Wreck (1815)
Critically, the ship did not have a chronometer—a comparatively new navigational instrument that was an "easy and cheap addition to her equipment" at the time—for this voyage. Captain George Simpson[4] could not afford the 60–100 guineas for one,[14] and the ship's owners were also unwilling to purchase one, even threatening to replace him with another captain if he refused to set sail without one.[15]
Arniston sailed from Port de Galle on 4 April 1815 in a convoy of six other East Indiamen, under the escort of HMS Africaine and HMS Victor (1814).[16] Among her 378 passengers were many invalid soldiers and sailors, plus 14 women and 25 children.[15][4]
During the passage from Ceylon, at one o'clock every day, the ships signalled each other their longitude that they calculated using their chronometers. In this way, the ships were able to compare their respective instruments, and the master of the Arniston was able to learn his longitude too, as long as he remained in the convoy.[15][14]
On 26 May, while rounding the southern tip of Africa, Arniston separated from the convoy in bad weather after her sails were damaged.[15] Without accurate daily longitudinal information from the other ships, Arniston had to rely instead on older, less accurate navigation methods. Navigation via dead reckoning proved particularly difficult as there were strong ocean currents combined with inclement weather that prevented a fix being obtained for several days via celestial navigation.
On 29 May, land was sighted to the north at 7 am, and given the dead reckoning estimates, was presumed to be the Cape of Good Hope. The ship sailed west until 4:30 pm on 29 May, then turned north to run for St Helena. However the land sighted had in fact been Cape Agulhas (then known as "Cape L'Agullas") and the ship had also not made good headway against the current since this sighting. Compounding these navigational errors, the master had not taken any depth soundings (which would have confirmed his location over the Agulhas Bank), before heading north.[15] Consequently, instead of being 100 mi west of the Cape of Good Hope as presumed, the ship was closing on the reef at Waenhuiskrans near Cape Agulhas. The anchors were unable to hold the heavy ship in the storm, so on 30 May near 4 pm, Lieutenant Brice advised Captain Simpson to ground the ship to save the lives of those aboard. Eight minutes later, at about 8 pm, the ship struck rocks half a mile offshore and heeled into the wind. The guns on the opposite side were cut away in a failed attempt to level the ship, which soon started to break up in the waves.[17][16]
Only six men (the ship's carpenter and five sailors[18] of the 378 people on board survived, after reaching the shore only with great difficulty through the high surf.[17][4] The following morning the sternpost was the only part of the vessel still visible.[16] The ship and her passengers had been lost for lack of a chronometer,[14] or as an officer from the same convoy later wrote:[15]
"[T]his valuable ship, and all the lives on board of her, were actually sacrificed to a piece of short-sighted economy. That they might have been saved, had she been supplied with the worst chronometer that was ever sent to sea, is also quite obvious."
