How 170 people leaving the UK for the US lost their lives in a shipwreck

Historian Colin Reed writes for The Blackpool Lead on the tragedy of 1848

Image depicting the fire on the Ocean Monarch

Blackpool, in its seaside location, has naturally played host to many a tragedy as the ocean has violently taken away a life.

In August and September of 1848, the coast played a part in the effects of the dramatic and tragic demise of the migrant ship, the Ocean Monarch, wrecked off the North Wales coast.

As the winds changed to westerlies, bodies from the wreck, if they weren’t picked out of the water, were washed up all along the shore right up to Cumberland. Fifteen of these bodies, among much debris, were cast upon the beaches of the Fylde coast.

Alice Wrigley's body was one of several deposited at Bispham. Of the ships contingent of passengers and crew totalling nearly four hundred, about one hundred and seventy had lost their lives, and the rest who were saved was due to a frantic and exceptional rescue operation by the several vessels that attended the burning ship.

Alice's body and those of her fellow passengers, six female and a single male, being the legal responsibility of the parish as well as the spiritual responsibility of the church, were taken to All Hallows Church to await identification before burial. The partially decomposed bodies were described in detail in the local newspapers in the hope that someone might recognise them, their clothing being sometimes the only means of identification.

Alice’s family were ‘well-to-do’ and, for those bodies buried in All Hallows churchyard, Alice is the only one with a name and a headstone, commissioned by a heartbroken sister. Hers and the other burials were given a description in the parish records as 'thought to be from the Ocean Monarch'. Alice’s burial took place on 9 September 1848.

Further south at Blackpool there were seven bodies, four women and three men and at Norbreck further north were four women. Of six bodies at Lytham there were three women, one man and two adolescent boys, and the bodies were buried in the churchyard there.

The body of an unidentified man washed up at Blackpool was put on display at Mr Walmsley's workshop in St Anne’s Sq. and many people came to view it, an unwitting precursor, perhaps, of the of oddities and curiosities on the future Golden Mile. Of the eight bodies washed up at Bispham, there was one man and eight women.