Volume One - Into the Victorian Age - Some newspaper reports from the 1870's

Inside also the water rose to the top of the hold, yet the fire raged with undiminished fury, and in the gathering darkness the hold, as it was seen through the honeycombed planking, blazed away with full vigour. The bow had fallen a victim, and only the carved woodwork of the stem remained unburnt, and that rose like a blackened and charred figure-head in sharp contrast to the terrible brilliance on deck. The forecastle had fallen into the ruins. Amidships, nothing but the ruddy glow of wood and the bright flames of coal. Aft, only a coruscating amorphous mass of fire, which, as every fresh log fell into the seething cauldron below, scintillated and shone with greater brilliance and more varied hues than any glories of the pyrotechnist. The steam caused by the contact of the water with the fire, rose in the clouds, but except from the timber there was little smoke.

If the catastrophe had been a test of the smokeless qualities of steam coal the issue would have been conclusive. There were eighteen hundred tons busting with flame, or smouldering into coke, and no sign of such a conflagration made itself apparent in the upper air. The tide ebbed, and as the water went down, the superincumbent heat drying the lower strata of coal, the fire burnt its way lower down, but with not a bit less strength, and when the water had receded the ship lay a fiery wreck, high and dry, still burning, and looking in the gloom of night like nothing so much as a row of immense coke ovens, from whose half-opened doors the white blaze shone with dazzling radiance. It continued to burn the whole of the next day, and was only extinguished by Wednesday morning's tide, when it had burned so low that the water washed over it.

The ship is said to be insured in a Boston office. Mr. T. S. Miller, the receiver of wreck, was present during the greater part of the day, and by his direction the coastguard, under the command of Capt. Evans, who was also in attendance, rendered efficient service. The spectacle attracted an immense number of people form Cardiff and Penarth, and the shore, the cliffs above, the raised platform near the Dock offices, and the new pier at Cardiff were severally thronged with spectators." Cardiff Times [019] 5th October 1872.

I felt that the foregoing report from the Cardiff Times was worthy of inclusion in its entirety given the wonderfully descriptive language of the reporter employed throughout. We just don't get writing like it today and you can almost smell and taste the sulphurous smoke mingled with the sea breeze and the pungent aromas of all that mud and seaweed ; I particularly like - "Aft, only a coruscating amorphous mass of fire, which, as every fresh log fell into the seething cauldron below, scintillated and shone with greater brilliance and more varied hues than any glories of the pyrotechnist." One anomaly I uncovered, was that the Cardiff Times refers to the ship as the Jane S. Southard, whereas other newspapers refer to her as the Jane J. Southard and even the J. J. Southard.