The mail from Valparaiso arrived here last evening, but contained no letters for Mr. Train, nor, as far as we couldlear, for any of those who had friends on board the ship. The postscript of a letter to a merchant in this city, dated Valparaiso, July 15, says: "There is a report here that the ship Staffordshire, of Boston, is wrecked upon an island near Talcahuana, and that all hands, with one exception, have been saved. No further particulars." The Mercantile Gazette, of July 15, published at Valparaiso, contains a report to the same effect, expressed in nearly the same words. A letter from our own correspondent, however, dated july 16, though devoted en tirely to ship news, makes no allusion to her whatever. With these rumors before us, we are less inclined to believe her loss than we were yesterday. The place were she is supposed to be wrecked, is about four or five days' sail from Valparaiso, where the news must have been received on the 14th, to be published in a morning paper of the 15th. Allowing five days for the news to reach Valparaiso, a day for the passangers to land and be mustered, and it follows tha the ship must have been wrecked on the 8th of July, as the latest, and this would allow her to be only 66 days out from Boston. Now, if she had made such an excellent run, she must have had good weather, and consequently the supposition of her being disabled, and seeking a port, to refit, is entitled to very little consideration. But we believe of she had been wrecked that several of her passengers would have been in Valparaiso as quickly as the news. She had on board several passengers who had been shipmasters, and who would soon have devised the ways and means of reaching Valparaiso. We have often heard of ships having been lost, which have been without the slightest foundation, but which, at the time, appeared more probable than the supposed loss of this ship.
Some of our neighbors, however, fear that she is lost, and give the following as her insurance in this city and Province:
BOSTON. BOSTON. Merchants 3,700 Warren (reinsured in New York) 8,000 Boylston 24,000 Triton Mutual 1,500 American 14,000 Equitable Safety 29,000 Boston 17,750 N.E. Mutual 20,000 Hope 20,000 Alliance 25,000 Neptune 25,000 City Mutual 23,000 Mercantile 20,000 PROVIDENCE. Franklin 18,500 American 3,000 Suffolk 15,000 Roger Williams 5,000 United States 15,000 --------- Washington 14,000 Total 204,950
Transcribed by Lars Bruzelius.
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Copyright © 1997 Lars Bruzelius.