Conditions for agricultural labourers and their families in England were extremely difficult during the early 1870s, with bad harvests leaving many almost destitute. Around this time, the New Zealand government was attempting to entice people to start a new life overseas by offering to pay for their passage to New Zealand.

Three men from Shipton-under-Wychwood had already emigrated to New Zealand and had apparently sent back glowing enough reports to encourage 17 members of the Hedges and Townsend extended families to also make the voyage. They joined nearly 400 other passengers, largely emigrants like themselves, on the Cospatrick, a three-masted frigate that departed England for New Zealand on September 11, 1872.

Just over two months into their voyage, the ship was sailing around the Cape of Good Hope when, at around 1am on night of 18 November, a fire broke out onboard. Who or what started the fire will probably never be known. Despite the crew's efforts to contain it, the fire quickly spread.

As the crew ineffectually battled the blaze, it became clear that the ship would not survive the night. The ship possessed six lifeboats, with enough capacity for just 187 people, less than half the passengers onboard the Cospatrick. With panic growing amongst the passengers and no formal procedure for their launch, only two of the lifeboats were successfully launched before the ship went down in flames.

For four days the two lifeboats with their 62 passengers floated in open waters, before heavy seas on 22nd November caused the two lifeboats to lose sight of each other. One was never seen again.

On 27th November, the remaining lifeboat was spotted by another ship. The crew of the British Sceptre had seen floating wreckage, realised that a ship had recently gone down and had followed the trail of wreckage looking for surprivors.

The scene that the crew of the British Sceptre found onboard the remaining lifeboat was horrific. With no food or drinking water for nine days, only five of the ships passengers were still alive. As the passengers died one by one, their bodies had been thrown overboard. However, by the end those who remained had become too weak to lift their deceased companions overboard and the lifeboat was littered with corpses.

Of the five survivors, two died onboard the British Sceptre on the journey back to port. The three who remained told stomach-churning tales of what they and their fellow passengers had endured. Some fell overboard. Some went mad. Other resorted to drinking sea water and died. But there was worse to come.

The three survivors, Charles Macdonald, Thomas Lewis and Edward Cotter eventually arrived back in England 104 days after the sinking of the Cospatrick, and told their story to the press where the details caused something of a sensation.

When the accounts of the disaster told by the men hit the press, they caused a sensation. Much was said about the poor safety measure aboard the Cospatrick, not least the inadequacy of the available lifeboats. In fact, the Cospatrick was in full compliance with the maritime regulations of the time, in which the required number of lifeboats on board was dictated not by the number of passengers but by the ship's weight or cargo capacity. While this caused an outcry, it wasn't until the sinking of the Titanic almost 40 years later that legislation was passed requiring ships to carry enough lifeboats for all onboard, and for mandatory drills to ensure lifeboats would be deployed safely.

An inquiry was held in February 1875 to find out the cause of the disaster. While the inquiry touched on subjects like the lack of lifeboats, fire drills and other safety procedures, it seems like a lot of effort was made to divert blame from the crew and towards at the emigrant passengers.

A theory was proposed by various 'experts' that the cause of the fire was emigrants sneaking into the hold to plunder the cargo of beer and spirits that the ship was carrying. This seem to be pure speculation as far as I can tell, and a rather cruel example of victim-blaming given that none of the 400-odd passengers survived to give their side of the story.

The memorial at Shipton-under-Wychwood, actually a ornate drinking fountain, was erected four years after the disaster in 1878. It features the names of the 17 who lost their lives, with the eight members of the Hedges family listed on the north side of the memorial, and the nine members of the Townsend family listed on the south side.