The Salt Lake City Herald (Utah) [1376] provided the following account of the disaster on the 18th February 1907:-

Collision of Two Steamers - One Goes Down and Fourteen Persons are Drowned - Both British Vessels - Cardiff. Feb. 17 - The British steamer Heliopolis collided Saturday at midnight with the British steamer Orianda, out-ward bound from Penarth.

The Orianda sank and fourteen persons, including her captain, were drowned.

The Heliopolis, it was said in these dispatches Saturday had been chartered to convey 2,000 Spanish emigrants to Honolulu. In a letter to Lloyd's Shipping Gazette the ship brokers said they had arranged the charter on behalf of the American government, but it was stated elsewhere that the Spaniards had been engaged by Hawaiian sugar interests to replace Japanese laborers. The Heliopolis was at Barry, Wales, Saturday and was to proceed thence to Malaga for the immigrants.

The Orianda was built in 1879 at Liverpool. She was of 1,500 tons displacement and belonged to the Oriental Steamship company of Liverpool.

Gale and Heavy Sea - The night was clear, but there was a gale blowing and a heavy sea running. The Orianda, which was coal-laden for Spezzia, was struck between the engine room and the stokehole and was so badly damaged that she began immediately to fill and heeled over, sinking in half an hour.

The Heliopolis drifted away without rendering any assistance.

The captain mustered all the Orianda's nineteen men on deck. Each was given a life-belt and jumped into the sea. Six of them reached a water-logged lifeboat, the only boat it was possible to launch, the other having smashed at the time of the collision and all of them, with the exception of one who died of exhaustion, were rescued by the pilot boat, after suffering greatly from exposure.