Maclean’s: The Morgue That Sailed Springbank

A black and white photograph showing an artistic depiction of the passenger boat, the Victoria leaving Springbank Park on its last voyage which ended in the tragic drowning of the majority of people on board. In the left foreground two people sit in a rowboat looking towards the Victoria which is steaming away from the dock on the opposite shore. Many people are standing on the two tiered pavillion and on the bank watching. To the left of the Victoria, in the background can be seen part of another passenger boat. (Cairncross Collection, Ivey Family London Room, London Public Library)
A black and white photograph showing an artistic depiction of the passenger boat, the Victoria, leaving Springbank Park on its last voyage which ended in the tragic drowning of nearly 200. In the left foreground two people sit in a rowboat looking towards the Victoria which is steaming away from the dock on the opposite shore. Many people are standing on the two tiered pavillion and on the bank watching. To the left of the Victoria, in the background can be seen part of another passenger boat.
(Cairncross Collection, Ivey Family London Room, London Public Library)

Originally published in Maclean’s Magazine, May 28, 1955.

A MACLEAN’S FLASHBACK
By Stanley Fillmore

Almost Every Home In London, Ontario, Was Draped In Mourning When The Bodies Of a Hundred And Eighty-One Victoria Day Excursionists Formed The Final Link In An Incredible Chain Of Blundering Irresponsibility. 

On a sparkling Tuesday in May 1881, while Queen Victoria was celebrating her sixty- second birthday in London, England, a steamboat, also named VICTORIA, was cruising
on the Thames River near London, Ontario, crowded with more than six hundred exuberant excursionists. Suddenly, something happened.

From his seat in a racing skiff less than a hundred yards off the VICTORIA’s starboard bow, Harry Nicholls watched the boat wallow toward London. He saw her rock ponderously from side to side responding to the motion of the upper-deck passengers who were running from rail to rail. The unusual swaying did not startle Nicholls who was aware of the VICTORIA’s shallow draft, but as he watched he saw the rocking increase until inches of water were shipped at each swing. Suddenly, with a roar of hissing steam, the boat’s huge boiler broke loose from its mounting and crashed through the bulwarks. Water poured through the opening and Nicholls was enwrapped in a cloud of live steam. With a slow, almost deliberate, movement the VICTORIA settled on her side. From both decks passengers were catapulted into the river. Nicholls heard the muffled screams of those trapped between decks. His slim shell was almost swamped in the wake as the VICTORIA went down.

At least a hundred and eighty-one persons drowned on the May 24 excursion; of these, a hundred and ten were children. It was the blackest day in London’s history, the result of an almost incredible series of blunders that could easily have been averted.

By nightfall the flags that bedecked London homes and businesses to mark the Queen’s birthday were lowered to half-mast. For eight days afterward, the dead who had been hooked from the river were carried to their graves. Funeral directors started work before dawn and were still conducting services long after dark. The supply of coffins in London was exhausted the first day and one infant was buried in an adult casket.

All London’s nineteen thousand residents lost relatives or friends. One family, the Fryers, lost five members. By official decree a black armband became a Londoner’s badge of mourning for a thirty-day period. Business firms and schools closed for two days. Most homes in the city were draped in mourning. One milliner advertised in the London Advertiser: “Family mournings at A. B. Powell and Co. who are showing a large range of crapes and mourning-dress material. Our prices are low. Millinery orders executed at the shortest possible notice. Also dressmaking orders.” Draymen charged double their usual funeral rates.

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The Culture of Fear

scared-woman-retro

This was written for a newsletter assignment, where we had to make our own newsletters, write our own articles, and design them using layouts and graphics. The topic of our newsletter was Sensationalism in the Media. You can see the final piece here. 

When every day seems to bring forward a new food that’s unsafe to eat, or a new location that’s unsafe to visit, or a new television show that’s unsafe to watch, it’s understandable that you would go through life with a sense of overwhelming anxiety. Most of this tends to be our own doing; we see or hear something on the TV or through a friend and our brain goes into overdrive thinking of every horrific outcome and problem that can arise. This of course isn’t a modern phenomenon, people have been getting worked up and scared about things since the beginning of humanity through episodes of mass hysteria. One of the most notorious examples of this would be the Salem witch trials in 1692, one of many witch trials that took place in America at the time, spurred by isolationism and religious extremism to name a few. Since the beginning of mass media however, starting with the modern newspaper up to the creation of the World Wide Web, the same culture of fear has been making appearances but in different subtle ways.

Modern-day humans consume a much larger amount of information than before, and with the internet and smartphones, the consumption is frighteningly close to a 24 hour a day intake. Coupled with our innate ability to become fearful about almost everything, the greater information consumption also comes with a greater consumption of bad news, accidents, deaths and other types of misery. The number of information sources has also risen dramatically over the years, so today, not only is there a greater amount of information coming in, there is a greater amount of places where this information is coming from.

The term “if it bleeds it leads” perfectly describes where many media outlets now find themselves. In the current economic climate which sees many TV stations cutting staff, and some newspapers closing altogether, the emphasis on sensational stories usually involving death or other gruesome subject matter tend to get preferential treatment. Though, they can’t be completely blamed for thinking this way, humans after all have a strange fascination with death and misery (the Colosseum anyone?) and it’s only natural for the free market to offer what people want. Many people however equate this onslaught of negative news is due to some kind of sinister intent, that either the companies owning the media property or the people within it, have something to gain from pushing sensationalism and death, something other than money. This argument is lobbied frequently towards entities like Fox News in America and Sun News in Canada; the insinuation being that they both mislead and frighten intentionally because it both sells and helps push viewers towards supporting political policies that benefit the corporation or the wealthy.

There could be arguments made that some media companies use fear as a basis of making money or pushing ideology, but one could make the point that the number of negative, gruesome stories far outweigh those with a positive and happy message. Life in general is a misery-filled roller coaster, and it’s only natural that the media cover that misery. If you were to ask any reporter, chances are they would probably say that they would prefer to cover stories that have nothing to do with death or crime, but it’s an unfortunate reality in the news business. That being said, there are many news organizations which could learn a thing or two about restraint. In his 1999 book ‘The Culture of Fear’, sociologist Barry Glassner noted that throughout the 1990s (and even nowadays) Americans were severely worried about things that weren’t as bad as they thought. When crime rates across America dropped in the 1990s, approximately two-thirds of Americans were under the impression that they were soaring. Similarly, drug use decreased by half in the late ‘90s, but 9 out of 10 people believed that there was a drug epidemic. As noted before, the amount of information has grown over the years, and with it, so has the number of negative news stories. When viewers are overwhelmed with negative news stories as opposed to positive ones, they are more likely to imagine that the world is a horrific, terrible, and dangerous place.

The solution to this would be to find some kind of sensible balance between the two sides. Cover an equal number of positive and negative stories to come to a sensible ratio, even though this is easier said than done. Like I mentioned before, reality offers us an obscene amount of bad news in comparison to good news, and good news itself is much harder to find. Another solution? To keep the negativity and horror from getting to us the way it does. But in our instant news age, that is more like an impossible feat than a simple fix.

Matthew Trevithick

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