Women and Children Last

The period saw a number of catastrophic shipboard fires, but that involving the New Zealand-bound emigrant ship Cospatrick was certainly the most destructive. When she burned and sank off the coast of Southern Africa in 1874, nearly 500 people lost their lives. There was a desperate battle to quench the fire, a huge death toll as the vessel was being abandoned, and acts of cannibalism in the one lifeboat that remained afloat.