Rare survival of this address given on the loss of the steamship SS London, which had sunk in the Bay of Biscay some ten days earlier on the 11th January 1866. The ship was travelling from Gravesend in England to Melbourne, Australia, when she began taking in water on 10 January, with 239 persons aboard. Overloaded with cargo, and thus unseaworthy, only 19 survivors were able to escape the foundering ship by lifeboat, leaving a death toll of 220. Christopher Newman Hall (1816-1902),was born at Maidstone and known in later life as a ‘Dissenter’s Bishop’. He was one of the most celebrated nineteenth century English Nonconformist divines, active in a number of social causes; supporting Abraham Lincoln and abolition of slavery during the American Civil War, the Chartist cause, and arranging for influential Nonconformists to meet Gladstone. OCLC records one copy, at the BL.