2-888-236 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Wreck of the "Royal Adelaide" Steam-Ship, 1850. On Sunday 31 March 1850 a ship was wrecked on Tongue Sands, just off the coast of Kent, in bad weather: 'The gale continued with such unabated violence the whole of Sunday and Monday, that it was not until late in the afternoon of the latter day that any official notification of the wreck was made at Margate...she appeared to have lost her funnel, as her fires appeared coming up through the deck...the only portion of the wreck visible above the surface was about one-half the starboard paddle-wheel...Many of the bodies of the poor people who were steerage passengers are lying about embedded in the sand...A subscription has also been set on foot for the relief of the widows and orphans created by the disaster'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.