Loss of the Eurydice (one of those who died was Albert Leall Pead aged 19½)
After being recommissioned under the command of Captain Marcus Augustus Stanley Hare, the Eurydice sailed from Portsmouth on a three month tour of the West Indies and Bermuda on 13th November 1877. On the 6th March 1878 she began her return voyage from Bermuda for Portsmouth. After a very fast passage across the Atlantic, on 24 March 1878 the Eurydice was caught in a heavy snow storm off the Isle of Wight, capsized and sank. Only two of the ship's 378 crew and trainees survived, most of those not carried down with the ship dying of exposure in the freezing waters The wreck was refloated later in the year but had been so badly damaged during her period submerged that she was then broken up.
The Eurydice was a wooden fully-rigged fast sailing ship, which had been built in 1843 and later converted to a purely sail-training vessel. On 24th March 1878 it was returning from a training cruise in the West Indies with 300 young seamen on board as well as 35 passengers. At about 3.30pm it was sighted by the Bonchurch Coastguard ´sailing hard for Spithead under all plain sail...´ Twenty minute s later a heavy squall accompanied by a blinding snow storm came suddenly from the land, catching the vessel completely unawares.
In less than ten minutes the squall had passed, the wind had died down but all that could be seen of the Eurydice was ´the masts and top hampers [upper sails and rigging] showing above the water just about 2½ miles off the island´. Apparently the fierce squall had turned the vessel's bows to the east causing it to capsize to the starboard, with the result that water rushed in through the open ports. A small schooner, the Emma, which had managed to survive the same squall, picked up the only four survivors but unfortunately two seamen later died. The final death toll was 364 officers and men, most of whom were buried in the cemetery at Haslar Hospital in Portsmouth
