The Raising of the "Utopia."
N the black and stormy night of March 17, 1891, Her Majesty's armour-clad warship Anson came into collision with the Anchor liner Utopia in the Bay of Gibraltar, the latter vessel passing too close to the warship's bows, and receiving her ram almost amidships. The horrible sights and sounds of that night have already been the matter of many newspaper reports, and our present business is to show how the fabric of the sunken vessel was recovered. Suffice it, then, to say that nearly one thousand persons, including many Italian emigrants, were on the Utopia at the time of the disaster, and that of these some six hundred met their deaths. The remainder owed their rescue to the prompt devotion of the crews of the ships of the Mediterranean squadron fortunately near.
The Utopia was struck rather aft of amidships, and consequently sank stern first. Our illustration is from a sketch by an eyewitness. In the position shown she remained for a very few minutes after the collision, and then sank entirely with her six hundred.
The morning of the next day broke on a serene calm, and the masts and funnel of the Utopia were all to be seen of that vessel above the water of the Bay of Gibraltar.
Divers descended, and the greater number of the dead bodies were recovered and buried ashore. It was then discovered that the ship lay in full 56 ft. of water at stern and in 43 ft. at bows, and the problem of raising her began to be considered. Many schemes and suggestions were submitted to the owners, and a famous Continental salvage company offered to undertake the work—the remainder of the year to be occupied in preparations, and the wreck to be raised in 1892, no guarantee, at any rate, being given that the business would be completed before. Ultimately the matter was placed in the hands of Mr. Thomas Napier Armit, manager of the East Coast Salvage Company, of Leith, a salvage engineer with a reputation at the time second to none, and now considerably enhanced by his perfect success in this case. Mr. Armit performed the entire business in two months.
Here was his plan; not a wholly original plan, be it understood; nevertheless a plan first successfully applied by Mr. Armit in 1875 in the Bay of Panama, and subsequently used in the case of the Orient steamer Austral, which sank in Sydney harbour; moreover, a plan much modified and improved in many important particulars for this particular case; so much modified and improved, in fact, as to become a new departure in wreck-raising.
A great superstructure was erected upon the hull of the sunken ship, in a manner clearly shown in the accompanying sketches. Practically speaking, a false bulwark was built above the bulwarks of the ship, so high as to rise above the surface of the water. This, of course, had to be strongly and scientifically stayed, to resist the sea
