Good morning, #Bermuda: today is #Thursday, December 18. For Writa Johnson, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 105, this was a date to remember: in 1929, while setting out from New York on honeymoon with her husband Al Burton, Mrs Johnson was on board the Furness Withy passenger steamship Fort Victoria - which was sent to the bottom after it struck another ship, the SS Algonquin, in a heavy fog. “Our rescuers took us to Staten Island with only the clothes we were wearing; we spent the remainder of the night in a hotel and returned to our home in Rhode Island the next day,” Mrs Johnson told this newspaper in 1997, recalling thankfully that none of the 443 souls on board were lost. The Fort Victoria went down off Sandy Hook. The sinking riveted Bermuda’s press, and made headlines far afield. Mrs Johnson, pictured here on her 102nd birthday, wasn’t the only Bermudian left with a story from that night: businessman Warren Brown was just a baby in his mother’s arms aboard the Fort Victoria on that fateful night. His rescue made the front page of the New York Daily News: the infant Mr Brown was tossed to safety to a crew member in a waiting lifeboat. As for the Fort Victoria, which remains on the sea floor, a contract went to Vickers-Armstrong’s to build a replacement, the SS Monarch of Bermuda, which began service in 1933. Both vessels are also pictured.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 12:04:23 +0000
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