Name SS Carnatic Completed 25 April 1863 Launched 12 June 1862 Draft 7.8 m | Laid down early 1862 Type Steam clipper ship Length 89 m | |
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Operator Peninsula & Orient Steam Navigation Company Fate Wrecked, 12 September 1869 | ||
SS Carnatic was a British steamship built in 1862-63 by Samuda Brothers at Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs, London, for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. She operated on the Suez to Bombay run in the last years before the Suez Canal was opened.
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Ship history
The ship was laid down in early 1862, and was originally to be named Mysore. She was launched as Carnatic on 12 June 1862, and completed on 25 April 1863. The iron-framed wooden-planked hull was fitted with square-rigged sails, and also had a 4-cylinder compound inverted steam engine by Humphrys & Tennant, providing 2,442 hp (1,821 kW) to a single propeller.
Grounding
On 12 September 1869, she ran aground on Sha`b Abu Nuhas coral reef near Shadwan Island in the mouth of the Gulf of Suez, in the Red Sea. Having assessed the ship to be safe and the pumps, Captain P. B. Jones denied repeated passengers 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 eventually at 2 a.m. on the 14th, the rising water engulfed the ships 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. 31 people drowned. The survivors made it to barren Shadwan, where they were rescued the next day by a passing ship, Sumatra.
Onboard Carnatic was £40,000 worth of gold (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 has added to the romance of the ship.
Captain Jones was recalled to England to face an official Board of Enquiry, which labelled Jones as "a skilful and experienced officer." However, they also found "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' 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 site.
In fiction
In Jules Verne's 1872 novel, Around the World in Eighty Days, Phileas Fogg intends to take a steamer named Carnatic to travel from Hong Kong to Yokohama, but misses it. His valet, Passepartout, catches the ship, however.