The Burning of the Sarah Sands

She was a small fourmasted, iron-built screw-steamer of eleven hundred tons, chartered to take out troops to India. That was in 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, when anything that could sail or steer was in great demand; for troops were being thrown into the country as fast as circumstances allowed — which was not very fast.

Among the regiments sent out was the 54th of the Line, now the Second Battalion of the Dorset Regiment — a good corps, about a hundred years old, with a very fair record of service, but in no special way differing, so far as one could see, from many other regiments. It was despatched in three ships. The Headquarters — that is to say, the Lieutenant-Colonel, the Regimental books, pay-chest, Band and Colours, which last represent the very soul of a Battalion — and some fourteen officers, three hundred and fifty-four rank and file, and perhaps a dozen women, left Portsmouth on the 15th of August all packed tight in the Sarah Sands.

Her crew, with the exception of the engineers and firemen, seem to have been foreigners and pier-head jumpers picked up at the last minute. They turned out bad, lazy and insubordinate.

The accommodation for the troops was generously described as “inferior,” and what men called “inferior in 1857 would now be called unspeakable. Nor, in spite of the urgent need, was there any great hurry about the Sarah Sands. She took two long months to reach Capetown, and she stayed there five days to coal, leaving on the 20th of October. By this time, the crew were all but openly mutinous, and the troops, who must have picked up a little seamanship, had to work the ship out of harbour.

On the 7th of November, nearly three weeks later, a squall struck her and carried away her foremast; and it is to be presumed that the troops turned to and cleared away the wreckage. On the 11th. of November the real trouble began, for, in the afternoon of that day, ninety days out from Portsmouth, a party of soldiers working in the hold saw smoke coming up from the after-hatch. They were then, maybe, within a thousand miles of the Island of Mauritius, in half a gale and a sea full of sharks.

Captain Castles, the master, promptly lowered and provisioned the boats; got them over-side with some difficulty and put the women into them. Some of the sailors — the engineers, the firemen and a few others behaved well jumped into the long-boat, lowered it and kept well away from the ship. They knew she carried two magazines full of cartridges, and were taking no chances.