Yes, this is another sinking, but what the passengers found themselves in after the ship went down is something no one should ever experience. I said it in my Mark Twain post, and I can’t say it enough: maritime regulations are written in blood. The sinking of the SS Princess Alice is another painful reminder of that truth. It also reminds us that some disasters are made worse not just by what happens on the water, but by conditions that should have been addressed long before tragedy struck.
On September 3, 1878, the crowded passenger paddle steamer was returning to London after a day excursion along the Kent coast. Some children were asleep, and a band was still playing as the ship rounded Tripcock Point near dusk. Then the Princess Alice and the much larger collier Bywell Castle suddenly found themselves on a collision course.
The iron bow of the Bywell Castle struck the Princess Alice near her starboard paddle box. The smaller ship broke apart and sank in about four minutes. Passengers were in the water before many of them understood what had happened.
The investigations did not produce one simple answer. The coroner’s jury found that both vessels had contributed to the collision. The Board of Trade blamed the Princess Alice for failing to follow the proper navigation rule, while the High Court later held both ships responsible.
Although the Bywell Castle survived the collision, her crew immediately turned their attention to rescuing survivors from the Thames. They were joined by police, watermen, dock workers, and ordinary citizens who rushed to help. In disasters like this, history often remembers the ships, but it should also remember those who risked their own lives trying to save people they had never met.
The ship went down at the point where enormous amounts of untreated sewage and industrial waste from London entered the Thames. About an hour before the collision, nearby outfalls had released an estimated 75 million imperial gallons of untreated sewage, about 90 million U.S. gallons, into the Thames.
Survivors found themselves struggling not only in the water but in what contemporary accounts described as foul, polluted sludge. Some survivors who were pulled from the river later died after swallowing the polluted water. Several survivors who were pulled from the river later died from swallowing the sewage water. Between 600 and 700 people died. They didn’t keep a correct ship manifest, so the exact number is not known.
That tragedy had consequences far beyond the sinking itself. It shocked Victorian Britain and added urgency to efforts to improve London’s sewage and public health systems. In other words, the Princess Alice wasn’t just a maritime disaster; it became part of the story of modern sanitation.
The collision put hundreds of passengers into the Thames. Years of neglect made the river itself part of the disaster. After this, things started to change and raw waste would not go into the river. London built purification and treatment facilities directly at the existing Barking (Northern Outfall) and Crossness (Southern Outfall) pumping stations.
