3-039-022 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Wreck of the screw-steamer Borneo on the coast of South America, 1871. Engraving of a sketch by Mr. Percival Kilbee, third officer of the Borneo, '...a packet carrying mails between Belgium, Brazil, and the River Plate, [which] was lost in the night of Dec. 26 [1870], off Cape Santa Martha, in Santa Catharina...breakers were perceived on the port bow, and the ship struck upon a sandbank...The sea broke over the steamer with great violence and stove in all the boats on the starboard side...the quarter-boat and port cutter were lowered, and as many of the crew as they could hold got into them. The port life-boat was reserved for the passengers, the mails, the specie, and the rest of the persons on board belonging to the ship: but when it was tried to bring her alongside the boat was thrown ashore by the surf. The construction of a raft was at once undertaken, as the vessel was breaking up fast...a tremendously heavy sea swept over the raft and washed all off it; the two boats containing the rest of the crew capsized. Of the seventy-seven persons who had been on board, only forty-two reached the land alive...Of those belonging to the vessel the captain, the chief officer, the doctor, four officers, and thirty-five of the crew were saved'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.