On 4 July 1898, the SS La Bourgogne collided with the sailing ship Cromartyshire while the two ships were in thick fog off Newfoundland, and Cromartyshire had reduced speed, but La Bourgogne was steaming at high speed. The La Bourgogne sank forty minutes after the collision, killing 562 of the 725 people aboard. It was, at the time, one of the worst maritime disasters in history.
Only 13 percent of her passengers survived, compared with 48 percent of her crew. 200 of her passengers were women, but only one survived. Passengers included numerous children, none of whom survived. It was alleged that after the collision, some of the steamship's officers failed to do their duty to minimise loss of life, and members of either her own crew or a group of seamen who were steerage passengers fought to save themselves to the exclusion of other passengers.
Owners of the Cromartyshire, and the relatives of dozens of the victims of the sinking, sued the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) for damages. The sailing ship's owners won, but CGT won limitation of liability against the other claimants. Some claimants won only a fraction of the amount they claimed, and others lost their cases altogether. Claims continued until 1908, when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that although La Bourgogne's excessive speed caused the collision, CGT was not at fault.
Background
La Bourgogne was part of a class of four new ocean liners ordered by the CGT in 1886, for its transatlantic route between Le Havre and New York. She made her maiden voyage on 19 June 1886, and made a record crossing of seven days, 15 hours, and 21 minutes from Le Havre to New York.
By July 1898, La Bourgogne's master was 44-year-old Captain Louis Deloncle, who had been with CGT for about five years. His previous command was the liner La Normandie. In 1895 La Normandie suffered an explosion of gas from the coal in one of her bunkers, which caused a fire in one of her cargo holds. Deloncle and his Second Captain, Dupont, were awarded gallantry medals for their "cool and couraegous" handling of the fire. He commanded La Normandie at the fleet review at Spithead for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in June 1897.
Deloncle had been a lieutenant de vaisseau in the French Navy. He wrote a handbook on marine manœuvres, which the Navy had adopted as a standard textbook. He taught tactics at the School of Gunnery. He was nicknamed Loup de Mer ("Sea Wolf"), due to his thorough knowledge of naval matters. He was a brother of the French politicians François and Charles Deloncle, and of journalist Henri Deloncle; his son Eugène was involved in the far-right terrorist group La Cagoule.
Collision with Cromartyshire
On 2 July 1898, La Bourgogne left the North River in New York for Le Havre. She carried a total of 725 people: 83 passengers in first class, 123 in second, 297 in steerage, and 222 crew. She also carried cargo worth $300,000 to $400,000, and 170 bags of mail. Her passengers included a party of Austro-Hungarian seamen, and a party of about 75 Armenians, including a priest, and 13 Assyrians.
Two days later La Bourgogne ran into dense fog off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, reducing visibility to about 20 yards (18 metres), but maintained high speed. Also, she was 160 nautical miles (300 km) off the eastbound transatlantic shipping lane on which she should have been.
On 8 June the three-masted, iron-hulled sailing ship Cromartyshire had left Dunkirk with a cargo of coal for Philadelphia. Early on the morning of 4 July she was sailing through fog, about 60 nautical miles (110 km) off Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, sounding her foghorn every minute. She was under reduced sail and was making only about 4 to 5 knots (7 to 9 km/h). La Bourgogne heard Cromartyshire's foghorn, and answered with her steam whistle, but neither ship's lookouts could see the other ship. At 05:00 hrs Cromartyshire's bow struck the starboard side of La Bourgogne at an oblique angle. The sailing ship's master, Captain Oscar Henderson, said the steamship was going at "terrific speed".
The impact was just abaft La Bourgogne's bridge. The sailing ship's bow penetrated the steamship's engine room below the waterline and raked her starboard side, smashing La Bourgogne's starboard lifeboat number 1, and damaging lifeboats numbers 3 and 5. Captain Deloncle set course for Cape Sable Island, but La Bourgogne lost steam, rendering her unable to work her main pumps. La Bourgogne fired a distress rocket and flare, and raised lights to indicate she was in danger.
Sinking
Most of the passengers were in bed and asleep until the two ships collided. La Bourgogne's starboard lifeboats and some liferafts were launched, but survivors alleged that the liner's officers were ineffective, and the ratings sought to save themselves rather than the passengers. Some passengers resorted to trying to launch boats and rafts themselves, and alleged afterward that some members of the crew "chased them away" and took the boats and rafts for themselves. One passenger alleged that a crewman on deck used an oar to beat a passenger to prevent him from reaching a liferaft. He and other passengers alleged that occupants of lifeboats used boat hooks and oars to stop passengers in the water from boarding their boat. One passenger alleged that he and his elderly mother were thrown out of a lifeboat into the sea. One survivor alleged that some passengers were threatened with knives. Survivors said that the only member of La Bourgogne's crew who made a professional effort to launch lifeboats was the Second Officer, Delinge.
Captain Henderson ordered Cromartyshire's crew to prepare her boats to be lowered, and went forward to inspect her bow. He found extensive damage, but the sailing ship was not in immediate danger of sinking. The two ships lost each other in the fog, but Henderson saw the rocket and flare that La Bourgogne fired, and he had several distress rockets and flares fired from Cromartyshire. At about 05:30 hrs the fog thinned enough for Henderson to see two of La Bourgogne's lifeboats being rowed toward his ship. This was the first he knew that the steamship had sunk.
Cromartyshire rescued the occupants of the two boats, stood to, and launched its own three boats to rescue other survivors, many of them on life rafts or clinging to wreckage. At about 15:00 hrs she sighted a westbound steamship, Allan Line's SS Grecian, and signalled to her. Survivors were transferred to Grecian, which towed the sailing ship to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they arrived on 6 July.
CGT was quick to deny the allegations against its officers and ratings. It claimed they had acted correctly, and that the seamen who assaulted passengers had been travelling in steerage and were not members of the ship's crew. CGT claimed that the Chief Officer commanded starboard boat number 7, which was full of women and children, and was successfully launched, but was then crushed by one of the ship's two funnels falling upon it. The French Consul-General in New York, Edmond Bruwaert, reported that starboard boat number 9 had conveyed 53 survivors to Cromartyshire, and its crew had then done all they could to rescue other survivors.
CGT said that ten or a dozen sailors from among the steerage passengers commandeered starboard boat number 11, refused to come to the aid of anyone else, and fought off anyone else who tried to board their boat. One passenger said that the sailors in the boat were "Austrian". It was later clarified that they were from Dalmatia and Croatia, which then were provinces of Austria-Hungary.
Survivors of La Bourgogne's crew were returned to New York, where Bruwaert questioned them. On 9 July the crew, along with about a dozen of the surviving steerage passengers, were sent to France aboard the CGT liner La Touraine. On arrival in France they were to be surrendered to the French Admiralty for further questioning. They reached Le Havre aboard SS La Touraine on 17 July.
Survivors described the conduct of Deloncle and his officers. One of La Bourgogne's stokers claimed that they all acted correctly but were impeded by some of the passengers. However, Charles Liebra, from Philadelphia, said that Deloncle told the "saloon passengers" (i.e. first class) that there was no danger. An Austro-Hungarian passenger, Matteo Turich, was on deck and saw the collision as it happened. He alleged "No commands were being given and no system prevailed". A Swiss passenger, Fred Nyffeler, also alleged that just after the collision, an officer told him "nothing" was wrong. Nyffeler alleged that as the ship listed, and passengers and crew made for the lifeboats, Deloncle "had evidently lost his head, and was walking up and down the bridge screaming and swearing".
Victims and survivors
Only 163 people survived. La Bourgogne's passengers included about 200 women, but only one was saved. The survivors included 104 of 222 crew, but only 61 of 503 passengers. Most of the first class passengers were also killed.
Captain Deloncle, all of the deck officers, and most of the engineer officers died in the sinking. The Purser and the Fourth Engineer were the only officers who survived.
Victims of the sinking included the artists and sculptors De Scott Evans, Léon Pourtau, and Emil Wuertz; Turkish wrestler Yusuf İsmail; the wife and child of George Deslions; and the wife and daughter of Judge John Forrest Dillon. Porteau was principal clarinetist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and two other BSO musicians were also killed in the sinking. Anthony Pollok, a colleague of Alexander Graham Bell, and his wife, both died in the sinking.
Two clergy were also killed: the Roman Catholic Father Anthony Kesseler of New York, and the Armenian Apostolic Church priest Stepan Der Stepanian with his wife and three children. Only eight of the 75 Armenian passengers survived, and only one of the 13 Assyrians.
Aftermath
On 17 July 1898 the Master of the ship E. J. Spicer recovered one of La Bourgogne's liferafts at position 42°05′N 57°12′W / 42.083°N 57.200°W. On it were three or four life preservers and a number of oars.
Before the end of July a funeral for the victims of the sinking was held at La Madeleine, Paris. The congregation included the French foreign minister, minister of commerce, numerous senators and deputies, and Admiral Jules de Cuverville, who had been Deloncle's commanding officer when he was in the French Navy.
Days before the funeral, Rowland Strong, The New York Times correspondent in Paris, attacked the whole Deloncle family. He called them "a hysterical, half-witted set, and personally I should never have cared to trust my life or property to any one of them. Louis Deloncle... used to boast of his skill in manoeuvring a ship, which, to judge from the accounts of his own friends and his surviving brother, principally consisted in threatening to run down any vessel that came in his way. "Je pass ou je tire dessus". In other words, "I mean to pass or I will fire," was the remark he made when navigating the Normandie through the crush of vessels at the great naval review held last year at Portsmouth in honor of the Queen's jubilee. Only a madman could have given expression to such an intention."
Seafarers reported seeing bodies, apparently from La Bourgogne, floating in the area up to two months after the sinking. On 6 August the Master of the schooner Florence reported finding the body of a man floating at position 43°28′N 59°55′W / 43.467°N 59.917°W. In his clothing was the passport of one of La Bourgogne's cabin passengers, Dr Candido Diaz, and a draft for FF 215,000. On 22 August the Master of the Hamburg America Line steamship Christiania reported passing two bloated bodies floating face down at position 43°N 60°W / 43°N 60°W. One was a man wearing a life belt, and the other was apparently a woman. On 2 September the Master of the fishing schooner William H. Cross reported that he and his crew picked up the body of a man. They recovered money, drafts, and other papers of value from the body, and then weighted it and buried it at sea.
Legal cases
A panel made up of the Wreck Commissioner at Halifax and two other sea captains investigated the collision on behalf of the Canadian government. Their report, published by 29 July, exonerated Cromartyshire's Master and officers. They found that La Bourgogne was not following the sea lane indicated on the nautical chart for that part of the North Atlantic, and was steaming at great speed. They found that had Captain Deloncle "adopted the rules laid down... his vessel could not have been in the position indicated by the disaster". Further, the panel reported that "many of the principal steamship companies do not follow the routes laid down and assented to by all the parties in interest and apparent good faith."