“The Loss of the City of Quebec”
Description
"On the first day of April eighteen hundred and seventy two The City of Quebec leaved London with a choice of British crew." Seventeen are drowned in Newfoundland waters.
Notes
The City of Quebec was lost at Isle Aux Morts, May 8, 1871 en route from London (Northern Shipwrecks Database). Isle Aux Morts is about 12 miles east of Port Aux Basques at the southwest corner of Newfoundland. - BS
Ships named "City of (somewhere)," e.g. _City of Glasgow_, _City of Philadelphia_, were characteristic of the Inman Line, which came into being in 1850; according to John Malcolm Brinnin, _The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic_ (1986; I use the 2000 Barnes & Noble edition), p. 208, "by 1857 he was carrying one third of all individuals traveling across the ocean." I have not been able to determine whether _City of Quebec_ was an Inman ship, but it seems likely -- and, frankly, looking at the stories in Brinnin and in Lincoln P. Paine's _Ships of the World_, they had a *terrible* safety record. - RBW
References
- Peacock, p. 941, "The Loss of the City of Quebec" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
- Roud #9936
- BI, Pea941