In 1859, 450 people died horribly off the Welsh coast near Anglosay.

Their ship, unamaginitably named the Royal Charter, was returning to Liverpool after a trip to Australia.

A quick trip. This was a new vessel, an ironclad vessel, an armored ship.

If you can imagine such a thing, what's more it was coal-powered.

Propulsion came not from wind power, but from some kind of large furnace in the bowels of the ship.

How about that? Very fast. It made it from Cape Horn to the Welsh coast in just 60 days, unheard of.

The Royal Charter carried 371 passengers, many of whom were gold miners returning to England from the colonies, bearing their fortunes with them.

Deposited in their pockets and effects there was gold, but there was also enough of it it was

consigned as cargo below decks as well a lot of gold and on October 25th the

barometer dropped you may not know what that means, but I now do. I now have an old-timey barometer

that I keep in my camper, and I finally figured out what it's for. When the barometer drops, the air pressure

outside has just dropped, and what that probably signifies

is an incoming storm.

Lo and behold, back there in 1859, a very big angry Welsh storm, the kind of storm with too many

Ls and too much wind and not enough fowls began stocking the

hMS royal charter.

Captain Taylor was advised to delay the trip,

Poland a safe harbor at Hollyhead,

but he thought he could probably beat that nasty old Welsh storm get into Liverpool before it got too bad

And again, one of an old-timey sailing ship. This isn't one of those

rickety wooden things floating around. This is a modern coal-powered iron-clad vessel.

But somewhere around Point Linus, the gale kicked up to Storm Force 10 on the Beaufort scale.

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