SS La Bourgogne was a Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) ocean liner and mail ship that was launched in France in 1886. When new, she set a record for the fastest westbound transatlantic crossing from Le Havre to New York.
The La Bourgogne was sunk by collision with the sailing ship . The two ships were in thick fog off Newfoundland, and Cromartyshire had reduced speed, but La Bourgogne was steaming at high speed. Only 13 percent of her passengers survived, compared with 48 percent of her crew. 200 of her passengers were women, but only one survived. Passengers included numerous children, none of whom survived. Until the Sinking of RMS Titanic fourteen years later, it was considered the worst maritime disaster of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Building
In 1885 and 1886 the CGT took delivery of a class of four new ocean liners. They were for its transatlantic route between Le Havre and New York, which the French Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs subsidised to provide a mail service. The four ships are named after French provinces. Ateliers et Chantiers de Saint-Nazaire Penhoët in Saint-Nazaire built La Champagne, La Gascogne, and . La Bourgogne (French name for Burgundy) was unique, being the only member of the class built by Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée in La Seyne-sur-Mer.
La Bourgogne was built partly of iron and partly of steel. She was launched on 8 October 1885 and completed in May 1886, at a cost of FF 7,300,000. Her lengths were overall and registered. Her beam was and her depth was . Her tonnages were and . Her hull had 10 or 11 transverse bulkheads (sources differ), and a double bottom with ballast tanks with a capacity of 650 tons.
As built, her first class accommodation had berths for 225 passengers in 85 state rooms. Second class had berths for 72 passengers in 12 cabins. Third class or steerage had berths for 900 people. Her public rooms included a first class grand parlour square, lit by a skylight. She carried 12 lifeboats. All four members of the class, including La Bourgogne, were designed so that they could be armed with guns as armed merchant cruisers.
Like her three sister ships, La Bourgogne had a single screw driven by twin engines. The screw had a diameter of , was made partly of bronze, and weighed 26 tons. Her original machinery was a pair of three-cylinder compound engines. Their combined power output was rated at 1,308 NHP. It gave her a speed of on her sea trials, as the French government contract required. As built, Bourgogne had four metal masts. Her foremast and mainmast were square-rigged with yards, but her mizzen and jigger-mizzen were rigged for fore-and-aft sails only.
CGT registered La Bourgogne at Le Havre. Her code letters were HNLM.
Prestige
On her maiden voyage La Bourgogne left Le Havre on the morning of 19 June 1886, and arrived off Sandy Hook, New Jersey on the morning of 26 June, having made the crossing in seven days, 15 hours, and 21 minutes, which set a record from Le Havre to New York.
La Bourgognes notable passengers included St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in 1889, Roman Catholic Archbishop Michael Corrigan in 1890, organist Alexandre Guilmant and writer Aleko Konstantinov in 1893, and actress Georgia Cayvan in 1894. In 1889 the ship brought Jean-François Millet's oil painting The Angelus across the Atlantic for the American Art Association to exhibit throughout the USA. In 1893 she took $1 million in gold from New York to Europe, including $782,000 for Lazard Frères.
Collision with Torridon On a westbound crossing in January 1890 La Bourgogne collided in a gale in the English Channel with the British cargo steamship Torridon. The liner badly damaged Torridons stern, and flooded the forward compartment in her own bow. La Bourgogne put in to St Mary's, Isles of Scilly, to telegraph for help to be sent to the cargo ship. The liner faced more heavy weather during her crossing, and reached New York on 14 January.
Collisions with Tigre and Alisa On an eastbound crossing on 10 February 1896 La Bourgogne collided with the French steamship Tigre in Havre Roads in heavy fog. Neither ship was seriously damaged.
On 29 February 1896 there were four shipping incidents in fog in and around New York. The tugboat E. S. Atwood was damaged in collision with the ferry Arizona. The Clyde Steamship Company's George W. Clyde was beached at Fort Hamilton to prevent it from sinking after collision with Dominion Line's Guyandotte. American Line's New York grounded in Lower New York Bay. And Atlas Line's steamship Alisa sank after La Bourgogne collided with her in The Narrows.
Alisa had left her pier in the North River at noon, but ran into fog, so at about 13:00 hrs she anchored off Fort Wadsworth to wait for it to clear. At about 14:10 or 14:20 hrs La Bourgogne struck Alisa about aft of the latter's bow, severing the latter's collision bulkhead. Each ship was under the command of a New York pilot at the time. Alisa swiftly developed a list. A dozen of her crew launched one of her lifeboats. Her passengers and some of her crew climbed her rigging. Alisa started to raise her anchor by its steam winch, and at the same time made for the shore of Long Island, but sank in shallow water, with only her masts and the top of her funnel above water. No lives were lost. The tugboat Harold rescued all of Alisas passengers and crew, and landed them at Battery Park.
One plate of La Bourgognes starboard bow was damaged, about above the waterline. After the collision she drifted into Gravesend Bay and anchored for the night. A boat transferred her mail to the Cunard Liner , and three of her passengers chose to transfer to the Cunarder as well. La Bourgogne returned to port the next morning, where a plate about was riveted to her bow as a temporary repair.
On 4 March the Atlas Line filed a lawsuit for $400,000 against La Bourgogne for sinking Alisa. On 21 August a commercial maritime court at Cherbourg, France exonerated La Bourgognes Master, finding that the collision was a "peril of the sea".
Rescue from Ernst On 28 July 1896 La Bourgogne sighted a German-owned barque, Ernst. The barque was in ballast, sailing from Caernarfon, Wales to Shediac, New Brunswick. She was leaking, one of her three pumps had failed, and the other two had become blocked. The liner approached Ernst and launched two boats to rescue her crew, but the weather was windy, and there was a heavy sea. This up-ended the first boat, throwing the Chief Officer and two crewmen into the sea, but they were quickly rescued. The heavy sea also made it hazardous to approach the barque. Ernst lowered one of her own boats, from which seven of her crew transferred to La Bourgognes boats. The barque's other five crewmen jumped into the sea, from which the French boats rescued them. La Bourgogne landed the survivors at Ellis Island on 2 August.
Refit La Bourgogne was refitted in 1897. Her obsolescent compound engines were replaced with a pair of quadruple-expansion engines, built by Ateliers et Chantiers de Saint-Nazaire Penhoët. They were rated at a total of 1,048 NHP, and increased her speed to about . She was also given a set of 12 new Scotch boilers, with a working pressure of . Two of her four masts were removed, and the yards were removed from her foremast. Her third class accommodation was increased to 1,500 berths.
Collision with Cromartyshire and sinking
On 2 July 1898 La Bourgogne left the North River in New York for Le Havre. She carried a total of 726 people: 83 passengers in first class, 123 in second, 300 in steerage, and 220 crew. She also carried cargo worth $300,000 to $400,000, and 170 bags of mail. Her passengers included a party of Austro-Hungarian seamen, and a party of about 75 Armenians, including a priest, and 13 Assyrians.
Two days later La Bourgogne ran into dense fog off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, reducing visibility to about , but maintained high speed. Also, she was off the eastbound transatlantic shipping lane on which she should have been.
On 8 June the three-masted, iron-hulled sailing ship Cromartyshire had left Dunkirk with a cargo of coal for Philadelphia. Early on the morning of 4 July she was sailing through fog, about off Cape Sable Island, Newfoundland, sounding her foghorn every minute. She was under reduced sail and was making only about . La Bourgogne heard Cromartyshires foghorn, and answered with her steam whistle, but neither ship's lookouts could see the other ship. At 05:00 hrs Cromartyshires bow struck the starboard side of La Bourgogne at an oblique angle. The sailing ship's Master, Captain Oscar Henderson, said the steamship was going at "terrific speed".
The impact was just abaft La Bourgognes bridge. The sailing ship's bow penetrated the steamship's engine room below the waterline and raked her starboard side, smashing La Bourgognes starboard lifeboat number 1, and damaging lifeboats numbers 3 and 5. Captain Deloncle set course for Cape Sable Island, but La Bourgogne lost steam, rendering her unable to work her main pumps. La Bourgogne fired a distress rocket and flare, and raised lights to indicate she was in danger.
Most of the passengers were in bed and asleep until the two ships collided. La Bourgognes starboard lifeboats and some liferafts were launched, but survivors alleged that the liner's officers were ineffective, and the ratings sought to save themselves rather than the passengers. Some passengers resorted to trying to launch boats and rafts themselves, and alleged afterward that some members of the crew "chased them away" and took the boats and rafts for themselves. One passenger alleged that a crewman on deck used an oar to beat a passenger to prevent him from reaching a liferaft. He and other passengers alleged that occupants of lifeboats used boat hooks and oars to stop passengers in the water from boarding their boat. One passenger alleged that he and his elderly mother were thrown out of a lifeboat into the sea. One survivor alleged that some passengers were threatened with knives. Survivors said that the only member of La Bourgognes crew who made a professional effort to launch lifeboats was the Second Officer, Delinge.
Captain Henderson ordered Cromartyshires crew to prepare her boats to be lowered, and went forward to inspect her bow. He found extensive damage, but the sailing ship was not in immediate danger of sinking. The two ships lost each other in the fog, but Henderson saw the rocket and flare that La Bourgogne fired, and he had several distress rockets and flares fired from Cromartyshire. At about 05:30 hrs the fog thinned enough for Henderson to see two of La Bourgognes lifeboats being rowed toward his ship. This was the first he knew that the steamship had sunk.
Cromartyshire rescued the occupants of the two boats, stood to, and launched its own three boats to rescue other survivors, many of them on life rafts or clinging to wreckage. At about 15:00 hrs she sighted a westbound steamship, Allan Line's , and signalled to her. Survivors were transferred to Grecian, which towed the sailing ship to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they arrived on 6 July.
Only 177 people survived. La Bourgognes passengers included about 200 women, but only one was saved. The survivors included 116 of 222 crew, but only 61 of 503 passengers. Most of the first class passengers were also killed. The Captain Deloncle, all of the deck officers, and most of the engineer officers died in the sinking.