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One of the greatest tragedies of 1913 came on the evening of Saturday 25th
October, when the Mirror, a small sailing boat, was hit and overturned by the
steamship Hogarth on the Thames off Gravesend. The Mirror was carrying a troop
of 11 Sea Scouts; three boys and an assistant scout master were drowned.
Some 2,000 boy scouts, alongside the band of the Royal Navy School in
Greenwich, representative of the Royal Army Medical Corps were among the
thousands of mourners who turned out the following Saturday for the funeral in
Charlton. The Sea Scout movement was then just four years old, and a wreath was
sent by the movement's founder, Sir Robert Baden-Powell.
Topical Budget's cameras weren't there to catch the collision or its immediate aftermath, so this short item features shots of the Mirror in happier times. They might even have been captured earlier on the day of the tragedy, since a Topical cameraman had been nearby in Chatham to film a happier maritime event, the launch of the cruiser H.M.S. em>Arethusa, presented in the same edition as this item as 'Our New Super-Destroyer'.
Mark Duguid
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Complete film (0:47)
