Each year seems to bring its own record of world disasters, and 1898 had its full share. It may be of interest to recapitulate briefly the principal calamities as they have been reported by the cable from time to time:
-- A fearful typhoon raged in the China Sea. The river Tamsui overflowed and submerged the city of Tai-Peh-fu, in Formosa, causing great loss of life and property. At the same time, the town of Chin-tu, was overwhelmed by a tidal wave, which destroyed ten thousand houses and caused the loss of a thousand lives.
Recent mail reports tell of a terrific blizzard in America, accompanied by fearful storms at sea, causing two hundred wrecks, and great loss of life, including the wreck of the steamer Portland, by which 170 persons perished. The British ship Atlanta was also wrecked, only three people out of 27 on board escaping. Shortly afterwards Baldwin's Hotel in San Francisco was burnt down with the theatre, and about twenty lives were lost.
In the same month -- November -- a disastrous explosion ruined the central and eastern portions of the Capitol at Washington, destroying the judicial records from 1732 to 1832. An earthquake in the Dutch West Indies killed 50 people and injured 200 others, and an earthquake in Asia Minor rendered 4000 homeless, causing loss of life of 120.
A fatal snowdrift in Persia killed 100 persons, and the Maine disaster in Havana made a human holocaust of 255. The hurricane in the West Indies had a death roll of several hundreds.
There were also minor disasters, such as floods in Queensland; a hurricane in the New Hebrides; a colliery explosion at Newcastle (N.S.W.); a gale in the North Sea, causing the drowning of 45 fishermen; bush fires in Victoria and Tasmania; a snow slide on the road to Klondyke with 100 killed; the destruction of Spurgeon's Tabernacle in London by fire; the drowning of a large number of persons at the launch of H.M.S. Albion at the Thames Iron Works Company's place in London; a boating catastrophe at Noumea when 14 sailors were devoured by sharks; a cloud-burst in Hungary which did damage to the extent of 30,000,000 forints; the loss of 31 lives by suffocation on an over-crowded Russian convict ship travelling from Tiumen to Tomsk; a railway bridge accident in Cornwall (Ontario) by which 30 persons were drowned; and 170 deaths from heat in New York in one day.
The wreck-toll of the year is also large, the principal losses being:
-- Brig Minorca, Sydney, seven lives lost; steamer Channel Queen, Channel Islands, 18 lives lost; steamer Flacbet, French, off Teneriffe, 87 lives; ship Atacama, Australian coast, many lives lost and survivors suffered terrible hardships; barque Candida, Adelaide; French liner Ville de Rome, off Minorca; P. and O. Company's steamer Chin, at Perim, in the Red Sea; barque Glentinlas, missing on voyage from Newcastle to Manila; the steamer Mataura, in Magellan Straits; the steamer Mapourika at Greymouth; the steamer Maitland, off the Sydney coast; schooner Lady Jane, in Kotzebue Sound, on the way to Klondyke ¨C all the foregoing with more or less loss of life.
Then there were the Ganges, steamer, destroyed by fire at Bombay; the Burgoyne, which collided with the Cromartyshire near New York, 326 persons being drowned and the foreign crew displaying the most cowardly ferocity; the Chinese warship Foo-Chi, off Port Arthur, with 154 souls; the steamer Wendouree at Newcastle (N.S.W.); the barquentine C. C. Funk (American), all lives lost save one; and many others, including the Blengfall explosion in the English Channel, the loss of the Clan Drummond, and the wreck of the steamer Illinois in collision with the Pierrepoint on the Tyne, many persons in each instance being drowned.
Quoted from Nelson Evening Mail, 3 January, 1899
End of a Century
Filipino Atrocities
The Expulsion of Count Tolstoi
World Disasters: Air, Sea and Space
Tragedy in Klondyke
World Disasters Report 2002
World Disasters
World Disasters timeline
General Sir Archibald Hunter
German victory predicted
The Sinking of the Titanic and Other Great Sea Disasters
