Three Good Questions

This is the sixth in an ongoing series of posts about historical research, featuring news articles, adverts, and other sources mostly from Britain in the 19th century.

Just for fun, imagine you stumbled across the news report fragments reproduced below during your research. What could you learn from them? How many research rabbit holes would they lead you down? In what new directions might they take your writing?

If you interrogate the image and words closely, what Three Good Questions would you want answers to first? You can send me your suggestions via the form at the bottom of the page.

I’ll collate the questions, and begin to answer some of them, in a follow-up post. Subscribers to the ThreesWrite Newsletter will receive that before it’s published on the website.

Here are my first Three Good Questions:

1. Why did the collision happen (was it unavoidable)?
2. How accurately does the artist’s impression match witness testimony?
3. What became of the Bywell Castle?

Illustration published in the 14th September 1878 edition.

Illustrated London News (7th September 1878)

Front page editorial extract:

…the appalling catastrophe which occurred on the river Thames last Tuesday evening. The magnitude of this disaster exceeds anything of the kind which has been recorded for many years past. The details of the accident, so far as it has been possible to collect them, will be found elsewhere. It will suffice for our present purpose to state that the Princess Alice, one of the largest saloon-steamers of the London Steam-Boat Company, which had started in the morning with between six and seven hundred excursionists on board, came into collision, on her return passage, with a screw collier steamer, the Bywell Castle, near the middle of the stream, just off the City of London Gasworks at Beckton, a little below North Woolwich Gardens. Within about five minutes the Princess Alice, with her crowded freight of holiday passengers, went down in deep water. A few saved themselves by clambering on to the other vessel; some were picked up by the Duke of Teck, another steamer belonging to the same company, which was also up on her passage with a party of excursionists; but we are told that “the river, for a hundred yards, was full of drowning people, screaming in anguish and praying for help.”

Source: Illustrated London News (7th and 14th September 1878)

What Three Good Questions would you ask?