietnam. The ship had already racked up an impressive amount of captured slave vessels under her current commander, Lieutenant Henry Downes, but had been struck by tropical fevers off the coast of Bioko in the last months of 1828 and been forced to leave her station to allow the crew to recover. However, by late January 1829, the ship was back in action, stalking its latest prey, the Spanish slave ship Almirante. She’d been observed taking on slaves for transportation to Havana in modern day Cuba, and Black Joke had started the chase as soon as the Almirante had set sail.

Almost immediately, things seemed to go bad for the Royal Navy ship. Lieutenant Downes was incapacitated, forcing Richard Roberts to take command. What’s more, the Almirante was not only larger than Black Joke, but outgunned her seven to one, with fourteen guns on the slave ship versus HMS Black Joke’s two cannon. Still, for 31 hours, Roberts chased down the Spanish ship and in the early hours of February 1st 1829 finally moved in for the kill. Continuing Black Joke’s seeming run of bad luck, the wind died just as Roberts was making his final approach into firing range, forcing the crew to run out sweeps or oars and row their way into the engagement. Despite lacking wind, being outgunned and with her captain out of action, HMS Black Joke would proceed, over the next eighty minutes, to systematically whittle down the Spanish ship, Roberts using the superior sailing and fighting skills of his battle-hardened crew to his advantage. When the dust settled, the Almirante had struck her colours, having lost fifteen crew members killed, including the captain, and a further thirteen injured. HMS Black Joke had suffered six injuries, two of which would later die. More importantly, the ship’s “cargo” of 466 slaves was freed. Richard Roberts’ actions during the action of February 1st would see him promoted to Lieutenant. Unfortunately, by 1830, the Royal Navy was feeling the full effects of the peace-time budget restrictions following the end of the Napoleonic wars and the War of 1812 and had to downsize. Accordingly, Richard Roberts found himself on half-pay and made his way back home to Passage West to seek employment with one of the private shipping companies based around Cork Harbour. By 1836, he’d joined the Saint George Steam Packet Company and found himself as the captain of the Victory. No, not Admiral Nelson’s old flagship, as epic as that would have been, but one of the Saint George’s packet steamers. Finally, in early 1838, Roberts was transferred to the Sirius, in order to prepare her for her epic transatlantic crossing. Given her small size and limited coal capacity, an experienced sailor like Roberts would maximize the ship’s chances of successfully completing the journey.

The Crossing

Wednesday, April 4th, 1838, was the type of fresh, blustery spring day that anyone who’s lived in Ireland for any length of time will be familiar with. Sirius was moored alongside the deep-water quay in Passage West, tugging against her mooring lines in a westerly wind. Her engineers had been busy lighting the boilers and raising steam for the ship’s single engine ever since the early hours of the morning, and a wisp of white steam was rising out of her amidships funnel, before being blown across the water by the freshening breeze. The quayside was a hive of activity, with the last bits of cargo being brought onboard, alongside her 45 paying passengers. She’d been moored here numerous times before, in between her regular runs to London on the Saint George Steam Packet’s flagship service. There was a certain urgency to these activities today, though. Word had come in from Bristol. The Great Western was being loaded at Avonmouth and might be ready to sail as early as this week. The race was on!

As Captain Roberts walked the decks of the ship, checking with one of the ship’s senior mates here, or having a quick chat with one of the passengers, he couldn’t quite suppress that lingering tinge of anxiety that kept gnawing hat his innards. He obviously couldn’t show it, after all, he was the captain of this ship and had to be an example for his crew, but no matter what he did, that little twinge of nervousness was always there. He had felt it on that February in 1829, when he had made his move against the Almirante, and he felt it now. For the task at hand was equally as audacious as that attack had been. Roberts knew all too well that Sirius would be operating at the very edge of her capabilities. She was a tough ship, designed to handle the worst that the Channel and the Irish Sea could throw at her, but the Atlantic, that was a different matter. On paper, she had more than enough coal onboard for both the journey and some reserves, but his twenty years at sea had shown him just how quickly things could change once you lost sight of land.

Back in the 1830s, this would have been a hive of activity, with cargo ships and packet steamers coming and going.

The bollard shown here is one of the only hints at the past of this quay in Passage West.

Shortly before noon, the last bits of cargo were finally brought aboard and stowed in the hold. Precisely at noon, the Sirius’ steam whistle gave an ear-piercing shriek, and the ship cast off her mooring lines. Helped by tugboats, the ship was pulled clear of the quay and ponderously swung her bow around to face downriver. With a single command of Captain Roberts, the Sirius’s paddle wheels began churning up the water. Leaving her tugs behind, she slowly made her way down the narrow channel of the River Lee, with familiar names passing on both sites: Glenbrook, Monkstown, Marino. Soon, Rushbrooke and its shipyard appeared ahead, heralding the narrowest and most challenging part of the navigation channel, as it made a tight turn to the east to thread the needle between the fishing village of Cove and Haulbowline Island with its Royal Navy yard. As the shipyard passed to port, Roberts ordered the turn, allowing himself a slight appreciative nod when he saw that, despite being heavily laden with cargo, passengers and coal, Sirius responded well to rudder inputs. It almost seemed like he was just off on another journey to London. But that wasn’t the case. Ever since they’d slipped their moorings at Passage West, the shores had been thronged by onlookers wishing to catch a glimpse of this historic journey. As she passed between Cove and Haulbowline, Roberts caught a glimpse of HMS Semiramis, the Royal Navy guardship, swinging at anchor next to several smaller frigates and sloops, their decks and rigging just as thronged with onlookers as the shores of Cove. Roberts ordered Sirius to come alongside the pier at Cove to disembark a number of local dignitaries who had joined the ship to see her off on her epic journey. With this last task in Cork Harbour done, the ship picked up speed again. As the sleeping fishing village passed behind them, one last sweeping turn brought Sirius onto a heading out into the Atlantic. The mouth of Cork Harbour drew nearer, a narrow channel between two imposing hills, the twin forts of Camden and Davis guarding the narrows like creatures of legend, Scylla and Charybdis. Before long, even that last narrow cut lay behind them. As Sirius passed Roches Point, Captain Roberts could feel the ship’s bow begin to slowly rise and fall as the first of the Atlantic’s long waves rolled through under her. As the sip picked up speed, the coast behind them shrunk further and further, before disappearing completely behind a rain squall that was moving up the coast. Roberts ordered another course change South by West. They were underway. 

The following days would prove Robert’s apprehension right. The Sirius’ log entries for the next couple of days show that the ship battled against “heavy gales with a very heavy sea” on April 7th, while the entry for the next day reads “strong breeze with heavy sea.” April 8th would also be crucial for Sirius in another way, as on that day, unbeknownst to Captain Roberts and his officers, the Great Western slipped her moorings at Avonmouth and headed out on her own transatlantic journey. For the next week, the Sirius would continue her battle against the elements, being pushed progressively south by a combination of strong winds and heavy seas. While the wind would on occasion slacken considerably, high waves would be a constant companion for the little ship for her entire journey. As if to add insult to injury, the ship’s engine started to act up, eventually requiring the engine to be stopped and re-adjusted in the middle of the Atlantic.

No sooner had this been resolved than the weather took a decidedly nasty turn. Following a few days of light winds and generally moderate seas, from April 15th onward, the passengers and crew of Sirius would feel the full wrath of the Atlantic. For four days straight, the ship’s logs show nothing but “violent gales”, “heavy”, “rolling” and “very heavy” seas. Records from passengers show that some of them feared for their lives and honestly, I can’t really blame them. Sirius was not a large ship, even for her time, and for people to find themselves suddenly in the middle of an Atlantic storm, their ship being tossed around by the waves like a child’s tow, thunderous seas crashing across her decks, her how alternately jutting up into the slate grey skies or buried deep into a boiling, frothing green seas, all while lighting crashes round them and anyone on deck is pelted by incessant rain, driven by the violent storm until any unprotected bit of skin feels like it’s being sandblasted, that would be a terrifying experience. 

Yet, Captain Roberts decided to push on. They had no choice. Ireland was too far behind and returning would have meant sailing against the storm. And the captain would be damned if he tried to do a full 180 degree turn in this kind of weather. And sure enough, as the journey entered its third week and Sirius approached the American coast, the winds and waves began to die down. However, fate had one last twist up its sleeve for the crew of Sirius. Her battle against the storms had eaten into her coal reserves, badly. Her fuel reserves had melted away and it would be anyone’s guess if they still had enough coal to make it to any port on the Eastern seaboard, let alone New York. They needed a way to stretch their remaining coal supplies. Not wanting to further frighten his passengers by beginning to rip out rigging or wood panelling, Roberts decided that they would use four barrels of resin they had taken on in Passage West to make their coal last that little bit longer.

Finally, the lookouts spotted land. On April 22nd, Sirius entered the Narrows, the strait linking New York Harbour to the Atlantic. One can imagine her passengers and crew gazing at the green bluffs on either side of the strait which a week ago they wouldn’t have been sure to ever see, saying little prayers of thanks. Slowly, the little steamer sailed up the harbour as Manhattan grew ever closer. It was a completely different site in those days, not too dissimilar to many Irish or British cities, and a far cry from the forest of glittering high rises it is today. But for those sailors and passengers, it was a beautiful sight indeed. Soon, the low, squat silhouette of the Battery began to take shape, as Roberts gingerly manoeuvred Sirius to her mooring position. Finally, after eighteen days and a journey of 2896 miles or 4660 kilometers, the ship dropped her anchors into the bottom of New York Harbour. They only had fifteen tons of coal left in her bunkers.

Epilogue

The passengers and crew of Sirius were the toast of the town in New York. The ship had cut the journey time between Britain and America clean in half, only taking eighteen days instead of the forty days that sailing ships usually needed for the trip. Yet, even as Captain Roberts was treated to dinners in his honour and galas in his name, it became clear that Sirius would not be able to bask in its triumph for long. A mere eighteen hours after her own arrival, a vast four-masted leviathan entered New York harbour, her paddle wheels tucked away in her hull and her black hull with white trim clearly giving her away. The Great Western had arrived, less than a day behind Sirius, despite the fact that the smaller ship had had a shorter distance to cover and a four-day head start. The writing was on the wall.

Sirius would complete only her two chartered journeys on the New York run before returning to her duties on the Cork London route. Her owners bid for a transatlantic mail run to Halifax, but this never materialised. She was sent to Hull in 1840 to be re-engined, but ended up staying there for two years, as the dry dock at Hull had to be extended to accommodate Sirius. The resulting financial shortfall caused the Saint George Steam Packet Company to seek refinancing, re-emerging in 1844 as the City of Cork Steam Ship Company, with Sirius continuing to ply her trade under that re-branded owner. Her story would not have a happy end. On January 16th, 1847, while on a regular run from Cork to Glasgow, the ship ran aground hard on rocks in Ballycotton Bay in dense fog. Despite the best attempts by her crew and shore-based rescue parties, twenty out of the total ninety-one passengers and crew perished in the sinking. It was the loss of Sirius that finally gave the impetus for a light house to be built at Ballycotton.

As for Richard Roberts, he transferred to the British and American Navigation Company when the charter for Sirius expired, taking command of the much-delayed British Queen on her transatlantic voyage when she finally entered service in 1839. In 1841, Roberts transferred to the newly built President, British Queen’s sister ship. It wasn’t a transfer he particularly relished, to put it mildly. Both British Queen and President were notoriously underpowered, with the latter actually taking longer to cross the Atlantic than it had taken the much smaller Sirius. Her seakeeping wasn’t much to write home about either. Roberts himself lamented this state of affairs in a letter to a friend, writing “…it is too bad to be forced into a vessel to give her a character.” His misgivings were to be proven tragically correct. On March 11th, 1841, President, under Richard Roberts’ command, departed New York for her return journey to Liverpool. The outbound voyage had taken twenty-one days. She carried 136 passengers and a full load of cargo. Two days later, she was seen struggling against the seas in a heavy gale near the treacherous Nantucket Shoals. It would be the last time that anyone saw her. President never arrived in Liverpool and while her precise fate is unknown, it is safe to assume that she was lost in the same storm she was seen struggling against back on March 13th, 1841.

As for the West Africa Squadron, where Richard Roberts had shown his abilities in command, this would persist until 1867, when it was amalgamated into the Cape Town based Cape of Good Hope Station. At its peak, one sixth of the Royal Navy’s entire fleet and Royal Marine troops would be assigned to the station. All in all, despite all the vagaries that the station brought with it, despite the rampant spread of tropical diseases amongst the officers and crew, the squadron would end up capturing 1600 slave ships and freeing 150,000 slaves between 1808 and 1860. Over 1500 sailors, officers and marines would be killed in action while serving in the West Africa Squadron between 1830 and 1865.