Sir Charles Slingsby

A carte-de-visite portrait of Sir Charles Slingsby of Scriven Park, Knaresborough.

Sir Charles was one of the six men who lost their lives on the morning of 4 February 1869 when a flat-bottomed, wooden ferry capsized while members of a local hunt and their horses were crossing the River Ure, which was swollen by recent heavy rain and in full spate.

The York and Ainsley Hunt had been in pursuit of a fox for an hour when it swam across the river and the hounds followed. The men galloped along the river bank in order to make use of a private ferry opposite Newby Hall, a wooden platform that was winched back and forth across the river by a windlass and chain. Halfway across the river one of the horses became agitated and capsized the raft, pitching thirteen men and eleven horses into the churning waters. Many of them were trapped under the barge when it turned over. Four huntsmen and nine of the eleven horses were drowned, as well as Christopher Warriner, a gardener from Newby Hall and his son, James, who had both been manning the ferry.

Photographed by W.T. and R. [William Thomas and Robert] Gowland of York.