The RMS

RMS

-Science and technology:* Root mean square, a concept encapsulating the "average", in some sense, of a quantity. Frequently encountered in statistics, the physical sciences and electronics...

 Royal Adelaide was a paddle steamship owned and operated by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company

City of Dublin Steam Packet Company

The City of Dubin Steam Packet Company was a shipping line established in 1823. It served cross-channel routes between Britain and Ireland for over a century. For 70 of those years it transported the mail...

. Its principal route ran between London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and Cork

Cork (city)

Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

.

Final journey

The Royal Adelaide, captained by John Batty, left Cork fully laden with cargo and about 250 passengers on Wednesday, 27th March 1850, touching off at Plymouth on the Thursday evening. By the time the ship left Plymouth for London at 3 a.m. on the Friday morning, there were almost 300 deck passengers.

The ship was totally lost at about 11 p.m. on the Saturday night on Tongue Sands north of Margate

Margate

-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....

, with the loss of all on board. News only reached London late on Sunday as the river pilot awaiting the ship happened to meet a Deal pilot (Charles Gillham) who reported seeing a ship of a similar description in distress the previous evening (London Illustrated News 6 and 13 April 1850).

The dead included more than 150 deck passengers from Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 during a time when the Great Famine was at its height.