'Captain Taylor was evidently an able and courageous seaman. He animated all his officers and crew to maintain discipline and continue their exertions to the latest moment, and it is with no desire to suggest blame that we express the belief that but for relying on the power of his screw to keep the vessel off, he would never have been in the position he was on that fatal Tuesday evening, when on a rugged lee shore he was losing precious hours endeavouring to procure a pilot. Either a safe port or the open sea were the only situations that could give security in a hurricane like that of Tuesday. There seemed to be a fatality attending the last voyage of the ill-fated ship that was to pursue her crew and passengers to the extremity of destruction, for the rapidity of her passage brought her upon the most perilous part of our coast that she had to near, just at the outbreak of the most violent storm we have experienced for very many years, and after striking upon the shore, her hull succumbed to the fury of the waves, and became rent and shattered almost in a moment, just as a communication had been established, by means of the hawser passed to the shore, that promised the fairest chance of saving the lives of all on board. The gallant action of the seaman who performed this feat, all but too late as it proved to be, was the means of saving many of the thirty-nine, who were all that escaped out of near five hundred.
'The records of shipwrecks upon the coast of Great Britain have been carefully compiled for some years past, and the annual number of vessels totally lost is known to range from 1000 to 1200. Of these, however, a very large proportion are small craft, coasting traders, and colliers, whose short voyages generally keep them in dangerous proximity to the shore, and whose crews are often insufficient for working them successfully out of a sudden emergency. This year, there will be a terrible excess over the average losses. The destruction of vessels in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday amounts, according to what is already known, to hundreds; whilst the loss of life by the "Royal Charter," which, though the greatest, is only one amongst a numerous list of such losses, will vastly increase the average mortality. The sacrifices even of human life, demanded and paid in the pursuit of our peaceful commerce, are not less appalling sometimes than those which render war terrible. This storm gives us a longer list of lives lost in a few hours on the English coast than has been the result of many a mighty battle.'