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Topical Budget 114-1: Wreck of the Ketch 'Mirror' (1913)
 

BFI

Main image of Topical Budget 114-1: Wreck of the Ketch 'Mirror' (1913)
 
29/10/1913
35mm, black and white, silent, 340 feet
 
Production CompanyTopical Film Company

Report of a tragic Thames accident, in which four sea scouts lost their lives.

Show full synopsis

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)
GALLERY / SCRIPTS / AUDIO
SEE ALSO
Topical Budget 114-1: Our New Super-Destroyer (1913)
A Very Topical Year: 1913