Pray for the Souls of Barbara Hultenschmidt Henrica Fassbender (not found) Norberta Reinkober Aurea Badziura Brigitta Damhorst.
Franciscan Nuns from Germany who were Drowned near Harwich in the wreck of the Deutschland Dec 7th 1875. Four of whom were interred here Decr. 13th. RIP
On
Saturday sailed from Bremen,
American-outward-bound,
Take
settler and seamen, tell men with women,
Two
hundred souls in the round
Gerard Manley Hopkins – The Wreck of the
Deutschland
We last week
reported the stranding and wreck, on the Kentish Knock, some 25 miles from
Harwich, of the North German Lloyd Steamer Deutschland,
bound from Bremerhaven to New York. The Official Gazette of the German Empire
publishes the list persons saved and missing, both of the crew and passengers.
Forty-eight male passengers, women and children, and 86 of the crew were saved.
Forty-four passengers are missing, including the bodies landed, but not yet
identified. It is estimated that of the crew twenty perished.
Chelmsford Chronicle - Friday 17 December 1875
In
December 1875 the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was studying at
St Beuno's, near St Asaph in North Wales. He had given up writing poetry when
his religious superior asked him to write a poem to commemorate the loss of 5
nuns from Salzkotten in the foundering of the German ship the SS Deutschland.
The nuns were fleeing religious persecution in Germany to begin a new life in
the United States in the Saint Boniface
Hospital in Carondelet, a town in Missouri south of St. Louis, where nineteen
sisters of their order were already working as nurses. Hopkins dedicated his
famous (and difficult) poem to “to the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns,
exiles by the Falk Laws, drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th, 1875,”
and based many details in his ode on incidents described in the newspapers. Before being buried together in St. Patricks Cemetery, Leytonstone, the bodies of the nuns were taken to the church of St Francis of Assisi on the Grove in Stratford. Hopkins had grown living across the road from the church, at number 87.
The inquest on
the victims of this disaster was opened yesterday afternoon at the Cups Hotel,
Harwich, before Mr. W. Codd, coroner for North Essex. The foreman of the jury
was Captain John Whitmore, shipowner, of Harwich, and former captain of
merchantmen. There were 13 bodies, only one of which was named. It was that of
a little girl, Pauline Gmelch, aged two years and eight months, who was brought
ashore dead in her mother's arms. The other bodies were identified by Carl
Lukermann, the chief steward of the Deutschland, as passengers, but he had not
been long enough acquainted with them to learn their names.
She
drove in the dark to leeward,
She
struck—not a reef or a rock
But
the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her
Dead
to the Kentish Knock;
Captain Edward
Brickenstein said the steamer left Bremen on Saturday, 4th inst., for New York,
having on board about 107 emigrants and crew numbering all told; he did not
know exactly how many passengers there were because the register of the ship
was lost; the vessel was anchored in the river that night, and proceeded on her
way the following morning; about half-past nine o'clock the wind was blowing
freshly from the N.E., and snow fell at intervals, the wind afterwards
increasing to a strong gale; at four o'clock on Sunday morning speed was
reduced to nine and half knots per hour, by one half; the lead was heaved every
half-hour, and about seven minutes before the vessel struck gave 17 fathoms
water; when he saw the breakers through the snow ordered the engines to be
reversed ; the propeller broke before the vessel had even changed her way, and
then, the wind being dead astern, she drifted on to the sand; the boats were
cleared and rockets fired; the water began making its way over the ship, and
some lives were lost; an attempt was made to get out the boats, but they were
carried away; there were lifebelts on board for more than 500 persons ; the
rockets were unanswered on Monday night, and on Tuesday morning, 28 hours after
the Deutschland got on the sand, the tug Liverpool took off 136 surviving
passengers and crew ; but he believed that more lives might have been saved by
a lifeboat on Monday night, deaths occurred through the passengers and others
dropping from the rigging into the sea.
They
fought with God's cold—
And
they could not and fell to the deck
(Crushed
them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled
With
the sea-romp over the wreck.
Night
roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble,
The
woman's wailing, the crying of child without check—
Till
a lioness arose breasting the babble
 |
| 'Waiting for succour' The Penny Illustrated Paper, Christmas Double Number 18 December 1875 |
It is sad anyhow
to know that these 200 fellow creatures remained for some 30 hours so close to
the English coast, passed by English vessels during the day, and their signals
of distress seen and answered from the land at night, and that,
notwithstanding, many of them perished just the last. Their situation first
became perilous on Monday night or rather Tuesday morning. At 2 a.m., Capt.
Brickenstein, knowing that with the rising tide the ship would be water logged,
ordered all the passengers to come on deck. Most of them obeyed the summons at
once; others lingered below until it was too late; some of them, ill, weak,
despairing of life even on deck, resolved to stay in their cabins and meet
death without any further struggle to evade it. After three a.m. on Tuesday
morning a scene of horror was witnessed. Some passengers clustered for safety within
or upon the wheelhouse, and on the top of other slight structures on deck. Most
of the crew and many of the emigrants went into the rigging, where they were
safe enough as long as they could maintain their hold. But the intense cold and
long exposure told a tale. The purser of the ship, though a strong man, relaxed
his grasp, and fell into the sea. Women and children and men were one by one
swept away from their shelters on the deck. Five German nuns clasped hands and
were drowned together, the chief sister, a gaunt woman six feet high, calling
out loudly and often, "Oh! Christ, come quickly!" until the end came.
The shrieks and sobbing of women and children are described by the survivors as
agonising. One brave sailor, who safe in the rigging, went down to try and save
a child or woman who was drowning on deck. He was secured by a rope to the
rigging, but a wave dashed him against the bulwarks of the vessel, and when
daylight dawned his headless body, which was detained by rope, was seen swaying
to and fro with the waves: In the dreadful excitement of these hours one man
hung himself behind the wheelhouse, another hacked at his wrist with knife,
hoping to die comparatively painless death by bleeding. was nearly eight
o'clock before the tide and sea abated, and the survivors could venture to go
on deck. At half-past 10 o'clock the tugboat from Harwich came alongside and
brought all away without further accident. Most of the passengers are German
emigrants, and is only right to add that they have received here from the first
the utmost kindness and sympathy.
One
stirred from the rigging to save
The
wild woman-kind below,
With
a rope's end round the man, handy and brave—
He
was pitched to his death at a blow,
For
all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew:
They
could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro
Through
the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do…?
Divers are much
wanted at the wreck, as there is a very general impression prevailing that all
the bodies have not yet been taken off. A proper officer is also wanted to take
charge of the property on board. It was impossible to form any idea of the rank
or position the people who were brought ashore tonight. One body was that of
well-to-do passenger, and another was that of one of the sailors. Nine of the
bodies are those of women, but the clothes are so soiled by immersion in the
water, and the light in the dead-house is so dull, that is impossible to form
any opinion as to their position. There is a remarkably placid expression
resting on the features of all the dead, most of whom resemble persons
sleeping. Great credit is due to Mr. Inspector Guy, of the borough police, for
the arrangement he has made for the reception of the bodies, and for the decent
manner in which they have been laid out. The medical officers who have charge
of the sick passengers (who are staying at the various hotels in the town)
report that they are all progressing as favourably as can be expected. A German
lady whose little child died in her arms on the way from the wreck, and who for
several hours was so ill that her life was despaired of, was so far recovered
this afternoon as to be permitted to see the body of her child. It is now hoped
that no fatal results will ensue to those who were frostbitten, the medical skill
of the locality being able to cope with all the cases which have come under
their notice.
 |
| The drowning of the nuns in the Wreck of the Deutschland - Garrick Palmer 1975 |
Away
in the loveable west,
On
a pastoral forehead of Wales,
I
was under a roof here, I was at rest,
And
they the prey of the gales;
She
to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly
Falling
flakes, to the throng that catches and quails
Was
calling "O Christ, Christ, come quickly":
The
cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wildworst Best.
Five German nuns
clasped hands and were drowned together, the chief sister, a gaunt woman six
feet high, calling out loudly and often, 'Oh! Christ, come quickly!" until
the end came.
Essex Newsman -
Saturday 18 December 1875
Banned
by the land of their birth,
Rhine
refused them, Thames would ruin them;
Surf,
snow, river and earth
WRECK OF THE
DEUTSCHLAND. BURIAL OF THE FRANCISCAN NUNS. London, Monday
Today the four
Franciscan nuns who, with another, were lost in the Deutschland were interred
in St. Patrick's Catholic cemetery, Leytonstone, near London. The bodies, as
soon as it became known to the Franciscans at Stratford that they had been
recovered, were taken charge of by one of the order and removed to the pretty
little church belonging to the brotherhood at Stratford. The church had been
draped, the alter, the pulpit and other portions of the scared edifice
presented signs of mourning. In front of the altar were deposited the four
coffins and no restriction whatever was placed on the free entry of the public,
who were allowed to circulate as they pleased close by the temporary resting
place of all that was mortal of the four unknown but honoured corpses. Long
before the hour announced for the solemn dirge for the repose of the souls of
the departed – eleven o’clock – the little church was crowded to the door, and
when his Eminence cardinal Manning, accompanied by the officiating priest,
entered, the crush in the body of the sacred building was very great.
Immediately after coming in front of the altar, the Cardinal indicated to two
of the Franciscans in attendance as to the coffins that he wished the lids
removed, and that was at once done, his Grace pausing at the foot of each
coffin and gazing for a few moments on the pale and placid countenances within.
The bodies were dressed as they were in life, the hands folded tenderly in
front, and it was remarked that although almost a week had passed since they
met with a violent death the countenances were as sweetly composed and the
complexions as clear as if they had merely slept. The coffins having been closed
and the palls restored, four crosses of evergreens and lillies were placed one
on each coffin by four sisters of the order, a solemn requim mass (Corem
Archiepiscipo) was sung and at the close of this His Eminence the Cardinal
archbishop delivered an impressive funeral oration.…… The large congregation then slowly left the
church, but lingered with thousands of others in the streets adjoining until
the bodies were removed. They were taken direct to St Patrick’s cemetery, about
a mile distant, where they were interred in the presence of a vast concourse.
Dublin Evening Telegraph - Tuesday 14 December
1875
On Monday the
four nuns lost in the wreck were interred in the Catholic cemetery Leytonstone.
A solemn dirge for the repose of the souls of the four sisters was sung in the
Franciscan church at Stratford, and after mass the large congregation was
addressed by Cardinal Manning, standing at the side of the coffins. He said he
was at loss to find words for the occasion. If there was no man - there touched
already that most beautiful though most mournful sight no words of his would
move him. Why should they mourn why lament, for those noble souls whose
careers, devoted to God, had been brought this suddenly to a close? What did
they or the church know of the past of the four sisters? They had a home,
peaceful and happy and fruitful in good works, in the great Fatherland in which
the Catholic faith had struck roots so deeply that no storms can shake it. They
were labouring in peace-ministering
consolation to the sick and dying, and training little children in the holy
fear and love of God. Why was their Fatherland no longer a home to them? He
would not answer the question. It would be a note of discord, and their hearts
would hardly bear it. Nevertheless, that home was home no longer to them, and
they were constrained by hard necessity to go forth as strangers from their own
land, and embark on shipboard to meet the perils of the wintry sea. The
Cardinal then gave a graphic account of the wreck of the Deutschland and of the
long suffering of the deceased, who, devoting themselves for the great change
which awaited them, furnished holy example to the others who were also lost in
the wreck. The service for the dead was then proceeded with by the Cardinal, and
the four coffins were removed and interred in the presence of vast concourse of
persons.
Essex Newsman - Saturday 18 December 1875