by Donia Scott
The first alert of the sinking was received at 4:40 a.m. on April 10th, when Police Constable Benjamin McKoy was woken at his post at the station house in the northern town of Consejo, situated only a few miles from the Mexican border. He opened the door to the alarming sight of four sodden and bedraggled men, a nun and a screaming child of about two years of age, later identified as the son of Mrs. Marchand.
McKoy! The E.M.L. gone down! The E.M.L. gone down!” he heard.
As far as he knew, the mailboat was scheduled to arrive a few hours after midnight at Corozal, 8 miles south, on its weekly trip from Belize. But these people claimed that it had sunk some two hours earlier, somewhere between Warre Bight and Sarteneja, with many passengers on board. The motley group before him had escaped, they said, in the only available lifeboat.
McKoy recognised the most vocal of the men as Percival Grant, a steward on the E.M.L. With him were two other crew members, one of whom identified himself as the cook, Cecil Patterson, and the other as a sailor named Hubert Flowers. The fourth man explained in broken English that his name was Serapio Lopez from Honduras and that his wife was left clinging to the wreckage. The nun, partly speaking in a language that he later learned to be German, said that she was Mother Cecelia of the Pallottine order and that she had been travelling with two fellow nuns and Bishop Hopkins.
As for the child, all they could say about him was that he had been thrown to them as they set off in the lifeboat. A woman in the crowd that had begun to gather around the station house took the crying child away to be fed and put in dry clothes. Later that day, McKoy learned that the child’s name was Chester, that he had been on board with his mother and several siblings, and that he was the son of Mr. Lucio Marchand, a Customs official in Belize.
Immediately upon receiving the shocking news, McKoy telephoned the station house in Corozal to report what Grant had told him. This was passed on to Mr. P.N. Riveroll, the telegraph officer at Corozal, who sent a telegram with the news to his counterpart in Belize and, without awaiting instructions, another to the chief operator at nearby Payo Obispo across the border in Mexico asking for urgent assistance.
The Collector of Customs at Payo Obispo set off for the location of the stricken vessel with two motor boats. All available motor boats in Corozal and Consejo were dispatched to search for survivors. Mr. Robert Turton, a prominent mahogany and chicle merchant in Consejo, sent out his two personal motor launches, the Lena and the Lula H. They were joined by many other townspeople from Corozal and Consejo in canoes and dories.
The Lena, named after one of Turton’s daughters, set off at around 5:45 a.m. with Constable McKoy on board. With him was Turton’s engineer, Selvyn Ireland, and the mailboat’s steward, Percival Grant, pointing the way.
About two miles out, they came across a man who McKoy recognised as John Moody, “clinging to a board”. Not long after, they picked up Percival Reneau, the engineer of the E.M.L. Altogether, the Lena retrieved six survivors from the water before reaching the wreck.
Within half an hour, they spotted the E.M.L. some four or five miles out of Consejo lying on her side almost entirely underwater with only the rigging visible. Clinging to the rigging were fifty or more people clamouring for help, many of whom appeared to be women and children.
Altogether, forty-five survivors were rescued by the various boats and taken to Corozal, where the anxious townspeople fed and clothed them.
Even before the rescue boats had returned, the “leading men of Corozal”—the Rosados, Romeros and others—set up a relief fund to provide for the survivors. They reported that $150 was subscribed within an hour, a substantial sum in today’s currency.
Throughout the morning, numerous telephone calls were made from Corozal to the authorities in Belize, with name after name coming through as survivors were brought ashore. At 10:30 a.m., a list of the 51 survivors was posted outside the store of Messrs James Brodie and Co. Ltd. in Belize. The list contained several errors since, in the panic, little care was given to correctly transcribe the names.
Passengers: , John Moody, John Riverroll, Ernesto Peyrefite, Emilio Mena, William Parham, Francisco Perez, Rafael Diaz, Braulia Lopez, Mrs Lucio Marchand, Octavio [Gustave] Marchand, Olga Marchand, Ambrose Marchand, Joseph Franco, Ignacio Franco, Norman Wade, Maria Delgado, Marta Delgado, Mrs Manuel Carbajal, Christina Trejo, Christine [Sybil] Sabido, Gregorio Torres, Felipe Ramirez, Mrs Felipe Ramirez and child, Mrs Candido Gonzales, Marta A Gentina, Jacinto Gonzales, Maria Escobar, Miss Erneese Woods, Cecilia Arnold, Henry Longsworth, Christopher Broadster, Adam Francis, Daniel Ramsey, Charles Gulop, Serapio Lopez, Sister Cecilia, Crecencio Xul, Lydia Usher, Elizabeth Usher, Daniel Ingleton, 1 child [later known to be Chester Marchand]
Crew: Percival Reneau (engineer), Nicholas Maldonaldo (purser), George Burn (2nd purser), Hubert Flowers, Emannuel Trapp (Captain), James Pollard (oiler), Percival Grant (steward), Cecil Patterson (cook), Francisco Gomez (sailor), Cresencio Humes (sailor)
As far as we can gather, those not rescued are: His Lordship Bishop Hopkins, two Sisters, Mrs Lawrence and 6 children, Miss Daisy Woods and 4 children, one child of Mrs Lucio Marchand, and two children of Mr. E.L Fuller.
In a belated attempt to rescue remaining survivors, Government officials in Belize sent the Customs boat, Panther, which set off at 10:00 a.m. On board were Lucio Marchand, the Assistant Harbour Master of Belize, Henry Masson, and the Assistant Medical Officer, Henry Folse. The Panther arrived in Corozal just after 8:00 p.m. that evening.
A newly-registered motor launch, Afri-Kola, belonging to a Mr. Chevannes and commissioned by the colonial government to transport mail from Belize to the southern towns, was also dispatched to Corozal, setting sail at 10:30 a.m. On board was Mr. Henry Lawrence, a cabinetmaker whose large family group of 14 women and children—including his own wife and six young children—had left Belize on the E.M.L. for Corozal the previous day. The Afri-Kola arrived in Corozal soon after 1:00 a.m. the next day, April 11. It returned to Belize late the following evening with ten survivors on board.
Messrs C. Melhado and Son Ltd. also sent their boat, the Milton, from Belize to render assistance in the search for survivors.
Meanwhile, fishermen from Consejo were beginning to recover the bodies of the drowned passengers. Over three days, the bodies of all but two children were found in the sea off Consejo, where they had drifted. They were taken to Consejo, and then by truck to Corozal for formal identification and burial.
The first bodies to be recovered were those of two small girls and an infant belonging to the Wood family, who were picked up on the day of the sinking by a Mexican boat running between Payo Obispo and Consejo. Over the next two days, eleven bodies were recovered by fishermen in their dories. One in particular, Apolonio Pech, was responsible for finding eight bodies, which he delivered to Consejo over five trips in his dorey. The day after the sinking, the body of a woman, identified as one of the Wood sisters, Adela, the wife of Harry Lawrence, was recovered at the site of the wreck; it had become dislodged and floated to the surface during an attempt to tow the wreck into the shallows. Bishop Hopkins’s body was the last to be found, tangled in mangroves at the mouth of the Hondo River that marks the border between British Honduras and Mexico.
At first, the bodies were delivered from Consejo directly to the Corozal mortuary for the cause of death to be determined by Dr. Fredrick Davis, Assistant Medical Officer at Corozal, and his counterpart who had arrived from Belize for this purpose, Dr. Henry Folse. From there, they were transported to the Corozal Cemetery for burial. But by the 12th, the bodies were arriving in such a state of advanced decomposition that they were taken directly to the cemetery.
On April 13, the Governor of British Honduras, Sir Eyre Hutson, sent a telegram to His Excellency L. Abitia, the Governor of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo and the Comandante of Payo Obispo:
I desire to thank you, your officers and others in Payo Obispo for the ready response to the call for assistance in connection with the wreck of the E.M.L. which has been very valuable and highly appreciated by this Government and by the people of the Colony.
To be continued.