TRAGEDIES OF THE SEA.

NZ Truth, Issue 121, 12 October 1907, Page 8

TRAGEDIES OF THE SEA.

FOUNDERING OF THE CENTRAL AMERICA

With 427 Lives and Vast Treasure.

152 PERSONS NARROWLY ESCAPE,

Sad but Heroic End of the Captain.

•: Kn3 yet,- amidst' tEai; joy : ami np,roar, - . • ■ Let us' think of them that sleep, I ■Full many a fathom deep, :' (By thy wild and stormy, steep, •• Elsinore !.

— Thos. Campbell*

tTfie foundering of tlie steamer Central America, -"off Cape^Hatteras, North Carolina, m 1857,' with the loss of more than 400 lives, and nearly half a million of -•/treasure; was a, maritime disaster never before equalled m American waters. The tidings fell upon the public ear m a form of horror, and for many years after the doom of the once crack steamship was vividly^remembered m the land of the staivspahgled banner. The steamship Central America, formerly the George Law, cpmmanded by. Lieutenant W. V :L« Herndon, ■United States navy, left Aspinwall Jor. New York oh -September 3, 1857, having; on board tlie passengers and treasure shipped frorii Sari Francisco by the, steamer Sonora on August „ 20. Oiv.Saturday, September H. 2, at 8 o'clock m the evening, she WAS TOTALLY WRECKED! v »n the eastern edge of the Gulf '• Stream,' off ' Cape Hatteras,' and, out of nearly six hundred, persons, on Ib'oard at Ttlie .vtime,' about threelourths went v down-with her, to- , aether with the vast s . amount of^bul- . Qion, . and the California mails. . The gale ■wliicli.catised this terrible calamity Was described, by experienced seamen as qne of- the fiercest ever known. It commenced on the eventing of the eighth— the day on which ;th'e Central America left Havana— and continued, lulling at intervals, ; «ntil the night of the twelfth. On /fthe latter day, it rose to the power jof an appalling hurricane, against Jiwhich the ship labored very hard. ?!A low, gloomy sky shut out the '^jun by day, and the stars by night;. 'Hhe sea did not rise into, waves, ..but was

ONE PLAIN OF, FOAM, over which a heavy mist of spray iwas driven by the force of the wind. iOn the morning of Friday, the 11th, ,the ship was discovered to have sprung a leak. This extinguished the fires . almost immediately ; the steam jpumps were therefore useless, and ithe only hope was m bailing, as the ship even then was making water fast. The passengers worked vigorously at the buckets, and with so much success that the fires were again lighted— but only for a few moments ; the water returned, and extinguished them for ever.

The vessel was now completely at the mercy of the wind and waves. During the whole of the night of the eleventh the bailing was kept up, with unremitting energy, but on the morning of the twelfth, m spite of all efforts to keep her afloat, the ship was evidently sinking fast. The passengers continued to demean "themselves, however, with the greatjest propriety ; there was no weeping ; no exhibition of despair,, even among the women. 'At two o'clock m the afternoon a sail was reported to windward, and m about an hour after, the brig Marine, Captain Burt, of Boston, came up under the .Central America's stern. Boats were now lowered, but two were m•- -• atantly swamped and destroyed, the sea being < AT A) TERRIBLE HEIGHT, .Three boats still remained, though one of them . was. m. a bad condition. At four o'clock the, work of removing the women and children to the deck of the Marine' was commenced. .The brig, however,, being. much ligh.,ter than the strip* , had . drifted two or three .miles to leeward, and the .boats were long p L making their trips. , 'A.ftiji . the ::-y< ruvn "and" children had ■aV> oe<?:: ssielv' placed oh board, the '- thief engineer" and" sonic, fifteen others took to. 'the boats,, made for the /'brig, and. did not Return. It was Jnow\dark v : ''."'■'"■"'.. • About two hours before the sinking 'of '. the",.. ship a .schooner ran down ..wilder her steph, but CQiild render, •no assistance for "want' of boats ;sust then: /This ' was the El Dorado, Captain Stone, .who, as stated by him; supposing from c Captain ! , : Herndon's asking him' to lie by' awcl mcininf,-, that the steamer wo'iM . ta kept afloat till that time, rn.vic all Hi 3 preparations m his TfowoT to assist. The vessels drifted apart m. the storm, though. , the , 'lights from the 'steamer were vis-

ible to the schooner until" nearly, 8 o'clock, when

THEY SUDDENLY. DISAP^ PEARED,

Captain Stone then ran as near the spot as could be ascertained, but could discover nothing of the steam-

er. Until within-, an J hour of the fatal event the passengers continued to bail, iife-preservers were then given out to them. Captain Herndon stood „u,p..QR the. » T wheel, and, was heard to say, "I' never" will leave the ship." The final scene took place more suddenly than her unfortunate passengers anticipated. All at once the ship made a plunge and . disappeared. A simultaneous shriek of agony rose from five hundred voices, and five hundred human beings were now floating on the bosom of the ocean, with no hope, but death. About half-past one o'clock, on the morning of the 13th, the Norwegian barque Ellen hove to under short sail. And the task of rescuing those who had been able to survive m the water for some five hours was commenced, arid by nine o'clock m the forenoon, thirty-one men were saved. Diligent search was made until 12 o'clock, but NO MORE SURVIVORS could be seen ; so the Ellen bore away for Norfolk, Virginia, where the passengers rescued by her, as well as those taken off the Marine, were placed on board the steamer Empire City and conveyed to New York. Out of a total of 579 persons on board— 474 passengers and a crew of 105— only 152 were saved. Captain Herndon, the commander, stood courageously at his post to the last, and Went down with his vessel. He was.. one of the most brilliant officers m the American naval service, distinguishing himself m the American war, assisted for some time m the conduct of the National observatory at Washington, and m 1851-2, explored the Amazon River., under the direction of the United States Government.

Among the thrilling narratives of the wreck, and of their personal sufferings, given by some of the passengers, that by one, named George, furnishes an idea of the

TERRORS OF A NIGHT on the waves. George was one of tile hundreds who had supplied themselves with life-preservers, pieces of plank, etc., and preferred to await the ship's going down to leaping overboard m anticipation of her fate. When she went down stern foremost after she had given three lurches that made her very timbers quiver, he was dragged with the rest on board of her some 25 feet below the surface. He heard no shriek, nothing but the rush qf" waters that closed above her, as she hurried to her ocean be"d. Night had closed m before the vessel sank, and he was sucked mby the whirlpool caused by her descent, into a darkness he had never dreamed of. Compared with it", the blackest night, without moon or stars, was as the broad noonday. He was

MORE STUNNED THAN STIFLED , but when he became conscious, after the lapse of a minute or two, he could distinguish every object around him for a considerable distance. The waves as they rose and fell revealed a crowd of human heads. Those unfortunates who had lost their life preservers or planks while under water, owing to the force of the whirlpool, were frantically grasping at floating wreckage.. Then cries arose that mingled into one inarticulate wail, and then the lustier and less terrified shouted for assistance to the Marine, which was far beyond hailing distance. The waves dashed them one against another at first, 1 but speedily they began to separate, and the last farewells were taken! When, rising and falling from the swell of the waters, the lights of the barque Ellen were first seen by the struggling swimmers, the thrill of hope that at once filled every breast amounted to ecstasy.

The most remarkable individual experience m this terrible catastrophe was that of Alexander Grant, one of the firemen of the ill-fated steamer. Though but a young man, this was

,THE FOURTH TIME he-had been wrecked, escaping only through great hardship and peril. When a boy, on a Fall River schooner, he was wrecked m the bay of Fundy , and barely saved his life. Subsequently he was fireman on the

Collins steamer Arctic— the wreck of i which has appeared m this series m "Truth," and when that vessel went down he was left floating on a piece of timber, m the broad Atlantic ; after several days of intense suffering he was picked up by the ship Cambria and carried with Captain Luce to Quebec. Afterwards he became fireman on the steamship Crescent City, and when that vessel went ashore on the Bahamas had a third most narrow escape with his life. Still he did not quit the sea, but engaged again as fireman on. board the Central America and was on her when she went idown. •Just as the steamer was sinking, :-he, with nine others, got upon a piece of the hurricane deck which they had previously cut clear, and, when the vessel sank, the remnant floated off with them. "I left the ship," says Tice, one of the passengers, "on a board just as she went down.; I had no life-preserver, and had no time to get one., I saw others with them on, struggling m the water ; they seemed to do but little good. The last object I saw was Captain Herndon, as the. ' SHIP WAS SINKING.I drifted a«way from the .others almost immediately, and was three days on that board, expecting every moment to be my • last. On the third day I fell m with a boat, which was about half full of-water. -I -swam to it, got m with great difficulty, and succeeded m" bailingout the water. I was two days m the boat, when I fell m with a portion of the hurricane deck, and two men, Grant and Dawson, succeeded m getting into the boat with me. We floated around till the ninth day, when we were picked up by the brig Mary. All that time we had nothing to eat and not a drop of fresh water. Most of the time, the sea was breaking over the boat. We suffered everything but death. No man could describe what we endured." Grateful, indeed, were these famished men for the kindness of the "good old Scotch captain of the Mary," who, after taking them into the cabin, removed their clothing and gave them a sip of wine,, and afterwards water and gruel, gradually increasing the amount as they were able to take the same without injury. They were found to have been severely bruised, arid exposure to the action of salt water HAD PRODUCED BOILS " all over them. According to the statements made by many of the survivors, there was seldom so large an amount of money owned by passengers as was, the case with those who came by. the Central America, and the quantity of treasure on board was, consequently, far greater than the one and a half to two millions named on the freight list. : Many, indeed, were persons OF LARGE MEANS, and there were but few whose immediate wealth did not amount to hundreds, while numbers reckoned their gold by the thousands of dollars. The greater portion of the passengers were returned miners, some on their way to invest the capital they had realised, m hopes to live a life of greater ease as the result of their industry, and others to get their families and once more go to the land of gold. But, as the storm continued to rage, less and less was thought of gold, and when, on Saturday, it became evident that they were likely at any moment to be buried beneath the waves, wealthy men divested themselves of

THEIR TREASURE BELTS and scattered the gold upon the cabin floors, telling those to take it who would, lest its weight about their persons — a few extra ounces or pounds— should carry them to their death. Full purses, containing m some instances thousands of dollars, lay around untouched. Carpet-bags were opened, and the shining metal was poured out on the • floor with the prodigality of death's despair. One of the passengers opened a bag and dashed about the cabin twenty thousand dollars m gold dust, .and told him who wanted to gratify his greed for gold to take it. But it was passed by, untouched, as the veriest dross.