Gun Fight at the Cape Florida Lighthouse – the Seminoles Fight Three Wars to Keep Their Land

Light House at Cape Florida, Key Biscayne – Wikimedia Commons

 

by Kathy Warnes

During the Second Seminole War, James Thompson and his black assistant Aaron Carter, were at Cape Florida Light on Key Biscayne. They didn’t expect the Seminole attack.

Only July 23, 1836, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, Seminole Indians surrounded the Cape Florida lighthouse, howling and waving rifles. Inspired by Chief Osceola, the Seminoles were attempting to drive the Americans off of their Florida lands. .Assistant Keeper Thompson spotted the Indians as he walked the path from the kitchen shed to the main house. He ran for the lighthouse, shouting for his assistant, some versions of the story say his slave, Aaron Carter to follow.

The Seminoles Attack Cape Florida Lighthouse

The Seminoles fired a shower of rifle balls, but neither Thompson nor Carter was hit. They reached the safety of the lighthouse and locked the door behind them.

Next, the Seminoles set fire to the lighthouse. Soon the flames worked their way up the inside of the tower and burnt the wooden staircase. Thompson and Carter were in danger of being roasted alive, so Thompson decided to take desperate measures. He hauled a keg of gun powder, an axe, some loose shot and one of his muskets to the top of the tower, leaving Carter below to guard the door. Thompson grabbed his axe and ran to chop the stairs. He called Carter to help him and together the two men chopped through the timbers holding the staircase. It collapsed with a crash, providing a pile of extra fuel for the fire.

Fed by the extra wood, flames roared up the shaft under the lantern room. Thompson and Carter inched their way to the edge of the lantern platform which measured about two feet wide. Flames licked at the lantern and its lamps and the glass burst and flew in all directions. The clothing of the two men caught on fire. Still, they couldn’t move away, because as soon as they stood up they would be clear targets for the Indians.

Thompson and Carter Throw a Powder Keg on the Fire

Then Thompson decided that a quick death was better than being slowly roasted. He and Carter slid over, pushing the powder keg ahead of them. They reached the scuttle and opened it. They threw the powder keg into the fire below. There was a deafening blast and the tower shook from top to bottom. The force of the explosion extinguished the fire for a few minutes and piled up more wood at the bottom of the shaft. Revived by this new fuel, the fire soon started up again. Dense clouds of smoke billowed up into the lantern room, and the temperature soared.

Aaron Carter decided that he didn’t want a slow, fiery death either. He stood up. A bullet whined and Carter slumped over and lay still.

Keeper Thompson crouched alone. He discovered that no matter how small he tried to make himself, his feet stuck out. Bullets hit his right and then his left foot. He pulled himself up and climbed outside the iron railing that surrounded the platform and stared at the Seminoles below. He decided he would leap head first down onto the rocks rather than let the Seminoles get him. He started to jump, and then a premonition made him lay down again.

Thompson Waves Bloody Trousers

The next morning, Thompson watched the Seminoles take his belongings from the base of the lighthouse to the beach where his sloop lay anchored. They loaded the sloop with booty and sailed away. Thompson estimated there were about 12 Seminoles in the sloop. Other Seminoles hiked along the shore, obviously planning to meet the sloop at the other end of the island. According to Thompson’s watch, it was 10:00 o’clock before the last Seminole left the island.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Thompson’s perch grew hotter, but he couldn’t escape. He was stuck at the top of the lighthouse, because he had destroyed the stairs. His assistant Aaron Carter, lay dead beside him, and he had no way to summon help. About noon, Thompson thought he saw a sail near the beach. He took a piece of Carter’s blood soaked trousers and pulling himself up to a half standing position, he waved the trousers vigorously. The sail passed out of sight.

Late that same afternoon, Thompson saw two boats approaching, but he was too tired to wave the trousers again. He watched one of the boats come right up to his mooring and he saw that a group of men in a sloop was towing his own boat. They put in at his landing and for a horrible moment, Thompson thought the Seminoles had returned. Then he saw that they were white men.

Bloody Trousers Bring Rescuers

Thompson shouted weakly and held the trousers up in the air. The wind caught them and flapped them loudly enough to catch the men’s attention. The men surrounded the lighthouse tower. They shouted to Thompson that they were returning to their ship for the night, but they would be back in the morning to rescue him.

The next morning the men returned and one of them carried a kite. The man tried to fly the kite across the top of the tower to get a line to Thompson, but he couldn’t get the kite high enough. Next, the man fired a musket with twine attached to the ramrod. The twine reached Thompson and he tied it to the tower. A tail block was hauled up and fastened to the lantern room around the iron stanchion. The men threw up a two inch rope and two of them climbed it, They treated Thompson and lowered him to the ground.

Captain Armstrong and a detachment of seamen and marines from the United States schooner Motto rescued Assistant Keeper Thompson and retrieved Aaron Carter’s body.The men took Thompson to Charleston, South Carolina, to recover from his wounds and he returned to the lighthouse service. The Seminoles continued to fight and gradually withdrew deep in the Everglades to avoid being sent to reservations in the western United States. Many of them still live there.

References

Brooklyn Eagle, July 29, 1851.

Mahon, John, History of the Second Seminole War – 1835-1842, University Press of Florida, 1990

President Grover Cleveland’s Secret Surgery on the Steam Yacht Oneida

Yacht Oneida

By Kathy Warnes

The President stood at the rail of his friend’s yacht, the Oneida, watching the waves from Long Island Sound roll and tumble over each other. His fingers itched for his fishing rod. He had fished from this yacht many times in the past, but this time was different. This time, he faced something more serious than how many fish he caught. His tongue explored the contours of the tumor growing on the roof of his mouth. The economic panic threatened the country like his tumor threatened his mouth. He didn’t want to call it cancer. Cancer, the forbidden word that translated into a person just as forbidden. The operation to remove the growth from his mouth had to remain secret for the good of the country and for the good of his family.

President Cleveland’s Reasons For Secrecy- Were They Purely Political?

President Grover Cleveland – Wikimedia Commons

Stephen Grover Cleveland, the 22^nd an 24^th president of the United States, often  pushed his favorite relaxing activities- fishing and sailing- to the back on his mind and life as he conducted his presidential duties. His second term that began in March 1893 proved to be especially trying, both nationally and personally.

President Cleveland won his second term in 1892 on a platform calling for the Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. The Democratic Party had split into two factions – the conservative pro business gold standard faction that President Cleveland led and the free silver faction that William Jennings Bryan headed.  Campaigning on a sound money platform, President Cleveland carried his party only by choosing free-silver advocate Adlai Stevenson as his running mate. President Cleveland led his party in the drive to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, and he had scheduled a special session of Congress to meet on August 7, 1893.

Bank failures, a railroad bubble, and a run on the gold supply, ushered in a serious economic depression called the Panic of 1893 that swept the country. Besides dealing with the deep depression, President Cleveland also coped with persistent office seekers and anxious Americans wondering how to get their next meal and keep a roof over their heads. On a personal level, he and his wife Frances had a two year old daughter named Ruth and Frances was pregnant with their daughter Esther who was born on September 9, 1893.

In May of 1893, President Cleveland discovered a growth on the roof of his mouth near his molars on the left side – the side where he chewed his cigars and smoked his pipes. The tumor continued to grow and on June 18, 1893, Dr. R.M. O’Reilly, the official medical attendant for Government officers in Washington, examined the growth. He pronounced it an ulcer as large as a quarter, encroaching on the soft palate and some diseased bone. Dr. O’Reilly removed a small piece of the tumor and sent it to the pathologist at the Army Medical Museum without telling him the name of the patient. The pathologist reported that the tumor was malignant.

The tumor in the President’s mouth had grown so large by the middle of June when his personal physician, Dr. Joseph Bryant, examined it, that it “often caused him to walk the floor at night,” his wife Frances recalled years later. When she examined the tumor she saw what she described it as a “peculiar lesion.”

Dr. Bryant advised President Cleveland that the tumor was malignant and to have it removed immediately.  The President agreed with certain conditions. He felt that any sign of ill health would signify weakness and favor the pro-silver side. He decided to keep his operation secret and that the Oneida would be the best place for the secret operation to take place. President Cleveland’s close friend banker and Commodore Elias Benedict owned the Oneida, a luxury yacht, and the President had already logged at least 50,000 miles on the Oneida fishing in Long Island Sound and off Cape Cod. When he disappeared on the Oneida for four days, people would think he had simply gone on another fishing trip.

Another Fishing Trip on the Oneida?

Commodore Elias Benedict – Wikimedia Commons

Even one fishing trip on the Oneida was a voyage into luxury. In 1883, John Roach, a self educated Irish immigrant who created iron shipbuilding in the United States, built the Utowana, later renamed the Oneida at the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engineering Works at Chester, Pennsylvania. He built yachts for rich and well known people and he also built the United States Navy’s first fleet of modern warships. He died in 1887, ironically enough of cancer of the mouth.

In 1885, the Utowana won the Lunberg Cup, an international race. In 1887, Elias Benedict, a banker and a fanatical yachtsman, bought the Utowana, refitted it for comfort and speed and renamed it the Oneida.   The Oneida measured 138 feet and featured an iron hull, two masts, and a steam engine. She could make 13 knots and accommodate a dozen passengers in her plush below deck quarters. She combined a schooner’s elegance, a steamer’s speed, and a luxury liner’s comfort.  Commodore Elias Benedict hosted famous guests on the Oneida including Edwin Booth, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Lawrence Barrett, and his close friend President Grover Cleveland. 

President Cleveland announced that he would take a four day fishing trip on the Oneida from New York to Gray Gables, his summer home in Cape Cod.  The President’s personal physician Dr. Joseph Bryant of New York assembled a team of doctors to perform the operation. He first recruited Dr. William Williams Keen of Philadelphia, who six years before performed the first successful operation in the United States to remove a brain tumor.  Dr. Bryant also enlisted three other doctors and a dentist to complete the team that would operate on the President.

Dr. William Williams Keen – Wikimedia Commons

Next, Dr. Bryant turned his attention to transforming the small dark saloon of the Oneida, anchored in the East River, into an operating room. The crew removed all of the furniture except the organ- it was bolted to the floor- and cleared and disinfected the room. They lashed a large chair to the mast in the center of the saloon to use for an operating table. A single electric bulb connected to a portable battery provided the only supplement to natural daylight. Dr. Bryant arranged to have other pieces of necessary equipment including tanks of oxygen and nitrous oxide secretly delivered to the Oneida. He told the Oneida’s crew that the President had to have two teeth removed when they wondered at the accumulation of medical equipment.

All of the doctors involved knew the risks of operating in the small, semi-dark, and poorly ventilated Oneida saloon. In Commodore Benedict’s vernacular, if disaster struck, the President’s doctors would find themselves “up to the hub in mud.”

An Operation on the Oneida

In a September 1917 article published in the Saturday Evening Post, Dr. Keen wrote that he arrived in New York City on the evening of June 30, 1893, made his way to Pier A, and traveled to the Oneida lying at anchor quite a distance of the battery. Dr. E.G. Janeway of New York; Doctor O’Reilly. Dr. John E. Erdmann, Dr. Bryant’s assistant and Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck, the dentist, had already arrived and were ferried to the Oneida from different piers.

President Grover Cleveland left Washington on June 30, 1893, after he issued a call for a special session of Congress on August 7, 1893 to repeal the silver clause of the Sherman Act    President Cleveland, Doctor Bryant, and Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont arrived from Washington at a later hour, drove openly to Pier A, and were ferried out to the Oneida.

When President Cleveland arrived aboard the Oneida, he lighted a cigar and he sat on deck with the doctors and smoking and talking until nearly midnight. He spent a restful night without any sleeping medicine.

The next morning President Cleveland thoroughly cleansed and disinfected his mouth, but he did not shave off his mustache. The Oneida weighed anchor and started up the East River. Doctor Bryant and the other doctors hurried from the deck to the cabin when they reached the Bellevue Hospital at Twenty Sixth Street, fearing that some of the staff might recognize them.

In the salon, the doctors boiled their instruments and pulled white aprons over their dark suits. Shortly after noon, President Cleveland came into the room and sat in the chair. The doctors anesthetized him with nitrous oxide and ether. As the Oneida crossed Long Island Sound, the doctors operated on the President of the United States.

According to Dr. Keen, the doctors worried more about the dangers of the anesthetic than the dangers of the operation itself. After all, at age 56 and very heavy with a short, thick neck,  the President was a candidate for apoplexy- a stroke. In an operation lasting approximately 90 minutes, the doctors removed the tumor, five teeth and much of the President’s upper left palate and jawbone. They performed the surgery entirely within the President’s mouth using the cheek retractor that Dr. Keen had brought back from Paris in 1866 to make sure that the President wouldn’t have external scars. They even left his bushy mustache intact.

Four days later on July 5, 1893, the Oneida deposited President Cleveland at Gray Gables, his summer home on Buzzard’s Bay. Two weeks later, again on the Oneida, the doctors performed a second operation to remove more suspicious tissue.  By the middle of July, Dr. Kasson C. Gibson, a New York prosthodontist arrived at Gray Gables to fit the President with a vulcanized rubber prosthesis to fill the hollow in his palate and restore normal speech.

Just a few weeks after his operation, President Grover Cleveland talked and fished in Buzzard’s Bay like he had never endured an operation.

The Real Story Appears in the Philadelphia Press

Frances Cleveland and several of the other people around the President played a pivotal role in keeping her husband’s operation a secret, and some of the newspaper stories helped her. The New York Times of July 9, 1893, published a story datelined Buzzard’s Bay, Massachusetts and headlined “The President is All Right.” Based on a dispatch from Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont, the story said that the President had suffered from a toothache, but doctors had extracted the tooth.  Dr. Bryant supplied medical attendance, and the story said that “undoubtedly there is a vacancy along his jaw where a tooth once grew- probably there is a mildly sore spot there, but surely nothing more will be heard of its “cancerous growth.” The story concluded that “those who look for ominous news from Gray Gables just now will not get it.”

A July 9^th story in the Brooklyn Eagle sounded a slightly more ominous note by reporting that President Cleveland was ill with an attack of rheumatism confining him to his room. The story quoted Secretary of War Lamont as saying that the President couldn’t have visitors until he felt better, but his condition was improving.

The real story with surprisingly accurate particulars broke in the Philadelphia Press on August 29, 1893. Elisha Jay Edwards, the 46 year old New York correspondent, had heard about the operation from a doctor friend who had heard the story through the medical grapevine. Elisha Edwards confirmed the story with Ferdinand Hasbrouck, the dentist who had anesthetized the President on the Oneida.

The Aftermath of President Cleveland’s Operation

After his operation, President Cleveland had recovered enough to return to Washington for the special August 7, 1893 session of Congress and by August 28 he had convinced Congress to repeal the Sherman Act.  On September 5, 1893 he officiated at the First Pan-American Medical Congress in Washington, speaking with a clear and resonant voice and two weeks later he spoke at the Centenary of the Founding of the City of Washington. He displayed no scars from an operation, and his voice and general health appeared normal.

On August 29, 1893, the Philadelphia Press story spread across the country and immediately caused an uproar.  President Cleveland and his friends and family flatly denied the Elisha Jay Edwards story, still citing the Presidential bad tooth extraction story. Many other newspapers denied the story of the operation, while others minimized it by saying that it consisted of removing two teeth and a little rough bone. They cited the lack of physical evidence and the statements of Doctor Bryant, and President Cleveland’s Cabinet officers and Private Secretary.  Dr. Bryant, the spokesman for the doctors involved in the operation, would not discuss the President’s case for professional reasons. He also minimized the operation because he feared that the truth of it would seriously impact the country’s serious financial crisis

Many newspapers endorsed the story of the President’s secret operation, pointing out the recent false denials of doctors in the case of General Ulysses Grant and other public figures. They pointed to Secretary of War Lamont’s statement that the President was “a sick man – how sick we cannot tell-“paralleled the actual facts. Just as many newspapers branded E.J. Edwards a “disgrace to journalism.” Despite the blow to his journalistic integrity, E.J. Edwards continued working into the Twentieth Century. In 1909, he became a columnist for the young Wall Street Journal, but accusations that he had faked his story about President Grover Cleveland’s secret operation followed him throughout his career.

Dr. Keene Tells the Real Story Twenty-Four Years Later

President Grover Cleveland served the rest of his second term and lived the rest of his life with no reappearance of the cancer and no official admission of his secret operation. Even after he died in 1908, the secret operation remained a secret. Finally, in 1917, Dr. William Williams Keen decided to tell the entire truth about President Cleveland’s operation. He always regretted that the newspapers had branded E.J. Edwards a liar and he said that by publishing his story of the operation he hoped “to vindicate Mr. Edward’s character as a truthful correspondent.”

In 1917, only three witnesses to the operation on the Oneida were still alive- Dr. Keen, Elias Benedict the Oneida’s owner, and Dr. John Erdmann who had been Joseph Bryant’s assistant during the operation and had become a prominent surgeon. Newspaper man E.J. Edwards had also survived to finally hear his Philadelphia Press story corroborated.  After Dr. Keen published his account of the President’s operation on the Oneida, E.J. Edwards received hundreds of congratulatory letters and telegrams.

A few questions about the nature of the tumor still lingered after Dr. Keen’s Saturday Evening Post story. In 1975, modern doctors reexamined the tissue from President Cleveland’s tumor and concluded it was a verrucous carcinoma of the hard palate and gingival, a diagnosis that matched the opinions of Dr. O’Reilly, Dr. Keen and others who had identified it.  Tobacco and alcohol use can sometimes produce a verrucous carcinoma, and surgically removing it is usually the cure for the tumor.

The Oneida Endures Longer Than President Cleveland

When ex-president Stephen Grover Cleveland died on June 25, 1908, his friend Commodore Elias Benedict and the Oneida still survived. In March 1913, Commodore Benedict bought a larger yacht that he also named the Oneida. He renamed the previous Oneida the Adelante and converted her to a tow vessel. The United States Navy commissioned the Adelante as the USS Adelante (SP-765) on December 17, 1918 at Lawley’s Shipyard in Neponset, Massachusetts, with Lt. Edwin W. Keith, USNRF in command. On February 24, 1919, the Adelante dressed ship to commemorate the Boston arrival of President Woodrow Wilson on board the transport George Washington as part of the armada of ships that greeted him as his ship arrived in President Roads.

The Adelante next went to Portland, Maine, and then moved to Damariscove Island where she helped convert and construct a network of wartime radio compass stations along the Maine coast for peacetime use. She also served as a boarding boat for ships including the Battleship New Jersey until the Navy eventually decommissioned her in Boston on August 18, 1919.

On March 25, 1920, J. Daniel Gully of Brooklyn bought the Adelante and renamed her John Gully. By 1924, the H.J. Wheeler Salvage Company, Inc., of New York bought the John Gully and renamed her Salvager, operating her until 1927. In 1927, the Salvage Process Corporation of New York bought the Salvager and operated her until 1940. By January 1, 1941, the company had abandoned the Salvager because it was old and deteriorated.

Tug Adelante- Wikimedia Commons

The Oneida’s owner, E.C. Benedict, served as a pallbearer at his friend Grover Cleveland’s funeral in 1908, and Dr. Joseph Bryant rode in one of the funeral carriages. After Commodore Benedict sold the Oneida and her name and purpose changed, she made more years of history. When she ended her life as the Salvager, old and deteriorated, the ghosts of pleasurable fishing trips and important voyages remained and the Oneida still rides sunlit waters and moon washed waves.

References

Algeo, Matthew. The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth. The Chicago Review Press, 2012.

Keen, William Williams. The Surgical Operation on President Cleveland in 1893. Philadelphia:  George W. Jacob & Co., 1917.

Nevins, Allan. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1933.

Reed, Lawrence W. Lesson from the Past:  The Silver Panic of 1893. Foundation for Economic Education, 1993.

Dr. W.W. Keene. Sept. 22, 1917 Saturday Evening Post on pages 24-55.

“Father Put Me in the Boat-” The Story of the Northfleet

The Northfleet

by Kathy Warnes

Much to his disappointment, Captain Thomas Oates couldn’t make his scheduled January 1873 voyage on the Northfleet, a three masted barque which he had commanded for five years, because the Solicitor for the Crown had subpoenaed him to testify in an upcoming criminal trial.  Thanking Providence that he had an able officer to take his place, Captain Oates appointed his friend and trusted Chief Officer Edward Knowles to sail the Northfleet from England to Tasmania. Very soon, Captain Oates would thank Providence that he hadn’t been able to make the Northfleet’s voyage.

An Honorable Twenty Years of Sailing

The 951 ton Northfleet was a Blackwall Frigate, one of the three masted full rigged ships built between the late 1830s and the mid 1870s that were originally intended to replace the British East Indiaman in the India, Cape of Good Hope, and China trade. From the 1850s, the Blackwell Frigates were also engaged in the trade between England, Australia, and New Zealand. Built in 1853 in Northfleet Kent and named for her birthplace, the Northfleet spent most of her sailing career plying between England, Australia, India, and China.

In his book Notes by Way of a Sailor’s Life, Arthur E. Knight, who said that he had sailed with the Northfleet for years, revealed some of her early history when he said that she voyaged from China to San Francisco and back to London before she carried troops for the Crimean War. Then for many years she ran between London and China carrying tea. He said that the Northfleet never made a voyage without someone being drowned from her. This January 1873 voyage would prove to be no exception.

The Northfleet’s Last Voyage

In 1872, John Patton Jr. of London owned the Northfleet when she was chartered to carry laborers and their families, 340 tons of iron rails, and 240 tons of other equipment to Hobart, the most populous and capital city of the Australian island state of Tasmania where they would build a railroad line.

There were 379 people on board the Northfleet including the pilot of the tug Landon Trinity, 34 crew members, three cabin passengers and the assisted emigrants headed for new lives in Tasmania. Assisted emigrants were people who could only afford passage to Australia and arrived in Australia and Tasmania with the help of assisted immigration schemes from the United Kingdom and other countries. The assisted emigrants on this voyage were made up of 248 men, 42 women and 52 children.

John Sturgeon, 23, his wife Lucy, 22, and their seven-month old daughter  Harriet were on their way to a new life in Tasmania and John Taplin, 44, and his wife Caroline, 43, and daughters, Sarah 13, Caroline, 12, and  Maria Taplin, 10, also left London on the Northfleet. John had signed up to work on the Tasmanian Railroad.

Cabin passengers were Mrs. Knowles, the captain’s wife, and Samuel Frederick Brand. The Knowles had been married for just six weeks and  Mrs. Knowles agreed to take her first sea voyage to keep her husband company. Besides Mrs. Knowles, two other ordinary cabin passengers also were onboard. Samuel Frederick Brand had accepted a position on the railroad contractor’s staff and although the Australian newspaper the Rockingham Bulletin listed the other cabin passenger as a Mr. Gross, he didn’t appear on the list of the passengers lost or the passengers saved.

The Northfleet Reaches Dungeness

Virtually all accounts of the Northfleet and the Murillo, the Spanish steamer that rammed her, told different versions of the events of the night of January 22, 1873, and several recorded different casualty figures. A book called The Loss of the Northfleet published by in 1873 by Waterlow & Sons, London, featured the testimony of the surviving crew and passengers taken under oath and at inquests. According to Boatswain John Easter in his testimony to the Receiver of Wrecks G.B. Raggett on January 25, 1873, the Northfleet was in excellent condition and classed in Lloyd’s List as A 1 from 1867 to 1873.

Under English Maritime law of the 1870s, a ship’s master had to enter an accounting of a ship’s disaster within 48 hours of the ship entering port, an action called “Noting a Protest.” Afterward, the details of the event were taken from the ship’s log and collected in a document called an “Extended Protest.” The master and the principal members of the crew were sworn to the truth of the events before a notary and this document enforced the groundwork for any claims or compensation for damages.  Boatswain John Easter, the sole surviving officer of the Northfleet, testified before Notary William H. Payn in Dover on January 24, 1873.

On January 13, 1873, the Northfleet left London about 11 o’clock in the morning and the tug Landon Trinity pulled her down the Thames River to Gravesend, a town in northwest Kent on the south bank of the Thames River to begin her long voyage to Tasmania. Arriving in Gravesend at 4 o’clock the same day, she was moored to a buoy and remained there until 6 o’clock in the morning of January 17, 1873. The weather turned stormy and the Northfleet stopped at various ports along the English Channel.

The Landon Trinity’s pilot George Brack  recommended to Captain Knowles that he anchor the Northfleet and on the night of January 22, she stood at anchor about two or three miles off Dungeness. Some witnesses later said at the inquest that at least 300 boats were anchored at Dungeness that night because of the bad weather.  Boatswain Easter testified that the Northfleet rode with her head towards Dungeness light. This Dungeness light was almost certainly lighthouse number three which had been built in 1792 and not the present Old Lighthouse built in 1901.

A Mysterious Steamer Strikes and Slips Away

Darkness covered the English Channel as snugly as the blankets covered the sleeping passengers, but the ships officers swore that bright riding lights illuminated the Northfleet. The crew of the Landon Trinity that had towed the Northfleet reported that at some point after midnight a steamer came under the point to anchor. The tugboat crew watched the steamer moving around for some time and then suddenly a loud crash shattered the peaceful night. From below the Boatswain Easter heard the Watch shouting,   “What steamer is that?  Where are you coming to?”

Hurrying up on deck, Boatswain Easter discovered that a steamer had struck the Northfleet on the starboard side just before the main hatchway.  The Boatswain and the Watch hailed the steamer several times, but no one answered and the steamer backed astern and quickly chugged out of sight.

Landon Trinity tug Pilot George Brack’s testimony differed a little from Boatswain John Easter’s version of the story. George Brack said that he was sitting down in the saloon when he heard the watch cry, “Pilot, pilot come out!”  He jumped up, but before he could reach the deck the boat vibrated with a jarring crash. As soon as he came on deck he saw a steamer backing out from the starboard amidships and he also noted that the Northfleet’s riding lights were burning brightly.

George Brack also cried, “What ship is this?” but the ship backed clear of the Northfleet. The noise and impact of the crash brought everyone on deck and Pilot Brack ordered the ship’s carpenter to get the pumps going and then he went below to determine how much damage the ship had sustained. He discovered that the Northfleet was stove amidships and water washed into the ship. He and Captain Knowles conferred and they sent blue distress signals at once, and fired distress rockets.

Only two of the seven lifeboats were launched. According to a Rockingham Bulletin story, Captain Knowles brought his wife to one of the departing boats, placed her in it and said to Boatswain John Easter who had already gotten into the boat, “Here is a charge for you, bo’sen; take care of her and the rest, and God bless you!” He clasped his wife’s hands and told her goodbye, saying, “I shall never see you again!”

Tug Pilot Brack testified that the passengers were terrified because they realized that the ship was sinking, but Captain Knowles acted with great calm and deliberation, ordering the life boats lowered and only women and children into the boats. A group of men rushed toward the quarter boats, cut away the port quarter boat and rowed away from the ship and then he saw the starboard boat full of people pull away from the sinking Northfleet.

Other versions of the story say that Captain Knowles used his pistols to try to prevent men from getting into the two lifeboats instead of the women and children and he shot a man in the knee who refused to obey his orders. The Northfleet sank in less than thirty minutes and everyone went down with her except the people who were clinging to the rigging. Captain Edward Knowles went down with the Northfleet, still trying to rescue passengers.

According to the Rockingham Bulletin story, the boat carrying Mrs. Knowles hailed the steamer tug City of London which had been anchored, but responded to the blue lights and rockets. Captain Kingston picked up the thirty people in the boat and in the hope of rescuing other people he steamed around for three quarters of an hour searching the sea for other victims. An account in the Sydney Morning Herald said that a steam tug, the City of London, anchored nearby rescued 75 of the passengers and 10 of the crew and took them to the Sailor’s Home in Dover. Another source said that the City of London, the lugger Mary, the Princess, and a pilot cutter took off several people but no other ship offered assistance, mostly because they didn’t realize that the Northfleet was in trouble until she sank.

“…Those in Peril on the Sea…”

 The night that the Northfleet sank, John Taplin and his wife and daughters were asleep in their berths when the sound of the collision woke them and they all rushed on deck. John Taplin threw Maria into the lifeboat and tried, but failed, to get the rest of his family into the boat. John Sturgeon threw his wife Lucy and baby Harriet into the life boat and clambered in with them. The boat with Mrs.Knowles, Mrs. Sturgeon, baby Harriet, Maria Taplin and thirty men tossed about in the English Channel until finally another ship rescued its passengers and took them to the Sailor’s Home in Dover. Mrs. Knowles volunteered to accompany Maria Taplin to London. The newspapers printed stories about Maria and the death of her mother, father, and sisters, and many people offered to adopt her. Then her two married sisters in Holloway sent telegrams informing her rescuers that Maria was their sister and she must come to live with them and Maria went to live with her sisters.

Arthur Knight noted in his memoir that the Knowles were newlyweds and that when Queen Victoria heard the plight of Mrs. Knowles she sympathized with her and awarded her a pension of fifty pounds a year as long as she remained a widow. Three years after the Northfleet sank, Mrs. Knowles married Captain Cawes of the ship Coriolanus and when the Coriolanus came to Hankow to load tea, Arthur Knight met Mrs. Cawes “who had been saved from my old ship which I had sailed for years.”

The death toll of the Northfleet added up to tragic totals. Of the three cabin passengers only the wife of Captain Knowles was saved. Of the steerage passengers, 177 men were lost and 71 saved. Of the women, there were 41 lost and 1 saved, and of children between one and twelve, 43 were lost and 1, Maria Taplin, saved.  The infant toll included 7 lost and one, Harriet Sturgeon, saved. Of the crew including the tug boat pilot, 23 were lost and 11 saved.

Alexander Gloack, Chief Officer, had agreed to take a friend’s place on the Northfleet.   Captain Thomas Oates had telegraphed Alexander Gloack at his home in North Scotland and given him an hour to come to the Northfleet and take the place of Chief Officer Edward Knowles so that Knowles could serve as captain on the January 1873 voyage. He joined the ship at Gravesend and died while trying to maintain order striving to carry out his captain’s order:  “Clear away the remaining boats.”

A steady, industrious, thrifty man, Alexander Stephens, the carpenter, had made two previous voyages on the Northfleet, and had married a young widow just before Christmas.  With his loss, she became a widow for the second time at age 24.

G.M. Blyth, second officer, steady and trustworthy, had served on the Northfleet for 18 months.  He left a wife and mother to mourn his untimely death.

John Rinaldo, a well educated Swede, had signed up for the Northfleet’s voyage as a sail maker, but because of his even tempered, honest, and trustworthy disposition he had been promoted to the position of store keeper.

John Easter the Boatswain, and the Pilot George Brack were among the crew that survived as well as Robert Humphries, third cook.

The Inquiries Began

An inquest was held in the town hall at Lydd situated on the Romney Marsh and the most southerly village in Kent, on Saturday afternoon, January 25, 1873, over the body of cabin passenger Samuel Frederick Brand. With Thomas Finn acting as ex-officio coroner, a witness testified that he recognized Samuel Brand’s body. Captain Thomas Oates of the Northfleet testified and  at that point Wollaston Knocker, a solicitor from Dover, entered the room and said that he represented the owners of the screw steamer Murillo, asked that he be heard, and requested permission to cross examine the witnesses. He was granted permission.

The funeral of Samuel Frederick Brand, the only cabin passenger whose body was recovered,   was held on Saturday January 25 at New Romney after his body had been transported there from Lydd the previous evening. People attending his funeral included his father surgeon Dr. Brand, John Brand, a brother, Captain Thomas Oates of the Northfleet, and W.D. Walker, justice of the peace and a sub agent for Lloyds. The Reverend R. Smith, vicar of St. Nicholas Church, officiated over the burial of Samuel Frederick Brand in a grave under a yew tree in the churchyard. From his grave the spars of the Northfleet were just visible above the sea.

The Spanish Steamer Murillo

Accounts differed greatly as to when investigators discovered that the mysterious steamer that smashed into the Northfleet was the Spanish ship Murillo, Captain Berrute, master. Testimony at the hearing held in Dover two days after the sinking of the Northfleet, stated that a representative of the owners of the Murillo attended the hearing and requested permission to interview witnesses. Other accounts say that it took several months to identify the Murillo and several years to hold her accountable for ramming the Northfleet and leaving her crippled in the water.

The Rockingham Bulletin story said that an eye witness described the offending ship as a two funneled schooner-rigged steamer, but he could not add any more details because the night was so dark. He said that no one on board spoke, although loud shouts from the Northfleet must have made her crew well aware of the terrible danger that existed. He said that the Murillo “backed” for two or three minutes, and then, steamed rapidly away and was soon out of sight.

In his memoirs, Arthur Knight said that the steamer that had run down the Northfleet had been twice arrested, but nothing definite could be proved until two years later when one of her officers who lay dying confessed that the Murillo had run down the Northfleet. Another account said that the Murillo’s crew covered her name with a sheet to keep her from being identified, because they had kept an inadequate lookout.

Just eight days after the sinking The New York Times identified the Murillo as the culprit in a story dated London, January 31, 1873. The story reported that the Murillo had arrived safely at Cadiz despite rumors that she too had foundered and the Lloyd’s agent at Cadiz confirmed that the Murillo had indeed rammed the emigrant ship Northfleet off Dungeness Lighthouse on the night of January 22, 1873. The Murillo did not sustain any damage, and she did not stay to assist the passengers on the Northfleet or inform any other vessels that the Northfleet needed assistance.

The Murillo had been bound for Lisbon, Portugal, with a cargo, but upon arriving there her officials discovered that she could not land because Portugal had an extradition treaty with Great Britain which would have required that the Murillo’s officers be surrendered and subjected to the charges brought against them. The Murillo put to sea again and made her way to Cadiz, Spain, where she landed without fear of arrest because Spain and Great Britain did not have an extradition treaty.

A story in the Wellington Independent dated April  23, 1873 reported that the High Court of Admiralty in England had acted on a claim of the Northfleet owners against the owners of the Murillo to recover damages for the loss of the Northfleet in a collision off Dungeness. The claim was for 14,000 pounds or about 21,000 dollars. The Northfleet owners had previously brought suit against the Murillo for 15,000 pounds or 22,000 dollars, but it was changed to a suit to be brought against the owners instead of the ship. The usual course of action in such cases was to arrest a vessel, and require bail to be given to answer the claim before the ship was released. In this suit the proceedings were against the owners “in personum” as it was termed and they were called upon to appear.

On September 22, 1873, eight months after the Murillo rammed the Northfleet, British authorities arrested the Murillo off of Dover. A Court of Admiralty condemned her to be sold and severely censured her officers.

Remembering the Northfleet

Most of the bodies of the victims who were recovered were unrecognizable and they were laid to rest under memorial stones in St. Thomas’ Churchyard, Winchelsea and at churches in New Romney, Capel-le-Ferne, St. Margaret’s-at-Cliff near Dover, and Lydd, Kent. A memorial at the Church of All Saints in Lydd reads: In memory of William Norman, passenger in the “Northfleet” drowned (23) January 1873 aged 21 years, also five others unknown.

A ballad called “The Wreck of the Northfleet” or “Father Put Me in the Boat,” commemorates the story of the Northfleet and without mentioning her name tells Maria Taplin’s story. The Northfleet is sinking and a little girl on deck does not want to fall into the cold dark sea, so she pleads, “father put me in the boat.”

English Channel Sunset
Wikimedia Commons

The ballad describes the desperate scenes around Maria and her father tries to save her mother and two sisters, but he succeeds only in saving her. The last verse of the ballad says:

Although the child was brought to shore,

Her parents and her sisters sleep

Together with three hundred more,

Within the bosom of the deep;

In years to come long may that child

His mercy and his goodness note

Who heard her on that night so wild

Cry, “Father put me in the boat.”

References

Knights, Arthur E.  Notes by the Way in a Sailor’s Life.

The Loss of the Northfleet.  Waterlow & Sons, London, 1873

Rockingham Bulletin, Queensland Australia, March 20, 1873

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

New York Times

Wellington Independent, April 23, 1873

Sydney Morning Herald, January 9, 1874

Loss of the ship Northfleet

The Loss of the Northfleet-ebook

The SS Orduna- Warrior, Troop Ship, and Stage for Human Drama

The Orduna arrives in New York in July 1915, after escaping a German submarine. – Wikimedia Commons

By Kathy Warnes

Shipbuilders Harland & Wolff in Belfast, Northern Ireland, built many world famous ships, including the White Star  Line’s sister ships Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic, all  three of them creating world wide wakes in maritime history. A less famous trio of sister ships, the Orduna, Orbita, and Orca, also came from the Harland & Wolff shipyards in 1913-1914. Even though the Titanic overshadowed the Orduna in physical proportions, power and prestige, the Orduna also carried famous people including Quentin Roosevelt and Robert Baden- Powell and his family, outran German U- boat torpedoes,  sheltered Jews escaping from the Holocaust, and carried countless troops to and from battle.

Harland and Wolff built the Orduna for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. She carried 15, 507 gross tonnage, length 550.3 feet, beam 67.3 feet with one funnel and two masts, and triple screws that gave her a speed of 14 knots. Passenger accommodations included 240 First class, 180 Second Class and 700 Third Class cabins.

Launched on October 2, 1913, in Belfast, the Orduna left Liverpool on her maiden voyage to Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Valparaiso on February 19, 1914. She made two voyages on this run, and then the Cunard Line chartered her and used her on its Liverpool to New York service until 1919.

A New York Times story dated November 11, 1914, headlined the Orduna as the first new ship since the war and reported her arrival in New York from Liverpool with 831 passengers. Both Captain Thomas M. Taylor and the passengers agreed that the Orduna was a steady vessel that had plowed through rough weather from Queenstown to Sandy Hook and made the 2,786 miles in 7 days, 23 hours, and 17 minutes. The Times said that the Orduna had been built to open new service from the west coast of South America to New York via the Panama Canal, but the war in Europe had delayed the service.

The Orduna offered accommodations for 300 first, 250 second, and 450 third class passengers. She featured spacious decks and cabins fitted with bedsteads, glass enclosed promenade decks, a gymnasium, veranda café, and large square windows. Her officers and engineers were all Pacific Company men.

Out Racing Submarines

By 1915, World War I had added hazards besides weather to the Orduna voyages. On February 10, 1915, the Reno Evening Gazette reported that the Orduna flew the American flag to keep German U- boats from attacking her as she traveled back and forth from Europe to the United States.

Many of the Orduna’s passengers were immigrants hoping to start new lives in America if they survived the submarine menace while traveling from the Old World.  Florence E. Norris, 21, and Bertha Roberts, 19, traveled to America on the Orduna. Florence arrived in New York from Manchester, England in July 1915, and Bertha left Leeds and arrived in New York on August 15, 1915.

In the 1970s, Bertha Roberts made a recording of her life story describing how a German submarine shadowed the Orduna as she passed through the Irish Sea. Ironically, the passengers on the Orduna didn’t even know that they had been in danger until they read the story in the New York papers. Captain Taylor had saved their lives by flying the American flag on the flagpole, so the Germans wouldn’t realize that the Orduna was a British ship. Florence Norris’ husband had arrived in America on the Cunard ship Lusitania earlier that year, the last trip she would ever make to America.

Lusitania arriving in New York. Wikimedia Commons

According to the newspapers of the time the Orduna flew the American flag on several more voyages until even the American flag couldn’t protect her from the menace of German submarine attack. Hints of the ever increasing peril to the Orduna increased as she made another trans- Atlantic voyage from Liverpool to New York in May 1915.

On Sunday May 16, 1915, The Washington Post reported that the  Orduna had reached New York and that while at sea her passengers had heard that the RMS Lusitania, jewel of the Cunard Line, had been sunk by a German U- boat on May 7, 1915, twelve miles off the coast of Ireland, but they didn’t know any details. Captain Taylor of the Orduna reported that he had passed the Lusitania at one o’clock that Friday morning, but he didn’t communicate with her. Although the two ships came within hailing distance of each other, the British Admiralty had forbidden wireless operations in and near the war zone. Eleven hours later German submarine U-20 torpedoed the Lusitania.

The Orduna brought 86 passengers to New York on this trip, including F.S. Butterworth of New Haven, Connecticut, a former Yale football star. F.S. Butterworth had spent six months in England and France . Mr. Butterworth told of his experience aboard an English Channel boat on April 29, 1915. Suddenly without warning, a German submarine fired a torpedo at the boat. The captain saw the torpedo coming and since the boat traveled at about 26 knots, it managed to dodge the torpedo which missed the boat by only thirty yards. Mr. Butterworth reported that the channel boat didn’t carry any soldiers, just many women and children.

  On July 8, 1915, a German submarine attacked the Orduna during her voyage to New York. Henry Sloan of Centredale, Rhode Island, wrote his account of the submarine incident on Orduna letterhead paper after the Orduna docked in New York and the New York Times published his account on July 21, 1915. According to Mr. Sloan, the Orduna left Liverpool at 4 o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday, July 8, 1915. She had been scheduled to start on July 3, but the sailing had been postponed.

He wrote, “As soon as we were underway the life boats were all swung out. Then the passengers were given special cards indicating the special boat to which they should go in case of attack. To insure the proper carrying out of this plan every passenger was made to don a life belt and stand beside his boat. The first officer then inspected every boat and informed us what to do in case of an attack by a submarine.

At six o’clock next morning the bedroom stewards appeared at every stateroom ordering the occupants to put on their lifebelts and come upon deck.  They told us a submarine was chasing us and we immediately made for our stations by the lifeboats. There was no terror apparent anywhere. For a short time we remained on deck ready to enter the boats.”

The German U- Boat raced along the starboard side of the Orduna. Below in the Orduna’s engine room, the engineers worked frantically to build a higher head of steam. On the bridge Captain Taylor used his skill to dodge German shelling, maneuver the Orduna, and finally out race the U- boat, following British Admiralty instructions. The Orduna crew told the passengers that the danger had passed and they returned to their staterooms to prepare for breakfast.

Henry Sloan concluded his account by saying “There seems to be some doubt about the number of shots fired, but I believe that eight is exact. The real reason for the attack on the Orduna is that she is one of the biggest cargo vessels on the Atlantic run at present and can carry over 20,000 tons of cargo.”

Despite the U- boat scare, the Orduna continued her voyages to and from Europe. On September 14, 1915, the Washington Post reported that in its explanation of the U- boat attempt to torpedo the Orduna Germany blamed the captain of the U- boat. German officials said that the captain had been instructed not to attack any liner, but he said that the weather prevented him from making out the nature or nationality of the Orduna. The captain stated that shortly after the Orduna incident he allowed the steamer Normandie carrying a load of lumber to pass unmolested.

The German explanation came in a note that Secretary of State Robert Lansing gave to President Woodrow Wilson on September 13, 1915. The note may have figured in the discussion of the German submarine issue with Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador.

On October 21, 1915, the Reno Evening Gazette reported that the Cunard liner Orduna arrived in New York from Liverpool.  Part of her cargo included $1,250,000 in gold consigned from British to American bankers. After unloading, the Orduna proceeded to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to take on Canadian troops for England.

Fighting World War I

The British government pressed the Orduna into service as an auxiliary cruiser and troop transport in World War I and she made several voyages from Halifax, Canada to Liverpool, England. On July 23, 1917, Quentin Roosevelt and his boyhood friend Hamilton Coolidge were part of the first detachment of World War I aviators sent to France, sailing for Europe on the Orduna. They both received flight training at the same aviator’s schools in France and they served in neighboring squadrons.

Hamilton Coolidge became a distinguished American ace and when a direct hit from an anti-aircraft gun felled his plane on October 27, 1918, officers and enlisted men alike mourned him. German fire brought down flying ace Quentin Roosevelt in aerial combat over France on July 14, 1918. Their voyage on the Orduna led them to the last chapters in their lives.

Halifax Harbor after the explosion. Wikimedia Commons

Kenneth Porter Kirkwood of the Royal Naval Air Service departed New York with his comrades on the Orduna on December 15, 1917 bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. A little more than a week earlier on December 6, 1917, much of Halifax had been destroyed when a Belgian relief ship and a French munitions carried collided in Halifax harbor. The munitions ship had drifted towards the pier and blew to pieces. Fires began and spread and the force of the blast and the fires created a tsunami wave. Thousands of people were killed and injured. To add to the misery, a snowstorm began the next day and continued for nearly a week. The scenes in Halifax were as indelibly impressed on Kenneth Porter Kirkwood’s memory as any of his war time experiences. He wrote:

“Far out on the rocks near the sea we saw the first wreck, a beached ship half submerged…ships were sunk in the docks and only masts appeared through the debris…on land buildings lay in ruins…the relief parties are still at work in the ruins, looking for victims or helping refugees…We lay in Halifax without being permitted to go ashore for a couple of days and then steamed silently out into the Atlantic.”

Voyaging in Peacetime

On April 1, 1920, the Orduna resumed her Liverpool, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Valparaiso voyages and in May 1921, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company chartered her to sail Hamburg, Southampton, New York. In 1923, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company purchased the Orduna and rebuilt and converted her to oil burning engines and extended the passenger accommodations to 234 first class, 186 second class and 483 third class. This was the year that the Orduna made her first Welsh speaking cruise from Liverpool to the Norwegian fjords. A chart of the voyage can be found in the Welsh National Museum at Cardiff.

The Orduna continued to be involved in rescues. On April 17, 1923, Captain Burke of the barquentine Clitha reported her abandoned in Lat 41 N, Long 47W, and set on fire. The schooner Jean Campbell rescued the crew and transferred her to the SS Orduna and the Orduna transported the rescued sailors to England.

The Orduna’s peacetime passengers had dramatic stories equal to those of her wartime travelers. The Oakland Tribune of May 20, 1923, told the story of Lieutenant Frederick Wiseman-Clark of the British Navy who sailed aboard the Orduna on May 19, 1923, visibly distraught by the end of his romance with Nancy Hoyt. A Washington socialite and sister of poet Eleanor Wylie, Nancy had broken their engagement on the eve of their wedding.

“Yes, I am afraid it is all off and I don’t think I shall ever be married,” said the young officer. “It has been a terrible blow to me. All I can say is that Miss Hoyt is suffering from a nervous breakdown.”

On March 15, 1924, the Oakland Tribune reported that the British liner Orduna had sailed for Hamburg, Germany, under a one million dollar surety bond with one of three counts charging violation of the Volstead Law dismissed. The trial of the government’s suit for confiscation of the Orduna as a smuggler was postponed until she returned from her present voyage.

Federal officials had seized the Orduna on Wednesday, March 12, and several of her crew members confessed to smuggling liquor and narcotics into the United States.  Federal Judge A.N. Hand ruled that the Orduna was not liable to seizure under the Volstead Law unless her captain had been convicted on a charge of violating that law.

The Oakland Tribune of June 26, 1925 told the story of Dorothy Cady of Rochester, New York. Dorothy Cady worked for five years as a secretary and saved her money to fulfill her dream of traveling to Europe. On April 25, 1925, she boarded the Orduna with modest savings and a plan to work her way around Europe using her secretarial skills and returning home at her leisure.

Strict immigration rules brought her plan to a bureaucratic halt. The English officials at Southampton refused to allow her to leave the ship when she told them she wanted to work in England. At Hamburg, Germany, officials were so upset that Miss Cady wanted to work in Germany that they held her onboard during the Orduna’s six day stop in German waters and the American Consul couldn’t help her. After years of saving and savoring the idea of Europe, Dorothy Cady saw Europe only from a porthole.

Miss Cady blamed her honesty for her predicament. “If I had said I was a tourist, the English authorities would not have said anything, but I told them the truth as I was told it was best to do so. But I found it didn’t pay. The next time I’ll be a tourist and do as I please.”

Besides rescue missions and individual stories, the Orduna also had an educational side of its history. Throughout the 1920s, New York University chartered the Orduna to transport students back and forth to France. Dean James E. Lough of New York University’s Extra Mural Division presided over study travel courses that offered college credit for 213 students. The University chartered the SS Orduna for the voyages, featuring special third class accommodations for students complete with a chaperone for women students. The 1926 Travel Course students had a choice of 66 days in Dijon, Tours, or Paris, for a cost of $395-$550 dollars. Side trips complete with lectures included trips to cathedrals, castles, and battlefields.

The Orduna returned to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company in 1927, and resumed the Liverpool, Rio, Montevideo, Valparaiso service. On July 27, 1927, the Oakland Tribune reported that the Orduna had arrived in Tacoma, Washington, the day before with a cargo of copper ore, whale oil, and concentrate from Port Hokan and other Alaskan ports.

In 1930, the Orduna transferred to Liverpool, Panama, Valparaiso sailings and stayed on this route until 1940. In August 1938, the Orduna made a final ‘Peace Cruise’, carrying 460 Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, including Robert and Olave Baden-Powell and their daughter Heather. They traveled to Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Belgium, departing Liverpool on August 8, 1938. During the voyage, Robert Baden-Powell couldn’t leave the ship because of illness, but local Scouts visited him at almost all of the stops and the Scouts and Guides on the Orduna toured local landmarks and attended receptions.

The Orduna moored beside the German cruiser Emden during a stop at Reykjavik on Thursday, August 11, 1938. A party from the Scouts of Iceland carried aboard some rock so that Baden-Powell could ‘set foot in Iceland.’ Before she returned to Dover, England on August 25, 1938, the Orduna visited Trondheim, Norway, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Belgium.

Transporting Jewish Refugees

In 1939, Nazi Germany continued the persecution of the Jews that it had begun when Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933. Thousands of Jews tried to flee Germany, but most countries, including the United States, did not readily grant them refuge. In May 1939, several ships including the passenger liners St. Louis and Orduna approached Havana, Cuba, loaded with Jewish refugees.

Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis in Havana Harbor. Wikimedia Commons

On May 27, 1939, the same day the St. Louis arrived, the Orduna landed in Havana Harbor, carrying 120 Austrian, Czech, and German Jews. Cuban authorities permitted 48 Orduna passengers holding landing permits to enter Cuba, but would not allow the rest of the 72 passengers to land.  On May 29, the Orduna began a voyage for South America with no guarantee that the passengers would be allowed to land in any port. The passengers appealed to the United States to land, since most of them held registration numbers for immigration into the country. In the following weeks the Orduna steamed from port to port, searching for a safe harbor for the refugees.

The Orduna navigated the Panama Canal, and then made brief stops in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. While the Orduna remained in port in Ecuador, a Joint Distribution Committee representative arranged for four of the 72 Jews to be rescued. The Orduna’s captain contracted Rabbi Nathan Witkin, Jr. who represented the Jewish Welfare Board stationed in the United States controlled Panama Canal Zone. With the support of the British Pacific Steamship Navigation Company and the Joint Distribution Committee, Rabbi Witkin arranged for the rest of the 68 refugees to be transferred to Lima, Peru, to the British liner Orbita, the sister ship of the Orduna, which was traveling to Europe through the Panama Canal. After more persuasion and negotiation, the remainder of the refugees and 79 additional refugees were transferred to the United States on the U.S. transport ship American Legion.

Navigating Through World War II

Following in the wake of her World War I service, the British Government continued to use the Orduna as a troopship and an evacuation transport. When World War II broke out in Europe in September 1939, the Orduna was moored in Liverpool, preparing to sail. Two days later, she set off with a full passenger list and steamed to New York without escort for most of her voyage. After France capitulated to the Germans in June 1940, the Orduna was chosen as the repatriation ship. She sailed from Liverpool to Lisbon on July 26, 1940, carrying a full complement of French citizens. She sailed at night, fully illuminated under an International Safe Conduct guarantee.

On August 12, 1940, the Orduna again left Liverpool, carrying a privately organized party of sixteen children from Belmont Preparatory School, Hassocks Sussex. The British Government had organized an evacuation program called Children’s Overseas Reception Board to ship British children overseas to safety because of the possibility of Germany invading England. The Orduna arrived safely in Nassau on August 30, 1940.  The next month a German submarine torpedoed the City of Benares, another liner carrying evacuated children abroad, and ended the Children’s Overseas Reception Board program.

In February 1941, the French government requisitioned the Orduna as a troopship and between January and May 1941, the Orduna carried part of the West African Division at Berbera after the recapture of Abyssinia. They had been through the entire Abyssinian campaign and the Orduna took them to Durban for transshipment to Lagos. After Madagascar fell in 1942, the Orduna carried the Vichy French governor and his staff from Tamataye to Durban and on her homeward voyage she transported 500 French naval officers and men to Britain to join the Free French forces.

Dr. Harry Inns of Brantford, Ontario remembered his voyage on the Orduna in July 1943. In his memoir he wrote that as part of Strike Squadron No. 621, he embarked on the troop ship Orduna to the east coast of Africa. According to Dr. Inns, his squadron on the Orduna was the first convoy from England to pass through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal after the North African campaign. He noted that “It really did us good to see the British troops lining the banks of the Suez Canal and cheering as our ships passed by.”

Since the Suez Canal had reopened, the Orduna took the direct route to England instead of the long trip around South Africa that usually took a troop ship about two months. In 1943, the Orduna carried American troops from Oran to Naples in the final phase of the Italian Campaign. The Orduna carried white and a complete unit of colored American troops for the advance on Rome. On another voyage she carried as many as thirteen nationalities aboard.

Bringing the Troops Home

The Orduna had been slated to be commodore vessel for the Malaya Invasion Force in August 1945, and after the Japanese formally surrendered in September 1945, the Orduna carried Allied prisoners of war home. She left Rangoon on September 20, 1945, carrying 1, 714 passengers and jubilant crowds greeted her at her home port of Liverpool. The prisoners of war presented a scroll to the Orduna’s captain which read: “To Capt. J. Williams, officers and crew, S.S. Orduna, in recognition of a happy voyage home from the Far East, from returning British prisoners of war and internees. September, October, 1945.”

Herbert Geoffrey Wells, known as Geoff, was one of the ecstatic returning prisoners of war. A member of the 4^th Battalion Suffolk Regiment, Headquarters Medical Section, he survived three and a half years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Thailand. In his memoir, the children of Geoff Wells wrote that “after a long sea journey on the SS Orduna, Dad arrived at Liverpool docks on 13 October 1945. He first went to a reception camp in England and on 19 October 1945 he was discharged “fit for leave.”

The Orduna wasn’t discharged as “fit for leave.” She had been one of the lucky ships in the Second World War, because despite her continuous service in many seas she had not fought with the enemy on the sea, land, or air. She continued to transport troops until 1949, making trooping voyages to the East Indies, Indo China and Japan. In November 1950 the Orduna made her last trooping voyage from Liverpool to Singapore and back.

After 36 years of ocean voyages and ten years of steady trooping with little refitting or careful maintenance, the Orduna was decommissioned and laid up. In 1951 the old warrior and voyager was sold for scrap and taken to Dalmuir, Scotland.

Dalmuir drop-lock, Dalmuir, Scotland
Wikimedia Commons

Dalmuir, an area of Clydebank in West Dunbartonshire, is located on the north bank of the River Clyde. In the early twentieth century Beardmore’s Naval Construction yards was an important industry and in the 1930s Dalmuir became the site of a Royal Ordnance Factory. Dalmuir presented a significant military target during the Clydebank Blitz and bombs devastated the Ordnance Factory and the ship yards.

Ironically enough after World War II, while some workers in Dalmuir were busy rebuilding the factories and ship yards, others were busy ship breaking at Beardmore’s Naval Construction. The ship breaking included scrapping major battleships, beginning with the HMS Queen Elizabeth and scraping the Orduna, the veteran of two wars, countless adventures, and witness to much human drama.

References

The Merchant Navy, by Archibald Heard and H. Castle.

Pacific Steam Navigation Company

Glasner, Joyce. Halifax Explosions:  Surviving the Blast that Shook a Nation. Altitude Publishing, 2003.

McCluskie, Tom. The Rise and Fall of Harland and Wolff.  The History Press, 2013

Thomas, Gordon and Witts, Max Morgan. Voyage of the Damned: A Shocking True Story of Hope, Betrayal, and Nazi Terror. Skyhorse Publishing, 2010.

The New York Times

The Reno Evening Gazette

The Washington Post

The Oakland Tribune

Detroit Mariner Captain Francis Martin Sailed Through 19th Century American History

Captain Francis Martin

by Kathy Warnes

Figuratively and often literally speaking, Captain Francis Martin sailed through eighty years of American maritime history. Descended from mariners, Francis Martin was born on June 1, 1800, in New York within the sound of the sea. By the time he reached 14 years of age, he surveyed the world from the deck of his uncle’s brig, the Vigilant. Before he was 20 he had visited the modest village of St. Petersburg, Russia, and while still a young man he earned a record on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as a capable mariner of a sailing craft.

Second Mate Martin Witnesses the Death of Napoleon

One of Francis Martin’s most recounted sea stories involved the death of Napoleon. In May 1821, within a month of his 21^st birthday, he served on the Purington as second mate under his Uncle Captain Williams. Bound from Java to Holland and running short of fresh vegetables, Captain Williams decided to put into St. Helena. As the Purington neared the mouth of the harbor, the British ship Rosalie, commanded by Captain Frederick Marryat challenged him. Captain Williams explained why he wanted to anchor in St. Helena Harbor, and the British man-of-war Vigo escorted them into the harbor.

Captain Williams and Second Mate Francis Martin went ashore, intending to return to the Purington within a few hours.  While they were ashore, a fierce storm blew in, smashing the Vigo against the Purington. The Purington’s crew that had remained on board feared that the constant pounding of the Vigo against their ship would destroy her, so they slipped the cables and the Purington drifted far out to sea. The Purington didn’t return to St. Helena until the storm had subsided.

In the meantime Captain Williams and his nephew Second Mate Francis Martin were ashore to witness the funeral of Napoleon Bonaparte. Second Lieutenant Martin described what he had seen many times to eager listeners, including family and friends. An English military band playing a funeral march, stepped in front of the hearse. Francis Martin watched the common hearse of St. Helena carry Napoleon’s coffin to his burial place. Members of Napoleon’s personal staff, wearing the national uniform and side arms, were his pallbearers. Several companies of English soldiers followed. A salute was fired over Napoleon’s grave under his favorite willow tree where he had requested to be buried.

According to Captain Martin – he had earned the rank of captain by the time he told the story of his children and grandchildren – several wives of British officers were present at the funeral. One of them who had sympathized with Napoleon during his last lonely hours wept copiously. Years later, in November 1840, Captain Martin’s son, Frank B. Martin witnessed Napoleon’s remains returned to Paris.

Lieutenant Martin Serves Aboard Revenue Cutters and Confronts the Nullification Crisis

Between 1823 and 1831, Second Mate Martin married and started a family and sailed the seas, battling pirates and serving on various United States revenue cutters.  In 1829, he married Rachel Brown of New York City and they eventually had two children, Frank B. and Louise.

The Early History of the United States Revenue Cutter Service  listed Francis Martin as being stationed as a third lieutenant on the revenue cutter Rush in 1830, receiving his commission from United States President Andrew Jackson.

Lieutenant Martin’s remarks recorded in The United States Service Volume 2 shed some historical light on the uniforms of the period when he said that he had been attached to the revenue cutter service for 58 years. According to Lt. Martin,   “prior to 1830 the officers paid little attention to dress so far as uniformity was concerned, and adopted such patterns as the caprice of the commanding officer selected; and such was the state of the service from 1812. Prior to the uniform trimmed with yellow, a round jacket with brass buttons was worn or none as the officers thought proper. The navy officers I found in the service in 1831 wore no uniforms.  The present vice admiral Stephen Rowan, was second lieutenant of the Cutter Rush to which I was originally attached. The rest were all dead.”

From 1833 to 1846, Lieutenant Martin served on several revenue cutters including the Rush, the Andrew Jackson, the Madison and the McLane. The United States Revenue Cutter Service had the cutter Andrew Jackson built at the Washington Navy Yard in 1832, and late that year Captain W.A. Howard, United States Revenue Cutter Service, sailed the Andrew Jackson to Charleston, South Carolina to support the Federal Government during the nullification crisis over new tariff laws. The Andrew Jackson and four other cutters including the Madison and McLane, forced ships arriving from overseas to anchor under Fort Moultrie’s guns and store their cargoes in the fort until the owners paid the duties on them at the new customs house at Castle Pinckney.

In 1833, Second Lieutenant Martin served on the Cutter Madison which had been sent to South Carolina to deal with the nullification crisis. President Andrew Jackson and Vice President John C. Calhoun openly split on national tariff policy, especially the Tariff of 1828. The South and parts of New England opposed the tariff. Finally, South Carolina issued an Ordinance of Nullification and Vice President John C. Calhoun became a strong advocate for South Carolina’s right to secede from the union. President Andrew Jackson ordered five cutters to Charleston Harbor to “take possession of any vessels arriving from a foreign port, and defend her against any attempts to dispossess the Customs Officers of her custody.”

Activities and John James Audubon

After the Nullification crisis had ended, Lieutenant Martin continued to serve his country aboard the Cutters McLane and Madison, scouring the Atlantic Ocean waters for pirate ships and sailing to Florida to aid the United States Armed forces in the First and Second Seminole Wars. Lieutenant Martin participated in the dangerous hunts through the swamps. The 1835 Fleet Organization Record revealed that he made $30.00 a month as second lieutenant aboard the McLane.

On November 27, 1846, Francis Martin became the captain of the lightship at Sand Key, Florida, located about seven miles southwesterly from Key West. He became the first captain of the lightship and remained there until he received orders to serve in a blockading fleet along the coast of Mexico under General Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War.

Clarence Monroe Burton mentions Lieutenant Martin’s friendship with John James Audubon in his history of Detroit. Clarence Burton says that Lieutenant Martin and John James Audubon became friends with him while they were both in Florida. In 1831, John James Audubon arrived in Florida with the goal of collecting water birds for the third volume of his Birds of America illustrated book. He landed at St. Augustine on November 20, 1831, and traveled by pony and on foot over log roads and narrow trails. For the next six months, he explored Florida’s east coast and the Florida Keys, traveling the waterways by canoe, skiff, cutter, and schooner. In his journeys he encountered hoards of mosquitoes and Lieutenant Francis Martin. They two became lifelong friends.

Lieutenant Martin Rescues a Distinguished John C. Calhoun Sculpture

Hiram Powers Sculpture of John C. Calhoun. Robert N. Dennis Collection.

After the Nullification Crisis, Lieutenant Martin encountered another assignment involving John C. Calhoun, Lieutenant Martin played a pivot part in rescuing a famous statue of Andrew Jackson’s former vice president. On August 20, 1850, a story appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle about the recovery of the statue of John C. Calhoun.

The statue sank with the bark Elizabeth which went down in a summer storm at Point O’ Woods of Fire Island on July 19, 1850. The Elizabeth, a 530 ton bark, had sailed from Leghorn, Italy, on May 17, 1850, carrying five passengers, a crew of 14, and cargo. The passengers included Captain Seth Hasty’s wife Catherine, Count Giovanni Ossoli, his wife Margaret Fuller, a famous writer and feminist, and their two year old son Angelino, a young Italian girl Celeste Paolini, Angeliono’s  nursemaid and a Mr. Horace Sumner. Captain Seth Hasty’s wife Catherine had also made the trip with him. The cargo included rough cut marble and a large marble statue of John C. Calhoun. When the Elizabeth sank, the statue of John C. Calhoun followed the ship to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

United States Revenue Cutter Morris – Wikimedia Commons

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, the statue of John C. Calhoun had been found by the officers of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Morris and that Lieutenant Francis Martin would immediately return to the spot with a suit of submarine armor to properly sling the box previous to bring it to the surface. Lieutenant Martin said that the statue was in perfect order, and that it could be got up with but little trouble.

Three months later, a story in the November 8, 1850 Brooklyn Eagle provided details of the rescue. The U.S. Revenue Cutter Morris, with Lieutenant Martin representing her, and Mr. Johnson’s yacht Twilight were anchored off Hamilton Avenue ferry, Brooklyn, where they had just arrived from Fire Island. Flags hung at half masts on both ships and on the deck of the Twilight lay the Hiram Power’s sculpture of John C. Calhoun wrapped in the United States flag. Lieutenant Martin’s extraordinary exertions had brought her up from the wreck of the Elizabeth, and it remained in the box that had originally covered it. The box was constructed of a double thickness of plank, strongly bound with iron, and also very heavy.

The Calhoun sculpture, weighing 2,200 pounds, had sustained more damage than originally reported. A life sized figure, clothed in a Roman toga and sandals, the right arm pointed towards a scroll held in its left hand with the word “Constitution” written on the scroll. Hiram Powers represented Calhoun’s left arm as resting on a palmetto tree, but the arm as far as the elbow and the hand with the portion of the scroll it grasped had been broken off and lost. Searchers discovered the first joint of the thumb in the box, but the thumb bore the mark of a heavy blow.

The box was buried in three feet of sand, and Lieutenant Martin and his men built a coffer dam around it and removed the sand surrounding it using a diving bell. After much exertion, Lieutenant Martin and his crew finally worked a chain beneath the box and hauled it aboard the Morris. The sculpture was sent to Charleston, South Carolina by the ship Southerner, and later moved to Columbia where General Sherman’s invading army destroyed it on February 17, 1865.

On October 1, 1851, the Revenue Service promoted Lieutenant Francis Martin to Captain and in the following years he commanded the Revenue Cutters Andrew Jackson, John Sherman, and the Fessenden. Lieutenant Martin and his family lived in Detroit from 1856 until 1860.  The 1860 census shows that Captain Francis Martin lived in Detroit with his daughter Louise 22, and his son Frank, 13, along with their maid. Apparently his wife, Rachel had died by this time because the next year on February 11, 1861, he married Jane G. Clawson of New York City. They had two children, Dr. William C. Martin, a distinguished physician of Detroit, and Jessie Pollion wife of Dr. Charles E. Bleakley of Detroit.

Captain Francis Martin Fights in the Civil War

A New York Times story dated September 14, 1893, shed much light on Captain Martin’s activities during the Civil War. The New York Times reporter described Captain Francis Martin’s visit to an old friend, Captain Charles Shoemaker, commander of the revenue steamer Hudson. The New York Times reporter described Captain Martin as “a little old man with a snow white beard and a form bent with years, but showing much dignity.”

Despite the fact that he was the oldest commissioned officer in the United States Revenue Marine, Captain Martin, currently 94 years old, still appeared on the active list. He hadn’t performed active duty in more than 25 years, but he had been carried along on the rolls as “waiting orders.”

In the beginning years of his Revenue Marine Service, Captain Francis Martin had made wise land investments in the West which earned him a large fortune. He lived in Detroit, Michigan, in one of the most luxurious homes in the city. Every summer he “weighed anchor,” as he called it, and “stood down” toward New York City to adjust his compasses and see old friends.

Like old friends, Captain Martin and Captain Shoemaker reminisced about old times. When the Civil War broke out, Captain Shoemaker was a third lieutenant in the Revenue Marine serving aboard the United States Revenue Cutter Robert L. McLelland. Captain John G. Breshwood, commander, sympathized with the South and he refused to sail the McClelland north.

United States Secretary of the Treasury John Adams Dix sent an order to Second Lieutenant Samuel B. Caldwell to arrest Captain Breshwood, and assume command of the McLelland, The Secretary of the Treasury said that if Captain Breshwood attempted to interfere with the order, Lieutenant Caldwell should consider him a mutineer and treat him accordingly. The message concluded with these words: “If anyone attempts to haul down the American flag shoot him on the spot.”   Confederates intercepted the message and the McLelland joined the Confederacy. Confederates also confiscated the USRC Cutter Lewis Cass stationed in New Orleans.

Captain Shoemaker was one of the officers who received the Secretary of Treasury’s order and one of the ten Revenue Marine officers serving in the Gulf of Mexico remaining loyal to the Union. When Captain Shoemaker reached the North, he joined the Revenue Steamer Bibb, which along with the Revenue Steamer Corwin was stationed in New York Harbor as port guard ships, each of them carrying 8 officers and 125 men. Captain Douglass Ottinger, current age 89, commanded the Corwin, and Captain Francis Martin, current age 94, commanded the Bibb.

Sitting snugly in the cabin of the Hudson, the two captains discussed many old Civil War scenes. Captain Martin asked Captain Shoemaker if he remembered the time they stopped Captain Ambrose Burnside’s fleet in New York Harbor.

Captain Shoemaker recalled, “I had charge of the deck that evening and your instructions were to permit no raft to pass in or out of the Narrows. We were lying off the present quarantine station with batteries constantly cast loose and on that night I espied a steamer crawling along hugging all the time the Long Island shore. I hastily sent word to you by an orderly and then saw the battery named. You were on dock in a twinkle.”

Captain Martin ordered Lieutenant Shoemaker and other Bibb crew members to order the steamer to stop and when it didn’t, he ordered them to fire. They sent a nine inch shell toward the steamer but it still didn’t stop. Another nine inch shell through her walking beam finally brought the steamer to a halt.

Captain Martin rubbed his hands and nodded his head, his face glowing at the memory. “Aye, and it was well done, Shoemaker. It was well done,” he said.

The steamer crawling along the Long Island shore turned out to be one of Colonel Ambrose Burnside’s transports attempting to push out to sea after sunset. When the soldiers at Fort Lafayette heard the shots from the Bibb, they opened fire. According to Captain Shoemaker, the blundering work of a volunteer officer commanding the transport nearly caused the death of many of the soldiers on board. Captain Martin returned to Detroit after his visit with his old shipmate.

Captain Francis Martin Commands the Fessenden

 In 1866, Captain Martin commanded the Revenue Steamer Andrew Johnson, which patrolled Lakes Michigan and Lake Superior. When Captain Martin commanded the Johnson, he successfully completed the mission of transporting General William T.  Sherman’s staff to Lake Michigan.

In the late 1860s, Captain Martin commanded the Revenue Cutter General Sherman, stationed at Cleveland, Ohio, to collect revenue and customs duties. The 1870 Federal Census shows that Captain Martin lived in Painesville, Ohio, within commuting distance of Cleveland and the Johnson, with his wife Jane, his two daughters Louise and Jessie and his son William. By 1872, Captain Martin in his family had settled permanently in Detroit, living at 159 First Street and by 1873, he commanded the William P. Fessenden.

The William P. Fessenden had been launched in mid 1865, but the official record showed her not entering actual service until April 19, 1869 when she followed her orders to begin patrolling from her home port of Cleveland. During the active shipping season the Fessenden patrolled the Great Lakes and usually from December to April she laid up for the winter. In 1875, the Revenue Service ordered her to be laid up in Detroit instead of Cleveland.

Captain Francis Martin Awaits Orders and Celebrates Birthdays

In 1876, while he commanded the Fessenden, the Revenue Marine Service placed Captain Martin on waiting orders and in 1895 he went to permanent waiting orders and half pay. In May 1877, the Great Lakes newspapers reported that after 47 years Captain Francis Martin had been retired from the Revenue Marine Service and had been replaced on the Fessenden by Captain Spicer.

The San Francisco Call of June 26, 1894, noted that Captain Francis Martin, who retired from the United States Revenue Marine in 1877 after forty-six years of service, celebrated at Detroit recently his ninety-fourth birthday. “He uses glasses when he writes, but reads without them,” the story said. The Boston Evening Transcript mentioned Captain Martin’s 94^th birthday celebration in a story dated June 9, 1894.

In 1900, 99 year old Captain Martin lived in Detroit with his wife, 64 year old Jane and his daughters Louise and Jessie. Newspapers reporting Captain Martin’s 100^th birthday party included the Detroit Free Press and the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald published in Battle Creek, Michigan. The story said that Captain Francis Martin had recently celebrated his 100^th birthday in Detroit, receiving many guests, who cordially congratulated him on his heath.

The Captain’s good health continued until Saturday, January 26, 1901, when he caught cold and took to his bed.  His son Dr. William C. Martin, and his son-in-law Dr. C.E. Bleakley attended him at his home on 159 First Street in Detroit but his condition worsened.  Captain Francis Martin died on Thursday, January 31, 1901, and he is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. Clarence Burton noted in his biography of Captain Martin that “Detroit was most proud of its centenarian for his accomplishments and his “splendid service to his country.”

References

Donald Canney. U.S. Coast Guard and Revenue Cutters, 1790-1935. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995.

Douglas Peterson. United States Lighthouse Service Tenders, 1840-1939. Annapolis: Eastwind Publishing, 2000.

U.S. Coast Guard. Record of Movements: Vessels of the United States Coast Guard: 1790 – December 31, 1933. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934; 1989 (reprint).

Coast Guard Cutters Index

Brig Vigilant

Rush

Madison

McLane

Morris

Andrew Jackson

General Sherman

Fessenden

U.S. Revenue Cutter Service – 1789-1849

The City of Detroit Michigan – 1701-1922 Clarence Monroe Burton,William Stocking, Gordon K. Miller             

Brave men unrewarded. New York Times. January 7, 1891.

Christmas Parties on Captain Hiram Meeker’s Brooklyn Floating Bethel

Joralemon Street Postcard, 1913
Wikimedia Commons

By Kathy Warnes

Captain Hiram L. Meeker and his Floating Bethel anchored at the end of Joralemon Street in the East River in Brooklyn were part of the chain of historical continuity that linked the Brooklyn waterfront of the 1700s through the Twentieth Century.  He also continued the maritime tradition of holding Thanksgiving and Christmas services for sailors on Floating Bethels and in churches and chapels around the world. Stories covering his Christmas observances on the Floating Bethel appeared several times in New York newspapers, including the New York Times and the Brooklyn Eagle.

Captain Hiram Meeker’s Brooklyn Floating Bethel’s Birthday

Captain Meeker took command his Brooklyn Floating Bethel for his missionary work in 1893, after he purchased a former canal boat named the O.A. Crandall . The New York Times of March 13, 1893 told the story of the dedication of the O.A. Crandall, a three masted schooner, and Captain Meeker’s mission. Bethel is a Hebrew word that means “house of God” and Captain Meeker intended to make his Floating Bethel a house of God for sailors.

The captain knew only too well how badly sailors needed a safe, snug haven to provide them with food, shelter, reading and writing material, and spiritual inspiration.  He had spent at least twenty years sailing the seas of the world including the West Indies, and he had experienced firsthand some of the temptations that could keep a sailor battling rough waters even on land. He understood that shore bound sailors would feel more comfortable at a mission that moved with the tide instead of one fastened solidly to the ground.

Searching around for a boat to be refitted for his Floating Bethel, Captain Meeker found the O.A. Crandall in the New Jersey flats and offered to buy her. When he put in his bid, he discovered that he fell $300 short of buying the Crandall. John Englis stepped forward with his purse in his hand and the O.A. Crandall became a Floating Bethel.

With the backing of the Brooklyn Mission and Tract Society, Captain Meeker supervised the Floating Bethel’s fitting up to accommodate 250 people, and temporarily tied it up at Martin’s Stores near Wall Street. The captain scheduled his Floating Bethel to be open from noon to ten o’clock in the evening of every day. Besides the chapel, the Floating Bethel featured a reading room stocked with newspapers and magazines.

The Floating Bethel officially opened on March 12, 1893, with three services. At a morning chapel service speakers included Dr. G. Le Lacheur, Secretary of the Brooklyn Mission Society; the Reverend W.H. Ingersoll, and Captain Richard Luce of Sailor’s Snug harbor.

At the 2:30 service, the speakers included Alfred H. Porter, President of the Brooklyn Mission Society; the Reverend Doctor A.C. Dixon of the Hanson Place Baptist Church; the Reverend Dr. David Gregg of the Lafayette Avenue Church; C.W. Parsons; the Reverend Dr. Stitt of the American Seaman’s Friend Society; S.M. Marston; the Reverend A.B. Pritchard of the Arlington Avenue Presbyterian Church; and the Reverend Dr. Albert S. Hunt. An evening service featured the Reverend Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall of the First Presbyterian Church and the Reverend Albert J. Lyman of the South Congregational Church.

On March 14, 1893, Captain Meeker’s Floating Bethel was moved to the foot of Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, and remained there for over a decade.

The Floating Bethel’s Joralemon Street Berth

In 1762, Hendrick and Peter Remsen and Philip Livingston originally created a common road between their farms that extended to the East River. Early settlers in the area called the road Remsen’s Lane or Livingstone’s Lane. Then in 1805, Teunis Joralemon bought a farm on the road and people began to call it Joralemon Lane, and finally Joralemon Street.

Joralemon Street continued to grow along with the neighborhood around the East River and New York’s system of linked water ways in general. Expanding trade and industry developed the East River waterfront on both sides of Joralemon Street. In 1817, the first regularly scheduled transatlantic cargo ship service to and from New York began and gradually New York became the center of national and international commerce. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 stimulated the development of the Brooklyn waterfront and a major system of docks and warehouses flourished.

Brooklyn 1883 – Wikimedia Commons

Brooklyn evolved as a place for transfer and storage operations because by water it stood close to New York’s commercial district yet far enough away from crowded lower Manhattan to allow plenty of room to build storage facilities. In the 1840s, businessmen like Jeremiah Robinson bought waterfront property and build docks, brick warehouses, and several grain elevators “rising like watchtowers.” Docks, wharves and storage houses in Brooklyn contained high bulk goods like glass, leather, oils and sugar and processed goods including coffee, liquor, salt, wool, and tobacco.

The East River waterfront of Brooklyn and Queens became the site of several factories and shipbuilding and related industries. Revolutionary War veteran Joshua Sands developed an area of Brooklyn known as Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass and operated a ship rope and cable works in the early 19^th century. By the time Captain Hiram Meeker came to Joralemon Street with the Floating Bethel he anchored in the middle of a thriving waterfront district.

Captain Hiram Meeker, Sailor, Soldier, Missionary

Born about 1835 in New York, Hiram L. Meeker spent several years sailing the seas before he enlisted in a New York 2^nd Heavy Artillery Regiment. One of the first documentary records about Captain Meeker appeared in the House of Representatives Private Claims, Vol. 2, dated 1853, when he unsuccessfully petitioned Congress for benefits for salvaging maritime wreckage.

In 1864, the New York Times listed Captain Hiram L. Meeker among the country’s wounded veterans and in 1865 he was mustered out of his Heavy Artillery Regiment. Captain Meeker’s life improved when on February 12, 1870, he married Ann Lindley. The New York State Census of 1892 records him as living with his wife Annie, his two sons Walter and Hiram Jr., his daughter Florence and Annie’s mother, Mrs. Mary Lindley.

On December 25, 1893, about 200 sailors and firemen belonging to steamships lying on the water front came to the Christmas Dinner at the Floating Bethel. Captain Meeker welcomed the guests and presided at the dinner that the members of the Christian Endeavor Societies of the Lafayette Avenue and Second Presbyterian Church helped to prepare. Singing by the sailors and speeches by prominent clergymen constituted the exercises of the evening.

The Floating Bethel’s First Anniversary

The Brooklyn Eagle of December 27, 1894, printed a story about the Christmas supper at the Floating Bethel. The story said that about 250 men sat down to eat turkey, mashed potatoes, celery, onion, cranberry sauce, mince and pumpkin pie and cakes of many kinds. The King’s Daughters of the Lafayette Avenue and Second Presbyterian Churches and friends of Captain Meeker provided the meal.

Captain Meeker reported that the Floating Bethel also possessed a good organ and he provided statistics for the Bethel’s first years of operation from September 30, 1893, to September 20, 1894.

Sailors attended Bethel – 15,148

Sailors attended divine services – 7,938

Sailors hands for prayer – 619

Sailors converted – 180

Sailors signed pledges – 812

Sailor’s letter written – 3,882

Bibles – 312

Testaments – 376

Books – 6,755

Papers – 25,486

Tracts – 13,520

Lodgings – 1,140

Meals – 7,868

Ships – 1, 017

Canal boats – 105

Hospital visits – 90

Before the festive Christmas dinner Misses Cassin, Phillips, Hart, Burton and Zimmerman of Opportunity Circle and Miss Duncan, Miss Darling and Mr. Darling performed songs and recitations.

Many Nautical Christmas Dinners

The 1894 and 1895 Floating Bethel Christmas dinners were even larger festivities. The Brooklyn Eagle of December 27, 1895, reported that a large and jolly crowd of about 259 people gathered around the table to celebrate Christmas in the well lighted cabin on the Floating Bethel which sheltered under the shadow of the huge warehouses lining the East River. As they ate the wind howled over the bay and whistled through the rigging of ships causing them to tug and haul at their hawsers, but the ships and the Floating Bethel remained safe and snug in the harbor.

The guests aboard the Floating Bethel enjoyed slices of steaming hot tasty turkey, both white and dark meat, and pyramids of mashed potatoes and turnips. They also ate cranberry sauce, celery, apples, generous slices of pumpkin pie and steaming hot coffee.

While the men ate their Christmas dinner, the Brooklyn Eagle reporter examined the interior of the Floating Bethel. The reporter said that the reconstructed and refitted canal boat measured 95 x 17 feet, and had been paneled in real wood. A companionway occupied one end of the room and a raised platform or a stage at the other end.

Several flags that Miss May and Miss Janette Englis had presented to the mission were draped around the platform an oil painting of a ship at sea hung in the center of the stage. The Floating Bethel’s quartermaster, Mr. Thompson, painted the ship Martello of the Wilson line, and the reporter pronounced its drawing and coloring excellent although Mr. Thompson had never had a painting lesson.

Other pictures and decorations hung on the walls of the cabin, making it homey and pleasant. The Floating Bethel and its décor reflected Captain Meeker’s goal of making sailors feel at home and feel comfortable coming to the ship when they were alone and friendless in a strange place. The ship had a reading room and writing materials were arranged in another room. There were also a variety of games for sailors to play. Needy sailors were never turned from the cabin of the Floating Bethel and donations and workers came to the Floating Bethel from the City Mission, the Baptist Temple, the Olivet Chapel, and the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Chaplain Meeker devoted full time to the Floating Bethel and his wife Annie and Miss K.A. Lattimer assisted him. The officers of the mission, Commodore Englis, first officer, N.P. Chase, second officer A.R. Robertson, purser C.D. Sayre, chorister Mr. Barnshem, and chaplain Reverend J.G. Snyder worked on the Bethel and the mission employed Dr. J.A. Kelly to care for the sick.

Figures from December 25, 1894 to December 25, 1895 reflected the number of visitors continued to rise.

Sailors attending – 20,876

Sailor attending divine services – 14, 206

Sailor’s hands for prayer – 2,275

Sailors forward for prayer – 516

Sailors who signed pledges – 131

Letters written by sailors aboard – 8,077

Books – 7,031

Papers – 27,446

Tracts – 7,775

Lodgings given – 1,967

Meals served – 16,564

From 1896-1900, Captain Hiram Meeker, now nearing 70, and his crew continued to attract more sailors to the Floating Bethel and helped them steer their lives in more positive directions. On December 8, 1902, the Brooklyn Eagle reported that Captain Hiram Meeker still held three services weekly for sailors and dock men from many different countries. A reporter from the Brooklyn Eagle attended this meeting and recorded what happened. The meeting opened with 200 sailors present by half hour’s singing of gospel songs starting with “Throw out the Life Line,” and continuing with “Jesus Savior, Pilot Me.”

Captain Meeker exhorted the men not to give up the ship, meaning their souls and to take a good compass along when they went out to sea and to cast the hawser on a good dock when on land. He told them that Jesus Christ was the only port and “any other dock was sinking sand.”

After one of the ship officers prayed, Captain Meeker opened the meeting to the sailors. One old man who called himself an “old barnacle”, said that he was turned away from Sailor’s Snug harbor in the winter. Being destitute, he sought arrest when one of Captain Meeker’s helpers directed him to the Floating Bethel. He was given new clothes, converted and led a respectable sailor’s life since then. He made the door mats over the entrance of the Bethel.

Another sailor related how happy his wife and children were because he had taken a temperance pledge and kept it.

The Floating Bethel’s Twelfth Anniversary

A New York Times story dated March 20, 1905 investigated how Captain Meeker celebrated his Twelfth anniversary on the Floating Bethel. Hans the blue eyed Dane, two Malays and one Fiji Islander, Danes, Norwegians, Russians, Japanese, Americans, Englishmen and Chinamen were among the sailors who walked the gangplank and enjoyed Captain Meeker’s welcoming whack on their shoulders as he stood decked out in his frock coat thumping greetings to everyone coming on board.

After the men ate their turkey dinner they settled down for a time of singing with Captain Meeker’s voice lustily leading the way. “Pull for the Shore,” “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning,” “Home Sweet Home,” and many other songs resounded through the Floating Bethel and out over the Hudson River. Some of the notes echoed through the streets and skittered over the big warehouses.

After the singing, Captain Meeker spoke to the sailors. He said, “You have immortal souls like church people and they don’t want you but the Lord keeps his eye on poor Jack and He is the captain of the earth…serve the Great Captain and be men.”

At the close of the evening, Captain Meeker explained his methods to the New York Times reporter. He said, “We don’t hang out any particular heavenly flag here. We just teach them all to be good men and that heaven has a wide scope.”

The Floating Bethel Christmas Party, 1906

After they came aboard the Floating Bethel, the guests, at least 200 of them, took their seats at long tables set up in a room that resembled a library. At one end of the room stood a quarter deck and in back of it sat a model of a full rigged ship made by one of the Floating Bethel’s sailors. There was also a reed organ and a piano beside a pulpit like place in front. A red hot stove kept the room snug and warm.

Letters with exotic foreign postmarks protruded from a rack under a sign labeled “Sailor write home.” Another sign offered a reward for information about the whereabouts of John W. Lord, seafaring man. The bronzed and muscular turkey cooks worked in the galley where the coffee simmered in a wash boiler and the cranberry sauce stewed in an iron bucket marked “fire.”

Captain Meeker circulated around the room talking to the men. “Yes, I know every man Jack of you and I want you all to have a good time tonight if it sinks the boat.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the sailors answered in chorus.

“I want every man to do his duty tonight,’ ordered Captain Meeker, piping the mess call.

“Aye, aye sir,” the men shouted.

After everyone enjoyed the turkey with dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and other trimmings, they tackled unlimited cups of coffee and spicy cake and mince pies solid as anchors. The sailors leaned back in their chairs, wiped their mouths, and with the backs of their hands reached for the new clay pipes and cut plugs and passed them around. A few landlubber guests also took pipes. Dr. Stewart, the Bethel’s surgeon, took a memorial sniff at the tobacco jar, since he had once known it well.

According to a New York Press story dated January 6, 1906, Captain Meeker spoke into the comfortable silence. “Now men and mates a word about our craft and its purposes. I launched this enterprise twelve years ago, not being connected with any church or creed and with the object of helping sailor men. We minister to their temporal and spiritual needs while they’re alive and well. We care for them when they are sick and bury them when they are dead.”

The party began to break up around midnight and everyone gave three timber racking cheers for Captain Meeker, his blushing silver haired wife, his two pink checked married daughters and his several small grandchildren.

Captain Hiram Meeker and his family and colleagues continued their work on the Floating Bethel for several more Christmas parties.

Links

House of Representatives. Digested Summary and Alphabetical List of Private Claims Which Have Been Presented to the House of Representatives. Vol. II. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1853.

Brooklyn queens waterfront home

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 30, 1898

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 1, 1899

Floating Bethel – January 24, 1900- Brooklyn Daily Eagle

March 28, 1901 – Aid for Floating Bethel- Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Church in a Canal Boat. Brooklyn Daily Eagle. December 8, 1902

References

Haw, Richard. The Brooklyn Bridge:  A Cultural History. Rutgers University Press, 2008.

Whyman, Henry. C. Hedstrom and the Bethel Ship Saga: Methodist Influence on Swedish Religious Life.  Southern Illinois University Press, 1992

new York times  http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F10912F93C5A10718EDDA90A94DB405B858CF1D3

Silver Islet – Mining Silver Under Lake Superior

Silver Islet – Wikimedia Commons

by Kathy Warnes

The story of the discovery of silver on a small reef in Lake Superior and how entrepreneurs and miners developed it into the first silver mine in Ontario predictably has different versions.

According to an Iron Mountain Press story, silver was accidentally discovered on Silver Islet, a reef on the rocky Lake Superior coast at the tip of the Sibley Peninsula in northwestern Ontario, Canada.  The Sibley Peninsula itself is a 32 mile long, 6 mile wide peninsula in Ontario, Canada that projects into Lake Superior from its north shore and separates Thunder Bay to the west from Black Bay to the east.

Who Discovered the Silver?

Once upon a day in May in 1868,two men huddled together on a small reef about 20 feet long and only eight feet above the beach on the far northwestern Ontario shore of Lake Superior about a mile from the mainland. Lake Superior waves chased each other, combining to form mountainous white crests that pounded against a tiny reef about the size of a beach towel. A light yawl tied to a bush at the fringe of the reef snapped its hawser and the wind and waves picked it up and tossed it like a sea gull on the waves.

The two men on the reef had been prospecting and the yawl was their only transportation to the mainland a mile away over the mountains of waves. As the storm increased in violence the men were astonished to discover silver nuggets. At last the waves rushed over the crest of the reef and the larger and stronger of the two men, a Cornish miner with a stout heart, put the slender man underneath him and sat on him to keep the waves from washing him away.

The two men spent the night battling the waves that sometimes completely buried them. When the cold dawn broke, the waves receded and the friends on shore who had given up all hope of ever seeing their comrades again, took heart and managed to get out to the reef and rescue them. The rescued men hung on to their silver nuggets and resolutely decided to search for more.

Another version of the story comes from the Montreal Mining Company which had sent John Morgan and his partner Patrick Hogan to search for lead-galena samples. John Morgan threw himself flat on the ground when his partner Patrick detonated explosives to free ore from the rocks. John‘s outstretched hand touched Lake Superior water and when he looked down he saw several silver nuggets. Within a week, John and Patrick had sent several hundred pounds of silver ore to Montreal aboard the steamer Algoma as well as details about a silver vein running northwest from the reef toward the mainland.

Yet another version of the discovery story comes from the biography of Thomas Macfarlane, who explored the mining country of Lake Superior for the Montreal Mining Company. In 1868, Thomas Macfarlane discovered Canada’s first major silver deposit on a reef in Lake Superior that he called Silver Islet. Using his European contacts he recruited Norwegian miners to extract the silver while at the same time managing The Wyandotte Silver Smelting and Refining Works at Wyandotte, Michigan, during the 1870s, although his connections with Silver Islet were sporadic.

Alexander Hamilton Sibley Buys “An Engineering Nightmare”

However and whoever discovered the silver on Silver Islet, after two years of attempting to establish a mine to collect the silver, the Montreal Mining Company declared the mine “an engineering nightmare.” In 1870, Montreal Mining Company sold their land and patents to Alexander H. Sibley’s Silver Islet Mining Company for $225,000. Alexander Sibley of Detroit headed the company and he appointed W.B. Frue as his partner and mine captain. The sale documents also reveal that Detroit merchant Eber B. Ward, merchant Edward Learned of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, contractor Peleg Hall of New York, and merchant Charles A. Trowbridge of New York were also partners in the transaction.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 17, 1817, Alexander Hamilton Sibley was the son of Solomon Sibley, Detroit’s first mayor and the brother of Henry Hastings Sibley, Minnesota’s first governor. After Alexander became president of the Silver Islet Mining Company in 1870, he and his family lived in Detroit and spent their summers at the mine. Sibley’s partner William B. Frue, built them a three story home and Marie Louise Miller Sibley had her piano shipped from Detroit every summer. He died in New York City in 1878, with his partner William B. Frue by his side. The Sibley Peninsula is named for Alexander Sibley.

Mine Captain W.B. Frue’s “Engineering Nightmare”

In September 1870, William Frue and his engineers arrived on Silver Islet along with two horses, mine machinery, a scow, a raft of timber, supplies and thirty men. The men worked 18 hour days building timber breakwaters, foundations, and a coffer dam around the vein of silver, allowing miners to take out about 70 tons of silver ore.

Montreal Mining engineers and Silver Islet Mining Company mine captain W.B. Frue and his men waged an unrelenting battle against Lake Superior. The Silver Islet Mining Company went to work constructing wooden breakwaters around Silver Islet to combat Lake Superior waves. The Silver Islet Mining Company used crushed rock to expand the Silver Islet to over ten times its original size and it built a small mining town on the nearby shore, but Lake Superior waves were a constant, threatening presence whether in liquid foamy form, freak tidal waves or ice surges.

William Frue and his engineers decided that a cribwork had to be built on the tiny reef and they immediately offered a reward to any man who could locate a stand of Norway pine within hauling distance. After diligent searching, a mine employee discovered a stand of pines that had withstood fires and ravages of nature. A group of axmen cut down the pine trees and with great difficulty hauled the timber to the reef.

Again, they faced challenges. Solid rock provided their only foundation, rock which slanted and in some places formed a sheer cliff that extended to the bottom of Lake Superior. After working eighteen hour days for a month, the laborers had built nearly 1,800 feet of cribbing, bolted it securely together and filled it in with huge rocks. The cribbing measured some thirteen feet deep and weighed several tons. On August 26, 1870, a gale from the southwest ripped away 200 feet of this crib work.

By October 1870, Lake Superior waves had shredded half the breakwater and the miners rebuilt it to 26 feet wide, twice its original width. Incessantly busy, Lake Superior waves destroyed much of the cribbing before Christmas 1870, claiming 3,000 tons of rock.

Spring brought new onslaughts of Lake Superior waves. In March 1871, the Lake Superior waters of spring ripped away more than 50,000 feet of timber cribbing fastened with iron bolts. On March 8, 1871, armies of waves rushed in carrying large ice cakes and slamming them into the crib work. The huge timbers bent and broke like slender reeds. Waves washed away over 50,000 feet of timber and 6,000 feet of rock from the reef.

Along with the crib building, the Silver Islet Mining Company also mined silver, and the miners, numbering about twenty at a time, extracted over $100,000 worth of silver while it built the preliminary crib work. After and between the storms, the miners and laborers rebuilt the breakwaters and cribs and during the summer of 1870, the miners took out nearly a million dollars in ore. In 1871, the mine yielded 600,000 dollars worth of silver ore and in 1872, the miners extracted $426,000 worth of silver ore.

The Mining Life on Silver Islet

Miners, mine operators and their families slowly came to Silver Islet, as Thomas Macfarlane had christened their reef. They faced nature’s challenges just making their way to Silver Islet. In the early days of mining, there were no railroads within 500 miles of Port Arthur. All supplies including the materials needed to build and work the mine had to be shipped in by boat.

The winter of 1870 proved especially difficult for the miners and their families who were obliged to endure frigid temperatures and ferocious winter storms while living in tents.  Mail delivery often resembled an Arctic expedition. Indian runners using dog teams followed the Lake Superior shore from Duluth, Minnesota, a small town in at the time. From Duluth, the Indians and the dog teams brought the mail north, about once a month, fighting their way through a dense 200 mile wilderness in sub zero winter temperatures. The mine was shut off from civilization from November to May.

In the summer of 1871, the Silver Islet Mining Company built the mainland town of Silver Islet Landing and a breakwater, basin, and wharves in the harbor. The company built its own lighthouse and range lights to guide the ships vital for its survival into Silver Islet. The underground mining operations continued to expand deep underneath Lake Superior, and so did the above ground equipment. The company built a shaft house, engine house, rock house and pump house to keep the shaft from flooding. By the end of the summer a breakwater with a 75 foot base and 18 foot bulkheads holding 50,000 tons of rock rubble surrounded Silver Islet.

On the mainland, the Silver Islet Mining Company built a long row of houses stretching in a semi circle along the shore of a beautiful bay called Camp Bay, back dropped by a range of low mountains. The company provided houses for hundreds of men and their families, a huge store house, a large and roomy hotel, and a large stamp mill. The company spent $100,000 to build the stamp mill which in less than a year turned out $225,000 worth of silver rock.

The company built a heavily barred jail for drunken and roughneck men. There were two churches, one on the curve of Camp Bay and the other farther down the bay, nestled in aspen and birch trees and Scottish rowan. On the reef were a man- made island, a huge shaft house, a power house, and other necessary buildings for operating a mine. There were house barracks for the miners without families that could accommodate at least 300 men. Mine captain William Frue constructed a three story house on Camp Bay for President Alexander Sibley. He organized a library for the single men living in bunkhouses and located it in the saloon building, recruiting the bartender to double as a librarian.

Eventually, over 480 men worked at the Silver Islet Mining Company. They were a mixture of races and ethnic groups, including many Cornishmen who scorned the other foreigners and fought with them. Originally, William Frue had hired miners from the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan, but later he paid the passage to bring several hundred Norwegian and Cornish miners to Ontario. Some of the imported miners left because of the adverse working conditions that included a 60 hour work week.

The Silver Islet Mining Company paid its miners $68 a month minus $14 for room and board and working conditions were deplorable, even by nineteenth century standards. At the end of each shift miners had to undergo body searches to make sure they weren’t making off with any of the silver to supplement their wages. Anyone who refused to be searched had to pay a $10 fine.

Strict rules like rationing whiskey consumption also didn’t endear the Silver Islet Mining Company to its miners. The miners had no place to buy whiskey within 25 miles, so a black market of sorts sprang up on Silver Islet when a few venturesome peddlers sneaked in a wretched brand of whiskey on boats. The company decided to open its own saloon to eliminate the peddler bootleg traffic.

The Silver Islet Mining Company set up its own whiskey system, allowing each man three drinks of whiskey per day, but not all at once. The company had fitted up a library and a reading room in one of its largest buildings and set up a bar at the end of the room. The bar was built so high and broad that not even the most agile miner could scale it to physically attack the bartender. In back of the bar a large blackboard sat and chalked on it were small numbered squares. The bartender assigned each miner a number, and whenever the miner wanted a drink he went to the bar, gave his number, and got his drink. The bartender made a chalk mark in his square on the blackboard and when the miner had accumulated three marks against himself, the bartender closed his account for the day.

The miners sometimes fought with each other and a few murders occurred, but they also provided companionship to each other. From the time the last ship left in the fall until the first ship arrived in the harbor around April 1, the miners and their families had no contact with the outside world. The people on Silver Islet had to depend on their own resources and provide their own entertainment. They hunted the abundant wild game including moose, deer, caribou, bear, pheasants, partridges and ducks. They fished in Lake Superior for whitefish and lake trout and fished the stream that tumbled down the mountain by the cemetery for brook trout. They relied on each other to survive their dangerous, pioneer life style.

Mining Silver under Lake Superior

Mining silver under Lake Superior was as dangerous as navigating the Lake that covered it. The power house and the shaft house were located at the northern end of the reef and equipped with expensive state of the art machinery. The miners loaded the ore into cars which ran on steel tracks, each car with a several ton capacity. The cars brought the ore up the shaft and again the men unloaded the cars and sent the ore on to be processed and stamped. The men traveled to their work in the mine under Lake Superior using a ladder down one side of the narrow shaft.

There were no mining safety standards and every day the miners worked with the fear that their head candles would set trapped pockets of gas on fire. As the company extended the mine shaft deeper and deeper under Lake Superior, the terror the miners’ felt at being lowered beneath the lake increased with the depth of the shaft. Only a flimsy wooden and stone wall separated the miners from Lake Superior and the waves constantly battered it. By late October 1873, the shaft had reached a depth of nearly 300 feet under Lake Superior and for the first time water entered the shaft when a vein opened into a crevice from the lake. The shaft began to fill at a rate of about ten feet an hour and the miners fled for their lives. Then two heavy storms struck within days of each other, doing about $10,000 worth of damage to the cribs and break walls.

Despite the danger, discouragement, and disasters, the men worked the Silver Islet mine enthusiastically and successfully for many years. The silver ore they mined the first two or three years consisted of “packing” type ore, rich enough for the company to ship it away in sacks and barrels for smelting. Some of the “packing ore” brought $7,000 per ton. Frequently the men found nuggets of pure silver and in 1873, they extracted nearly $550,000 in silver and they also mined 20,000 tons of rock, worth $40 to $50 a ton to be crushed in the stamp mill.

At this point the mine shaft ran out nearly 1,300 feet under Lake Superior, with scattered levels leading away from the main shaft. Some shafts yielded poorly and brought fears that the mine had stopped producing. Then the miners would strike a bonanza shaft overflowing with silver ore.

In 1873 when the mine had been operating two or three years, silver production suddenly dropped as steeply as the mine shaft, although the men had found evidence of richer deposits. Miners broke off a corner between the sixth and seventh levels of the shaft and took 65 tons of rock that yielded $113,000. Experts estimated that from $400,000 to $500,000 worth of ore could be seen in the roof of one part of the mine, but they decided not to build an artificial roof to mine the ore, because the deposits below were richer yet.

The Silver Islet Mine Shuts down and Lake Superior Reclaims the Mine

In 1875, William Frue left the Silver Islet Mining Company and mine production lagged over the next three years, despite the capabilities of his replacement Richard Trethewey. The company brought in a diamond tipped drill and struck a new vein, but production still only amounted to $150,000 worth of silver, a deficit when compared to the cost of working the mine.

In 1878, most of the original mine had played out, but the miners discovered a second vein. The stockholders organized a new company called The Silver Islet Consolidated Mining and Lands Company with a capital stock of one million dollars. After the new company pumped out the lower levels of the mine, in 1878 it took out over $800,000 worth of ore. The mine didn’t yield well in 1879, and in 1880, the output totaled a little less than $50,000. By 1883, miners had extracted the highest quality silver and the price of silver had declined. The Silver Islet Mining Company and the Silver Islet Consolidated Mining and Lands Company had expanded the original 90 foot island ten times its size and by 1883, one of its shafts reached 1,250 feet, nearly a quarter of a mile deep.

The end of the mine came before the end of the 1883 shipping season and like the story of its beginnings, the story of the end of the Silver Islet mine has more than one version.  The first version of the story says that in the late fall of 1883, a ship loaded with a cargo of coal from a southern port headed for the mine. The captain of the ship drank heavily and didn’t get his ship far enough north to reach Lake Superior before winter arrived. He abandoned the coal delivery and winter came with only a small supply of fuel on hand. The mine’s possibilities still seemed limitless, but possibilities couldn’t make steam.

The second and more colorful version of the story says that the mine superintendent nervously noted that he only had enough coal to last until March first. The steam pumps couldn’t operate without fuel and without the steam pumps working, the mine would flood. The mine superintendent knew that the steam freighter H.B. Tuttle was coming with 1,000 tons of coal which would keep the pumps pumping until spring, so he told the miners and their families not to worry.

January arrived with freezing temperatures and a frozen Lake Superior. February followed shivering cold, and work in the mine progressed slowly. Then one day the engines slowed and the last car of ore crawled up the incline that ran down below icy Lake Superior. The mammoth pumps spluttered and chugged and then stopped. The miners quickly left their levels and escaped into the icy air. Frigid Lake Superior water advanced up the shaft, inch by inch, foot by foot as the last ton of coal burned to ashes in the giant boilers. The engines spluttered to a stop. Mining had ceased in one of the most famous mines in the world.

The Silver Islet mine had been one of the richest silver mines in the world. People considered it a marvel in modern mining and at one point the stock had sold readily at $1,500 above par value.. Many mammoth silver nuggets had come from Silver Islet mine, some so pure they didn’t need smelting and in over thirteen years of operation, it had yielded approximately 3.25 million dollars worth of silver, $1,300,000 in its first three years alone.

Critics of the mine management argued that if they had been more frugal the mine would have kept paying good dividends and kept pace with its silver deposit fluctuations. Occasionally rumors of reorganization of the mine and prospecting of adjoining properties surfaced. People believed Silver Islet still held unlimited riches, but Lake Superior had the last word by sending its waters to reclaim the mine.

Silver Islet Survives and Endures

In a May 1903 story in the Iron Mountain Press reporting his visit to Silver Islet, reporter W.S. Harwood wrote that the mine shaft which had once led to great riches was now a column of water 1,300 feet long beneath the ice cold body of Lake Superior. He said, “I dropped a stone in the darkness and the only response was a sullen splash as it fell into this grave of many hopes.”

He wrote about Captain John Cross, caretaker of Silver Islet, guiding their tour on a cold and gray day and rowing them back from the deserted reef. He noted that over on an island near the shore, he spotted blue smoke curling lazily to the sky from a clump of birches. The smoke came from the chimney of an old Cornish miner who still lived there. The old Cornish miner had spent his younger years working for the Silver Islet Mining Company and after it closed he remained searching for the missing vein which many people believed ran out from the reef to the mainland.

As ship’s chief officer in command Captain Maloney, turned the prow of the Georginia into deeper waters, William S. Harwood noted that he saw behind him “only a string of weather beaten, paintless, time scarred houses, strung along the great curve of the bay like the beads of some huge rosary.”

.Seven years later, on a summer day in1910, a record 4,000 picknickers and cottagers visited Silver Island when the paddle wheel steamer Forest City carried passengers to Silver Islet. After the silver mines closed, most of the miners cottages were deserted until the Lake Coast Transportation Company bought them. The Lake Coast Transportation Company sold many cottagers and the Forest City brought cottagers and supplies to Silver Islet until the advent of World War I.

Silver Islet Historical Marker – Wikimedia Commons

One hundred years after the Silver Islet mine closed, wreckers were tearing down the old freight shed and they discovered a sealed shipping crate. Inside the crate they found the small tombstone of a miner’s child who probably had died during a typhus epidemic and they speculated that perhaps the miner didn’t have the money to pay for the tombstone when it arrived. The miner’s child likely rests in the tranquil cemetery which nature is gradually reclaiming, just as the waters of Lake Superior reclaimed the Silver Islet mine.

Today Sleeping Giant Provincial Park occupies most of the Sibley Peninsula and the Thunder Cape Bird Observatory is located at its southern tip along with the small town of Silver Islet. Time has changed Silver Islet, but its story endures as timelessly as  Lake Superior waves.

References

Barr, Elinor. Silver Islet : striking it rich in Lake Superior. Toronto : Natural Heritage/Natural History, c1988.

Chisholm, Barbara. Superior:  Under the Shadow of the Gods, Lynx Images, 1998

Excavating for a mine : Silver Islet, 1868-2008 : 140th anniversary / edited by Bill MacDonald. Thunder Bay, Ont. : Porphyry Press, 2008.

Macfarlane, Thomas. Silver Islet. Montreal : Dawson Bros., 1880.

Links with More Information About Silver Islet

The Sibley Peninsula

Alexander Hamilton Sibley

Major Alexander Hamilton Sibley’s Sudden Death. New York Times, July 11, 1878.

Thomas Macfarlane

Pictures of Silver Islet, Thunder Bay Public Library.

Silver Islet

Silver Islet Mine Report, 1879

Marquette Engineering and Mining Journal

The Marquette Engineering and Mining Journal

Coal Mine Song

One More Night