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“The Florizel Disaster, I Was Frozen Solid” A survivor of the steamship Florizel recalled the 27 hours he spent aboard the vessel after she ran aground on Newfoundland’s southern shore during a raging storm February 24, 1918, only 44 of the 144 aboard survived. Ralph Burnham, 80, of 32 Main Street, Corner Brook, was 31 years old when he boarded the Florizel at St. John’s February 23, 1918 to sail for Texas. The ship left St. John’s 8 o’clock on a Saturday evening. It ran into the storm near Cape Spear and ran aground at Cappahayden early the next morning. He said the ship’s speed must have been cut down for some unknown reason, because the ship should have been at Cape Race at the time (one cause suggested was reversing of the polar current, which supposedly decreased the speed and caused Captain William Martin to think he was turning around Cape Race). Mr. Burnham said the ship was running well when he had went to bed at about midnight. At about 4 a.m. he awoke to hear people rushing around on the deck and shouting. A man came into the room he was sharing with another passenger and told them to get out, the ship was sinking. Actually he said, the ship struck and stayed there as if wedged. The hull was undamaged and the ship remained where it was until the following summer. He said he dressed as quickly as possible and got to the top deck. He did not see the other passenger a man named Miller who worked with the United States Picture and Portrait Company, after leaving the cabin, and does not know what happened to him. Many of the passengers drowned in the stairways, skylights and portholes. When he reached the top deck Mr. Burnham was swept across the deck and struck the rail which he used to help himself up before making his way to what was known as the “Fiddly” --- “that is where they take the ashes up out of the boilers”, the structure about six feet high and six square had no roof but was enclosed at the top by iron bars through which the sea poured in on him and others. Similar bars about the size of a man’s forefinger formed the floor beneath their feet. The other occupants of the “fiddly” were a Captain James, acting mate of the Florizel, steward James Dwyer; colonel M.F. Sullivan, former member of Parliament in the days of responsible government, and a Spaniard who understood no English. The five men took turns wrapping themselves in two tarpaulins that happened to be there, using the tarpaulins at half hour intervals to keep from freezing to death. They could see other passengers “washed off the deck, broken and smashed”. He said he did not know the exact temperature but I know it was pretty damn cold. I know I was frozen solid. (His feet and hands were frozen). They spent 27 hours aboard the disabled ship before being taken by dory to the “Hawk” which together with the Fogota, the Crossbow and two or three other vessels rescued the 44 survivors. (Alec Ledingham, former steam plant superintendent at Bowaters who is residing in St. John’s is the only living survivor he knows). He said he had to jump into the dory from the second deck. “The dories were out here all day Sunday but could not get near us on account of the seas. They finally reached us seven o’clock Monday morning”. The ship sent out an S.O.S. before dynamos went, he said “It must have been picked up at Cape Race”. The ship’s own lifeboats had been swept away. The ship itself originally a sealer, was strongly built. He said that with wind, snow, slob ice, the night on which the vessel ran aground was the “worst on record for years and years” … the winds must have been blowing 80 to 85 miles an hour by the time we got out around Cape Spear”. Mr. Burnham came to Corner Brook in 1925. From the files of the Newfoundland Historical Society |
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