THE FOLLOWING TWENTY SEVEN LOTS ARE ITEMS RECOVERED FROM THE WRECK OF THE ROYAL CHARTER AND ARE SOLD ON BEHALF OF THE RECEIVER OF WRECK THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT:
The Loss of the Royal Charter, 25-26 October 1859
The auxiliary sailing ship Royal Charter was one of the most successful early steam vessels which ran to Australia during the decade following the gold rush of 1851. Built by Gibbs, Bright & Co for the Liverpool & Australian Steam Navigation Company in 1854, she was registered at 2,719 tons and was 235 feet in length. After a number of profitable voyages, she left Melbourne on 26 August 1859, homeward bound carrying 388 passengers, 112 crew and almost 70,000 ounces of gold valued at 273,000 and 48,000 in newly minted sovereigners, she also carried the personal wealth of passengers made on the goldfield.
Reaching Queenstown on 24 October after a record run of 58 days, thirteen passengers disembarked but were replaced by eleven riggers wishing to work their passage to the Mersey. The entire ship's company were happy at the thought of making port so soon and Royal Charter put to sea again after a short stop-over. As she sped up the Irish Sea, the good weather changed but progress was good and by mid-afternoon the following day, Captain Taylor ran her inshore to allow passengers a sight of Brunel's new monster steamship Great Eastern lying at Holyhead after her trials. Shortly after this detour, the wind started to freshen considerably and by the time Royal Charter rounded the Skerries on the north-west of Anglesey, the rising wind decided her captain to short sail. Royal Charter was a good sea boat however, having weathered many previous storms, her passengers filled with confidence in her and her captain's ability. With the benefit of hindsight Captain Taylor should have put back into Holyhead for shelter but, mindful of the promise he had made after leaving Queenstown "to by home witin 24 hours", he decided to keep his course. He was close to land but he judged it safe enough given the off-shore S.E. wind.
Taylor's signal rocket for a pilot at around 6.30pm remained unanswered due to the weather and by 8.00pm it was blowing a full gale, with fierce squalls and heavy rain. In an effort to gain more searoom, he ordered a few sails to be set but to no avail. The power of the sea and the wind, which had veered around and was hurricane strangth, was blowing the Royal Charter towards the shore and her puny engine could do little to stop the drift. Taylor made repeated attempts over the next few hours but all were doomed to failure; the power of the elements was simply too great. At 1.30am the following morning the port anchor snapped and the starboard chain went an hour later. Swung around by the straining cable before it broke, Royal Charter was now bows on to the land and heading inshore. She grounded at about 3.30am although little could be done to evacuate the ship until daylight. Valiant efforts to get a line for a bo'sun's chair ashore eventually succeeded, but hardly had a handful of men got off the wreck then a huge wave swamped her and broke her in two; it was 7.00am and dawn was just breaking. With practicually all the passengers in the rear saloon, when the stern of the ship was severed their fate was sealed.
Only forty survived the disaster and all were men -- 22 passengers and 18 crew. Every woman and child perished in the violence of the storm and those bodies which were recovered revealed the awful thruth; very few had drowned, most had been battered to death on the rocky shore within feet of safety. It was a fearful calamity in which over 450 people were lost. The gale devastated vast areas of England and wales wreaking havoc on land and sinking many other ships both at sea as well as at their moorings. Such was the impact of what happened on the Anglesey coast however, that the storm - one of the greatest of the century - became known to history as the "Royal Charter Gale".
Sovereign, 1838, (slight edge knock)
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Sovereign, 1838, (slight edge knock)