The SS Deutschland, an iron steamship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd line, was on a maiden voyage to New York from Bremen. On December 4, 1875, the Deutschland was en route to New York from Bremerhaven, with 123 emigrants. The weather conditions for the steamboat were horrible; a snowstorm hit the steamer on Kentish Knock, an area off the coast of Kent and Essex in England. The Deutschland's crew attempted to retreat, but failed when the strain broke the Deutschland's propeller. The ship began to sink, the sea began to break over the steamer, and the wind rose until it was violent; hence, an order to abandon ship. On December 7, 1875, 135 people out of 213 were saved from the shipwreck. Among the victims of the shipwreck were five Franciscan nuns from Salzkotten, Westphalia. The Franciscan nuns had emigrated to escape the anti-Catholic Falk Laws, bills passed in the German Kingdom of Prussia during the Kulturkampf conflict with the Catholic Church. The death of the Franciscan nuns inspired Gerard Manley Hopkins to compose his longest Christian theme poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” dedicated to their memory. In this lyrical poem, dedicated to the lives of the Franciscan nuns, Hopkins expresses his reactions to the shipwreck. of Germany, which aroused powerful emotions in him. Although Hopkins is a devoted Catholic, he encounters critical difficulties in understanding the ways of God and seeks in his poem to resolve them. “The Wreck of Germany” is therefore a theodicy (an attempt to reconcile the existence of tragedy and suffering with the belief in a God who is both loving and powerful), aimed at justifying God's ways towards the man. In the first part, Hopkins admits that his "deeper rhythm" allowed him to add "hangers," or avant-gardes, which are not counted in the scansion. Because of the suspended rhythm, Hopkins does not strictly adhere to line length in “The Wreck of Deutschland.” The main variation in the lines of the stanza, however, comes from the number of unstressed syllables Hopkins uses. When counting compounds as a single constraint, each half of the compound is considered to share the constraint. In the third line of the last stanza, the accents are counted on “-mem-”, “roads”, “paradise” (275), a compound, sharing the accent. Between the lines of a stanza there are no less than 9 unstressed syllables. The final syllable count is 14 syllables, which would be considered a long line, in most poetic forms, however, Hopkins made it a short one. "The Wreck of the Deutschland" is read as an iambic ode, although Hopkins intended the meter to be seen as trochaic..