five o’clock in the morning
On March 5 , 1867 , the Moravian from the Montreal Ocean Co. , lying during the night in latitude 27 degrees 30 ' and longitude 72 degrees 15 ' , ran its starboard quarter afoul of a rock marked on no charts of these waterways . Under the combined efforts of wind and 400-horsepower steam , it was traveling at a speed of thirteen knots . Without the high quality of its hull , the Moravian would surely have split open from this collision and gone down together with those 237 passengers it was bringing back from Canada . This accident happened around five o'clock in the morning , just as day was beginning to break . The officers on watch rushed to the craft 's stern . They examined the ocean with the most scrupulous care . They saw nothing except a strong eddy breaking three cable lengths out , as if those sheets of water had been violently churned .