The SS Deutschland, an iron passenger steamship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line, was on its maiden voyage from Bremen to New York. On December 4, 1875, the Deutschland was on its way from Bremerhaven to New York, with 123 emigrants. The weather conditions for the steamer were horrible; a blizzard hit the steamer on the Kentish Knock, an area off the coast of Kent and Essex in England. Deutschland's crew attempted to reverse but failed because the stress fractured Deutschland's propeller. The ship began to sink, the sea began to break the steamer, and the wind rose until it became stormy; consequently, the order to abandon ship. On December 7, 1875, 135 out of 213 people 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 enacted in the German Kingdom of Prussia during the Kulturkampf's conflict with the Catholic Church. The deaths of the Franciscan nuns inspired Gerard Manley Hopkins to compose his longest Christian-themed poem, "The Shipwreck of Germany", dedicated to their memory. In this lyric poem, dedicated to the lives of the Franciscan nuns, Hopkins expresses his reactions to the shipwreck of the Deutschland, which aroused powerful emotions in him. Although Hopkins is a devout Catholic, he encounters critical difficulties in understanding the ways of God and tries to resolve them in his poetry. “The Wreck of Germany” is, therefore, a theodicy (an attempt to reconcile the existence of tragedy and suffering with faith in a God who is both loving and powerful), determined to justify God's ways to the man. In the first part, Hopkins confesses that his more intimate "rhythm" allowed him to add "hooks" or treads, which are not counted in the scan. Because of the elastic rhythm, Hopkins does not stick rigidly to verse length in “The Wreck of Deutschland.” The main variation in the verse lines, however, comes from the number of unstressed syllables Hopkins uses. By counting the compounds as a stress, you see that each half of the compound shares the stress. In the third line of the last stanza, the accents are counted on "-mem-", "roads", "heaven-haven" (275), a compound, which shares the accent. Between the lines of a stanza there are no fewer 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 wanted the meter to be seen as trochaic.