HMS Eurydice

The 921-ton, 26-gun HMS Eurydice set sail in 1843. She had a sleek wooden hull and a large sail area, making her a swift boat and one of the best in the Royal Navy. She was recommissioned on the 7th of February at Portsmouth after undergoing normal maintenance and a refurbishment at J. Whites shipyard in Cowes in 1876.

The Atlantic crossing on HMS Eurydice took only 16 days down to the ship’s expert seamanship. She was “moving fast under plain sail, studding sails on fore and main, bonnets and skycrapers,” she sailed passed the Isle of Wight on March 22 at 3 p.m., as recorded by the Bonchurch Coastguard Station. It was about 3:40 when she sailed across Sandown Bay.

At that time ‘The Emma’, a schooner commanded by Jenkins, and a fishing boat piloted by Mr. Colenut on its way back to Shanklin were the only other ships in the vicinity.

Suddenly, a massive storm rolled in across the bay, covering all in snow and ice and moving at breakneck speeds. Captain Jenkins reefed the sails and Mr. Colenut pulled in beneath the lee of Culver Cliff, but witnesses say the Eurydice kept sailing with full mast and sail with her gun ports open until she vanished in the storm. The mystery of why she was set with her gun ports wide open remains unsolved.

Only two of the ship’s 319 crew and trainees survived; most of those who were not carried down with the ship died of exposure in the freezing waters. One of the two survivors said that Captain Hare had ordered the sails to be brought in, but that it had been difficult to do so because of the heavy snowfall. The wind shifted and flipped the frigate onto her starboard side, exposing the exposed gun ports to the South East.

Many crew members were competent swimmers, but the storm’s waters were just above freezing, and the heavy snowfall meant that most survivors perished from hypothermia before the blizzard finally subsided and the Emma could return to pick them up. Only Fletcher and Cuddiford, out of the five she saved from the river, made it to Ventnor Cottage Hospital alive.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Eurydice_(1843)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Eurydice_(1843)