The emigrant ship Cospatrick caught fire south-west of the Cape of Good Hope in November 1874 while sailing from London to Auckland. Most passengers and crew died in the fire or after taking to poorly provisioned boats. Only three people ultimately survived from more than 470 aboard.

Cospatrick generated elegies and broadside verses throughout Britain and New Zealand, where many passengers had expected to begin new lives. Its poetic commemoration joined fire, ocean and emigration in a particularly severe image of Victorian vulnerability.