SS ''Carnatic'' was a British
steamship
A steamship, often referred to as a steamer, is a type of steam-powered vessel, typically ocean-faring and seaworthy, that is propelled by one or more steam engines that typically move (turn) propellers or paddlewheels. The first steamships ...
built in 1862-63 by
Samuda Brothers at
Cubitt Town on the
Isle of Dogs, London, for the
Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company
P&O (in full, The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company) was a British shipping and logistics company dating from the early 19th century. Formerly a public company, it was sold to DP World in March 2006 for £3.9 billion. DP World ...
(P&O). She operated on the
Suez
Suez (, , , ) is a Port#Seaport, seaport city with a population of about 800,000 in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea, near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal. It is the capital and largest c ...
to
Bombay
Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...
run in the last years before the
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal (; , ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, Indo-Mediterranean, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest ...
was opened. This route gave a fast, steamship-operated route from Britain to India, connecting with similar steamships running through the Mediterranean to Alexandria, with an overland crossing to Suez. The alternative was to sail round the Cape of Good Hope, a distance at which steam ships were not, in the early 1860s, sufficiently economical to be commercially competitive with sail.
As one of the first British steamships to use a compound engine, ''Carnatic'' achieved a much better fuel economy (at 2lbs of coal per indicated horsepower-hour) than most other contemporary steamers. P&O had a number of compound-engined ships built in the first half of the 1860s: ''Poonah'' (1863), ''Golconda'' (1863) and ''Baronda'' (1864).
In 1869, she ran aground on a coral reef in the Red Sea and broke apart the following morning, with the loss of 31 lives. Her wreck was rediscovered in 1984 and is now a popular scuba diving site.
Ship history
The ship was laid down on 30 January 1862,
and was originally to be named ''Mysore''.
[ She was launched as ''Carnatic'' on 6 December 1862,][ and completed on 25 April 1863. The ]composite construction
Composite construction is a generic term to describe any building construction involving multiple dissimilar materials. Composite construction is often used in building aircraft, watercraft, and building construction. There are several reasons to ...
hull (iron-framed and wooden-planked) was fitted with square-rigged sails and a 4-cylinder compound inverted steam engine by Humphrys & Tennant, providing to a single propeller.
The compound engine was unusual at the time for a British vessel. Carnatic's boiler ran at only . Higher pressures were not allowed by the Board of Trade
The Board of Trade is a British government body concerned with commerce and industry, currently within the Department for Business and Trade. Its full title is The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of ...
. The advantages of a compound engine were not fully realised at this low pressure - but the solution to the problem was to apply a large amount of superheat. The efficiency gained was a fuel usage of just over 2lbs of coal per indicated horsepower-hour. This is comparable to the achievement of the groundbreaking at 2.2lbs per indicated horsepower-hour, but at a boiler pressure of .
Grounding
On 12 September 1869, she ran aground on Sha`b Abu Nuhas coral reef
A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in group ...
near Shadwan Island at the mouth of the Gulf of Suez in the Red Sea
The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...
. Having assessed the ship to be safe and the pumps intact, Captain P. B. Jones denied passengers' repeated requests to abandon ship, and reassured them that the ship was safe and that the P&O liner ''Sumatra'' was due to pass by and would rescue them. There was a general air of calm and normality on board until about 2 a.m. on the 14th, when the rising water engulfed the ship's boilers and the ship was left without power or light. At 11 a.m. the following morning, after 34 hours on the reef, Captain Jones had just given the order to abandon ship and the first four passengers had taken their seats in one of the lifeboats when ''Carnatic'' suddenly broke in half. Thirty-one people drowned. The survivors made it to barren island of Shadwan, where the next day the ''Sumatra'' rescued them.
''Carnatic'' was carrying £40,000 worth of gold
Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...
(well in excess of £1,000,000 in modern terms), so the wreck was the subject of a salvage operation two weeks later. All the gold was reported recovered, but persistent rumours of remaining treasure
Treasure (from from Greek ''thēsauros'', "treasure store") is a concentration of wealth — often originating from ancient history — that is considered lost and/or forgotten until rediscovered. Some jurisdictions legally define what constit ...
have added to the romance of the ship.
Captain Jones was recalled to England to face an official Board of Inquiry, which labelled him "a skilful and experienced officer". However, the inquiry added that "it appears there was every condition as regards ship, weather and light to ensure a safe voyage and there was needed only proper care. This was not done, and hence the disaster." Although Jones's Master's certificate was suspended for only nine months, he never returned to sea.
Rediscovered in May 1984, the wreck of the ''Carnatic'' is now a popular scuba diving
Scuba diving is a Diving mode, mode of underwater diving whereby divers use Scuba set, breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface breathing gas supply, and therefore has a limited but variable endurance. The word ''scub ...
site.
References
External links
*
A victim of the ''Carnatic'' disaster
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carnatic
1862 ships
Ships built in Cubitt Town
Steamships of the United Kingdom
Ships of P&O
Around the World in Eighty Days
Shipwrecks in the Red Sea
Maritime incidents in September 1869
Wreck diving sites