Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [5]
There was not one soul found alive, and all the remaining bodies were lost to the sea.
That very same day, Margaret, in shock, performed the grisly task of identifying bodies on the quayside of Donaghadee harbour.
Her beloved’s body was never found.
Margaret never recovered, and within a year, she died of a broken heart.
At a memorial service attended by over a thousand people in the parish church at Bangor, the Bishop of Down said in his address that Walter Smiles died, as he lived: ‘a good, brave, unselfish man who lived up to the command: “Look not every man to his own things, but every man, also, to the good of others.”’
Almost a hundred years earlier, to the day, Samuel Smiles had written the final pages of his book Self-Help. It included this moving tale of heroism as an example for the Victorian Englishman to follow. For the fate of my great-grandfather, Walter, it was poignant in the extreme.
The vessel was steaming along the African coast with 472 men and 166 women and children on board.
The men consisted principally of recruits who had been only a short time in the service.
At two o’clock in the morning, while all were asleep below, the ship struck with violence upon a hidden rock, which penetrated her bottom; and it was at once felt that she would go down.
The roll of the drums called the soldiers to arms on the upper deck, and the men mustered as if on parade.
The word was passed to ‘save the women and children’; and the helpless creatures were brought from below, mostly undressed, and handed silently into the boats.
When they had all left the ship’s side, the commander of the vessel thoughtlessly called out, ‘All those that can swim, jump overboard and make for the boats.’
But Captain Wright, of the 91st Highlanders, said, ‘No! If you do that, the boats with the women will be swamped.’ So the brave men stood motionless. Not a heart quailed; no one flinched from his duty.
‘There was not a murmur, nor a cry amongst them,’ said Captain Wright, a survivor, ‘until the vessel made her final plunge.’
Down went the ship, and down went the heroic band, firing a volley shot of joy as they sank beneath the waves.
Glory and honour to the gentle and the brave!
The examples of such men never die, but, like their memories, they are immortal.
As a young man, Walter undoubtedly would have read and known those words from his grandfather’s book.
Poignant in the extreme.
Indeed, the examples of such men never die, but, like their memories, they are immortal.
CHAPTER 5
Margaret’s daughter, Patsie, my grandmother, was in the prime of her life when the Princess Victoria sank. The media descended on the tragedy with reportage full of heroism and sacrifice.
Somehow the headlines dulled Patsie’s pain. For a while.
In a rush of grief-induced media frenzy, Patsie found herself winning a by-election to take over her father’s Ulster seat in Parliament.
The glamorous, beautiful daughter takes over her heroic father’s political seat. It was a script made for a film.
But life isn’t celluloid, and the glamour of Westminster would exact a dreadful toll on Northern Ireland’s youngest-ever female MP.
Patsie had married Neville Ford, my grandfather: a gentle giant of a man, and one of seven brothers and sisters.
Neville’s father had been the Dean of York and Headmaster of Harrow School. His brother Richard, a young sporting prodigy, had died suddenly and unexpectedly a day before his sixteenth birthday whilst a pupil at Eton; and one of Neville’s other brothers, Christopher, had been tragically killed in Anzio during the Second World War.
But Neville survived, and he shone.
Voted the best looking man at Oxford, he was blessed with not only good looks, but also a fantastic sporting eye. He played top-level county cricket and was feted in the newspapers as a huge ‘hitter of sixes’, with innings becoming of his six foot three frame. But marrying the