“Sunk?” I managed. “What the devil ran into her?”
“A collier. Not sure which one.”
“Damn,” I said as I pulled on my coat. The Princess Alice had a wood hull and probably weighed less than two hundred tons, compared to a steel-hulled collier, which was likely eight or nine hundred tons, especially if loaded with coal. It would be like a runaway railway engine striking a hansom cab. The steamer would have gone under in a matter of minutes.
“Weather was fair today,” the sergeant said grimly. “Like as not, it was a full boat.”
I could picture the open wooden decks, fore and aft of the paddle box, with hundreds of men, women, and children milling about by lantern-light, lounging against the rails, singing along to the cheerful music from the boat’s small orchestra.
As I did up the buttons, another thought halted my hands: we would have no idea who the passengers were. There was never a manifest on those pleasure steamers. Another oath flew out of my mouth.
“Come with me,” I said, and Sergeant Trent nodded. I went to a cupboard where we kept supplies, hoisted a parcel of blankets tied with string, and handed it to the sergeant. I took another parcel for myself and retrieved two bullseye lanterns from their hooks, then told Sergeant Trent to fetch us a cab. We went out to Wapping High Street, and he hurried to the corner, withdrew the metal police rattle from the pocket over his heart, and shook it vigorously.
Gallions Reach was a seven-mile ride east of Wapping Station. Once we passed the East India Docks, the streets were blessedly clear, and the driver urged his horses. Out this far, there were no churches to toll the hours, but with a glance up at the moon’s position among the clouds, I estimated it was not long after ten o’clock as we drew close. We could smell the pungent ammonia and sulfur, byproducts from the Beckton Gasworks, even before we saw the lights on their retort houses and towers. From ahead, we heard the cries and shouts of a gathered crowd on the margin of the river. There were already at least a dozen carriages and carts abandoned along the road, and as people dashed in front of us, not heeding the danger, our horse let out a high-pitched neigh, and the cab halted.
“I daren’t go any farther,” the driver called down to us. “Afraid I’ll hit someone!”
Sergeant Trent and I clambered out with our blankets and lanterns, and I paid the driver. The stink of the river assailed us, and the sergeant grunted his disgust. With Erith, the processing plant for London’s sewage nearby, this was a swampy, stench-filled stretch of water at the best of times, but tonight it smelled particularly vile.
By the light of other people’s lamps and lanterns, we made our way along a wall of stone five feet tall that served as a bulwark against the river when it flooded. Jostled by desperate people running past, we reached a break in the wall and halted to take in the scene. A cloud veiled the moon, and I could see little more than flares and flickers from lights and lanterns and shadows moving through the murk of darkness. At last, the cloud shifted, so I could discern shapes out on the river. Among a dozen smaller boats and ships, the collier was a black hulk looming against the lesser darkness of the sky. Three small boats, each with a lamp of some kind at the bow, appeared to be making their way to shore.
But there wasn’t a remnant of the Princess Alice to be seen. The passengers all would have slid into the water, the sudden sharp cold a knife twisting in their lungs.
“Your lantern, sergeant,” I said tersely and lit my own, stepping forward and raising it high, illuminating the riverbank close to me. A man sprawled in the mud, a gash on his forehead spilling blood down the side of his face. Two men, dead, their eyes open and mouths slack. A child facedown in the water. A man stumbling past, clutching his arm, which hung at an unnatural angle from his shoulder, calling, “Louisa,” in a hoarse voice. A woman keening and rocking a silent child, a daughter whose dark hair fell lank across her back.
Around me echoed the voices of men and women, recently arrived, scrambling across the pebbles, frantically calling out the names of friends and relations—
Charlotte, Charlotte Ambrose—Anthony—William—Henry Blight—Louisa—Mary—Elizabeth—
My heart thudded thickly in my chest.
“Mother of God,” muttered the sergeant beside me, his voice rough.
Close by us, another man, with his arm around a woman’s waist, attempted to help her reach higher ground, but her skirts hampered her so badly she sank back onto the shore, crying, “Never mind about me! Go! Please, James! Go! Go look for Samuel!” Unwillingly, he let go of her and stumbled off into the darkness, leaving her, crumpled and sobbing, on the rough stones.
I took a blanket from the stack, bent, and put it around her. “Let me help you.”
Her hands grasped my shoulders, and her face was twisted with desperation. Gasping through chattering teeth, she begged me, “Find Samuel for me! Just find him! Please—please, just help my husband find my boy!”
Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. “We’ll find everyone we can, mum,” I promised her.
I stood and met the sergeant’s eyes. We both knew the ebb current moved fast at this time of night. The survivors and their kin would never locate each other, stranded as they were along this long, dark shoreline.
As I stood, a gust of evening wind sent the cold straight through my thick overcoat, and I wasn’t even wet. “We need to get these people out of this wind, or they’ll die of exposure.”
The sergeant nodded. “Other side of the wall would be better.”
“Or the closed carriages,” I replied. “But we’ll need to find something we can use as a stretcher.”
“I’ll pass ’round the blankets for now, sir,” Sergeant Trent said as he hefted my parcel along with his own. Though I couldn’t see the sergeant’s face, I heard the shock in his voice. He’d served at Wapping for two decades, long enough to see the filth and even death that the river carried every day, but this scene was something else altogether. It was worse than a railway disaster. In that, at least the passengers had a chance to extricate themselves and crawl to safety. And if this narrow section of shoreline was anything to go by, not dozens but hundreds of people had drowned.
The sergeant moved off with his burden, and I helped the woman to the wall before returning to the shore. Two of the small boats had been dragged onto the stones, and I watched as two men lifted a woman out. I saw three other bodies in the lighter, but none of them moved. Sergeant Trent was already at the woman’s side, wrapping her in a blanket and directing the men to take her out of the wind.
I scanned the beach again, and this time I found a uniformed man. I strode toward him. “I’m with the River Police. Are you with the gasworks?”
“Aye! And I saw it happen! I’m the night watchman, just there.” His thumb pointed backward, over his shoulder
I could make out the tower’s dim outline on a small rise near the river’s edge. “What the devil happened?”
“’Twas the bloody Bywell Castle,” he said indignantly. “Came flying down the river and smashed her up.”
“Have any crew from the Princess Alice come ashore?”
“No sign o’ the crew, but there’s a constable was on it.” His expression was grim.
“With his family?” I asked.
He nodded. “Seems they might’ve drowned. His wife and son.”
The knot in my stomach twisted. “Where is he?”
“Rowed to the other side to look for ’em.” He jerked his head toward the south shore and the Plumsted Marshes of Woolwich. “Some boats came from over there.”
I stifled a groan. We’d have bodies along the south shore too.
“Most boats nearby tried to help,” he continued. “The damned Bywell realized what they done, threw out some lines, put lifeboats out. Duke of Teck steamed by ’round half past eight and took some survivors back to Swan’s.”
The Duke was another of the pleasure steamers, in the same fleet as the Princess Alice. I was grateful they’d come by, of course, but as I considered the hodgepodge of boats that had offered aid, it was becoming clear that both dead bodies and survivors would be spread out all along the river, not just downstream from the accident but on both shores and anywhere boats saw fit to leave them. Helping friends and relations find each other was beyond our abilities at this point. The important thing was to move people out of the cold, transfer the injured to hospitals, and keep an eye out for someone who could utter a coherent and reasonably unbiased sentence about how the devil something like this could have happened.
“Sir!” Sergeant Trent approached, waving his hand over his head.
Another boat drew up to shore, and the watchman stepped forward to help. I reached the sergeant. “What is it?”
He gestured toward the young man at his side. “He’s from the gasworks.”
The man wore a fine coat and a silk top hat new enough to reflect the light as he lofted his lantern into the air between us. “My name is Brantlinger. We can offer you two sheds, where people can take shelter.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Two sheds, you say?”
“They usually house our railway carriages, but we’ve removed them to make room.” He gave a glance around and added apologetically, “They’re not heated, but they’re better than this.”
“’Specially as it’s likely to rain,” Sergeant Trent added.
Screams burst out anew, and the three of us pivoted as one, our eyes peering toward the shoreline. Two rivermen had drawn a boat up onto the pebbles. Inside were three slack-boned corpses, and a woman bent over the gunwale, clutching one of the dead by the shoulders, as his head lolled. She unleashed a long, incoherent cry that fell into a wordless keening.
The sergeant’s face screwed up in sympathy; the gasworks man stared in horror.
“Brantlinger.” He didn’t hear me. “Brantlinger!”
His gaze jerked to meet mine. His face was stricken.
“We need to put survivors in one shed and bodies in the other,” I said. “Survivors need blankets and hot food and tea. Take care of them first. Then we’ll collect the rest.”
His body convulsed once, and then again, as if he’d been struck a blow. “Of course,” he managed. “I’ll do everything I can.”
Under a moon that slipped in and out of the clouds, Sergeant Trent and I spent the next few hours helping people into wagons that ferried them to the gasworks yard. To my relief the sheds, less than half a mile distant, were cavernous, dry, and even reasonably warm. The smaller shed provided plenty of room on the platforms on either side of the tracks. Groups of people in sodden clothes, with mud streaked across their faces and hands, huddled together, draped in rough blankets, some weeping and others talking in low, urgent tones.
At some point, we received reinforcements from the Wrecks Commission, who would be responsible for managing the aftermath of the disaster. Commissioner Rotherly didn’t come himself, but one of his deputies oversaw thirty fresh men who took over the transport of victims. The corpses we placed on stretchers, and rivermen carried them to the larger shed, on my orders placing women and children on one side of the rails and men on the other. As the moon descended, I heard a rumble of thunder to the east, and I prayed it wouldn’t rain until we had everyone—the survivors and the dead—inside one building or another. At last, Sergeant Trent and I climbed wearily into a cab. He dropped me at Wapping and continued home. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning, and I found a young man sitting up but asleep on one of the benches near the entryway, a folded paper between his loose fingers.
“Said the message was important,” the desk sergeant said. “Wouldn’t leave it.”
I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder and shook him gently. “Wake up.”
Blearily he looked up. “Be ye Corr’van?”
I nodded.
“Got a message,” he said, fumbling to hand it to me.
“You could’ve left it,” I said.
He shook his head vehemently. “Wouldn’t get paid unless I brung an answer.”
I opened the paper and read: Where are you? O.H.
O’Hagan.
“Damn.” The word slipped out before I thought.
“Ye fergot?” the boy asked with a smirk.
I didn’t bother to answer. “Take this back to him.” I turned the paper over, picked up a pencil from the nearest desk, and scrawled my reply: Princess Alice steamer hit by collier at Gallions Reach. Hundreds dead. Need 2 days. Will see you Friday.
McCabe might not like the delay, but there was no help for it.
The other message I wrote was to the Yard director, Mr. Vincent, to be delivered to his home immediately. I explained that he needn’t bother going to Gallions Reach, as there was nothing more to do tonight. We’d need daylight to dredge the river, to begin the work of recovering the bodies from the muck at the bottom of the Thames.