THE sinking of a ship that left Southampton on her maiden voyage is not exclusive to the Titanic. The same catastrophe befell 19th century HMS Amazon which foundered in heavy seas in the Bay of Biscay with the loss of more than 100 lives.

The three-masted barque paddle steamer sank after catching fire, the loss leading to the Admiralty reconsidering its insistence on wooden hulls for their mail ships and her replacement was constructed with an iron hull.

She was among a set of five sister ships specifically designed for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company’s routes between Southampton and the Caribbean and the arrival of the steamer caused immense excitement in the town.

The biggest timber ship then ever built in Britain, she was 304ft long with a 42ft beam, and her steam engines with 800 horsepowers drove the paddle-wheels 40ft in diameter.

To the cheers of hundreds of spectators, the Amazon was a magnificent sight as she set sail from Southampton on January 2, 1852, with a cargo estimated in excess of £100,000, including 500 bottles of mercury for mining purposes and £20,000 worth of specie, and like many other ships of her day making transatlantic crossings, she also carried livestock on deck with appropriate feed of hay.

But a mechanical problem ominously soon manifested.

Heading down the English Channel, she was forced to drop her top speed of 12knots an hour off Portland because her powerful engines began overheating and the hose was played on the red-hot bearings.

Again and again throughout the night the same problem arose and the same solution applied.

But shortly after 12.40am there came the cry "fire". Smoke was seen pouring from a hatch ahead of the forward funnel and the captain William Symons and the chief engineer Roberts were quickly on deck.

Fire buckets were brought out and the crew desperately tried to shift the hay but had only succeeded in moving two before the remainder caught alight. The blaze had gained a fierce hold and those at the fore of the ship were divided by a sheet of flame from those at the rear.

Despite the intense efforts of the crew, the Amazon was burning fiercely and worst still they fatally could not gain access to stop the engines, with the boat now travelling at top speed in the bay’s notorious choppy waters.

Symons ordered launch of the first lifeboat with 25 people but it was swamped and all were drowned. He turned the ship so the wind was at her stern which helped to slow the fire in that direction but the manoeuvre aggravated the difficulty in launching other lifeboats.

Under the appalling conditions, it was little wonder that several either capsized or lowered wrongly, resulting in a further loss of life.

Some got away and the survivors could watch in horror as the magnificent craft rolled out of control.

By 4pm the fire had destroyed the ship’s foremast and mainmast. At 5pm, her magazine exploded and within half an hour she slid beneath the waves about 110 miles west-south-west of the Scilly Isles.

At 10.30am the brig Marsden, bound for London from North Carolina, picked up 25 survivors, dropping them at Plymouth. The Dutch galliot Gertruida rescued seven passengers, 17 crew members and landed them at Brest. A second Dutch ship, the Hellechina, found 13 people alive and transferred them to the HM Revenue cutter Royal Charlotte, and they were also brought ashore at Plymouth.

More than 100 people, including the travel writer and novelist Elliot Warburton, perished, and a national appeal, championed by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, raised money for widows, orphans and survivors.

A maritime inquiry determined no blame could be apportioned to anyone and the cause of the fire could not be firmly established, though the continued overheating of the engine bearings was cited.

The Amazon was a beauty of her time, constructed regardless of cost by the best builders, and the town of Southampton deeply felt her loss.