Forgotten News

by Jack Finney

  And comfortable, if a bit crowded; cabins "usually contained three berths, one above another, together with a cushioned locker which could accommodate another passenger … each room had a mirror, toilet stand, washbowl, water bottles and glasses. The floors were covered with carpet, and the berths … screened with outer damask … and inner cambric curtains."

  Officers had quarters in the same deckhouse, and sometimes the galley was there. On the deck below (the Central America had three decks), a similar arrangement containing both first-and second-class cabins, the second-class being smaller. Second-class "dined at the same tables and used the same decks as the first-class." Below all the others lay the steerage, with wooden bunks, "no private rooms, and (usually) no segregation of the sexes…."

  Four days now to Havana, including a stop at Belize, British Honduras. "The weather was … delightful, and the sea calm," said passenger Henry Childs. On Monday afternoon, September 7, they reached Havana, to remain overnight, and I suppose some of the passengers would have walked out, on that September evening, into a Spanish Havana that is now all but gone.

  A few additional passengers came on here. Two were seamen shipwrecked on a voyage from New York, now sent home on the Central America by the American consul. And a Mr. Jacobs came aboard without a ticket, hoping to buy one, but the Central America was fully booked. He'd have to wait for another ship, they told the disappointed man, and he walked back down the gangplank; with a story, I would guess, that he told for years.

  A new fireman joined the crew here: Alexander Grant, only twenty-six, but he'd been at sea for thirteen years, during which he'd been shipwrecked three times. I don't know whether or not he met an old shipmate aboard as a steerage passenger: George Dawson, a black man—called "mulatto" on the passenger list—returning home to Rochester, New York. If he did, it would have been a rather special reunion, because two years earlier, in December of 1855, Dawson and Grant had been shipwrecked together while serving on the Crescent City.

  And now, at about 9:35 next morning, Tuesday, September 8, said Second Mate James Frazer, the Central America steamed out to sea from Havana with some five hundred passengers and a crew of around a hundred. This final leg of the journey started out well. "Fine weather, moderate sea breezes and head sea" all day, Frazer said. There'd been some seasickness, but most of the passengers had recovered, and: "The general anticipation," said Virginia Birch, the young bride, "was that the few days which remained would pass merrily by." I think the Birches were a lively, sociable couple, and that they made the most of the good weather. Because it's from Virginia Birch that we know such things as that Mr. Shreve, the San Francisco jeweler, was on his way to New York to be married. I don't know that comedian Billy Birch entertained their friends professionally, out on the sunny deck that day or in the saloon that night; but he did entertain later under terrible circumstances, and so may have done so now. In any case, there was sociability of course aboard this nice ship in this fine weather.

  But now the first hint of trouble. On Wednesday the weather worsened a little; a fresh sea breeze and head sea, Second Mate Frazer noted when he came on watch early that morning. A lookout high on a mast reported Cape Florida 15 miles to the west; moving with the Gulf Stream, the Central America had traveled 286 miles in the first 26½ hours.

  In that "breeze and head sea," the ship began to pitch and roll a little, and a seventeen-year-old passenger, Winifred Fallon, traveling with her father and little brother, James, sharing a stateroom with a Mrs. Redding, got up that morning, and went right back "to bed again," she said, "where I staid…."

  But Virginia Birch came out on deck with a group of ladies. As they walked, she said, "a squall came up, and the wind blew like a whirlwind…. We were forced to leave the deck, and the word brought into the cabin was that we must again expect rough weather." During the day wind and sea rose still further, and "with the increase of the gale sea sickness again seized the passengers…. We passed the night on the sofas in the cabin, the sea sickness rendering it impossible to occupy our staterooms. I lay down on a sofa with my clothes on, and passed a very uncomfortable time, the vessel careening fearfully."

  A storm, "a genuine West India hurricane," said a passenger, had begun, which would move along up the coast from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, but to the ship's officers it wasn't too bad. Even the next day, Thursday, steaming along the Florida coast well out to sea, when the weather worsened still more, the wind and head sea strengthening, Captain Herndon and his officers weren't alarmed; a rough sea, all right, but within normal bounds.

  But to Virginia Birch, Thursday was "a fearful day, the vessel rocking and pitching violently…." And by that night, she said, "the sea breaking over the steamer had dashed large quantities of water into the staterooms, and subsequently they were not used…."

  Second Mate James Frazer took the watch again at eight that evening, went off at twelve, and all he said of the weather was, "The wind continued to blow heavy all night." Virginia Birch said, "… At night the storm did not abate, but darkness added to our fears."

  When Frazer came on again at 4 a.m. Friday, it was raining as well as rough, so I picture him as wearing rain gear as he walked out onto the deck. He said only that the sea was "running high," but however accustomed he was to all kinds of weather, it could hardly have been pleasant out there in the dark and rain, the ship lifting, dropping, rolling, as he checked their course, keeping the steamer headed into that sea. Chief Engineer George Ashby said, "The day commenced with the wind blowing a perfect hurricane," but then he wasn't a deck officer.

  Still, it was a full-fledged gale now, and I can't believe that many passengers came out on deck Friday morning. But at least two of them did: Captain Thomas W. Badger, traveling as a passenger, and his wife, Jane. They got up about six, dressed, and came out to walk that careening deck. I wish we had a daguerreotype of Thomas Badger or even only a physical description, but we don't know what he looked like. It is a fact, though, that he was remarkably powerful, so I picture him as a man of medium height with massive shoulders and chest. And for even less reason —no reason—he walks through my mind bald and with a short black beard: I have got to have a mental picture of him, since we'll see this remarkable man in some remarkable action. Your own mental illustration of T. W. Badger may be different.

  As he walked the slowly rocking deck with his wife, this experienced seaman checked things out: the wind, he noted, was "fresh and directly ahead, but the ship came up finely, and was not strained perceptibly by the wind or the roughness of the sea." From below he could hear the steady sound of the two steam engines turning the enormous paddle wheels past which the couple made their way from time to time, and Captain Badger noted that they "were working regularly and slowly." He had made three previous voyages on the Central America, so he knew the ship, and all seemed well to him.

  But not to one of the cabin passengers, a Mrs. Thayer. "I got up early on Friday morning," she said. "I could not sleep for the tossing of the ship. I could hardly keep in my berth…. Some of the other ladies were already up…. The steamer was plunging and careening, and I felt a continual anxiety, lest a timber should be strained so as to let the water in. I told the ladies that I meant to go and see the Captain, and to ask him if he thought the ship was safe. Two or three of them laughed at me, and said that they had been out in just such gales before, and that they had never fallen into danger. Besides, they said that the ship was very strong. But I was not easy in my mind, and every time a high sea struck her sides, feared a leak…."

  At eight o'clock Third Officer Charles Myers relieved James Frazer. Who noted, writing it in the log, I expect, that the rain had stopped, but it was "still blowing heavy." The Central America had passed Florida, and now stood, well out to sea, off the coast of Georgia.

  The Badgers seem obviously not seasick because about half past eight they went to breakfast, and then he came out on deck once more. Now, Captain Badger doesn't say he was conce
rned, and I don't suppose he was. Yet he seems to have continually checked and rechecked the condition of the ship; looking down an open hatchway now—inside the deck cabin, I believe—he noted that there was no water to be seen in the hold.

  Somewhere between nine and ten o'clock that morning, as he later remembered it, out on deck again or still, he met George Ashby, the chief engineer, on his way somewhere. Ashby figures very importantly in what later happened, and we know what he looked like to a Tribune reporter: "… a fine, stalwart man of about thirty, with a frank, seamanlike face and bearing, and certainly with nothing about him from which to surmise … defect of character…." Captain Badger now remarked to Ashby that it was blowing hard, and would blow harder still before long. But Ashby answered that he didn't think the gale would get any worse, and added, as Badger recalled, " 'Let it blow—we are ready for it.' " So finally bull-chested, bald-headed, black-bearded Captain Badger went below, and stayed there for the rest of the morning; even for him a yowling gale would be no fun out on deck. Badger believed that Engineer Ashby "apprehended no special danger," and he noted that the ship was "at this time working easily, and was apparently staunch."

  He was wrong: about ship and Ashby both. For the chief engineer had "discovered that the ship was making considerable water, more than ordinarily results from the drippings of various parts of the machinery." Ashby ordered his assistant, John Tice, to stand by the pumps for bilge injection, then he went up "to Captain Herndon at once," he said, to report that the ship was making water. Possibly this was when he met Captain Badger on deck.

  Ashby had another problem he hadn't mentioned to passenger Badger: he was running low on coal at the boilers. The coal bunkers lay fore and aft, and ordinarily coal was brought down passageways to the furnaces by wheelbarrows. But now the Central America, heading into the gale, lay tilted so far over to starboard—which is the right side, facing front—that the barrows couldn't be wheeled down the passageways, and Ashby had his crew passing coal along in buckets. But that wasn't fast enough, because this morning he needed even more steam than usual, for the pumps.

  Captain Herndon listened to Ashby's report, and then—breakfast being over—he sent down some of the waiters to form another coal-passing brigade.

  But now another problem. Ashby noticed that the water pouring out of the pumps was hot. He thought he understood why: with the ship tilted over so far, the water down here lay only along one side of the ship. The other side stood high and dry, the pumps over there idle since they had nothing to pump. With only half his pumps at work, the water leaking into the ship was gaining and had risen high enough to touch the steam boilers on the starboard side. This not only uselessly heated the bilge water but also tended to cool the boilers. And they had to stay hot—to make the steam that turned the paddles that kept the ship alive and maneuverable.

  With crewmen and waiters passing coal along as fast as they could work, Ashby kept the boilers going. The bilge pumps "worked freely," he saw, and the paddle wheels continued to turn. But slowly, the steam not at full pressure, and the water continuing to gain.

  Trouble up on deck now, too. The lightly loaded Central America stood high out of the water, and as the press of the still-rising gale felt for the ship's sides, Captain Herndon had greater and greater difficulty keeping his ship headed into the wind. Yet he could not allow it to fall off and lie helpless in the troughs of these enormous waves. So about ten o'clock he ordered Third Officer Myers, still on watch, to set a sail called a "storm spencer," meant to help keep the ship into the wind. As it did, briefly, then suddenly the raging wind ripped the canvas to fluttering tatters.

  The gale increased, the shrill sound of it in the rigging rising higher. And the height and stupendous power of the waves grew with it. More sail was set out to substitute for the shredded spencer, but still the high-out-of-the-water ship fought them, kept turning its prow aside, wanting to lie sideways and helpless. That must not happen, for it would allow the entire towering tonnage of the gigantic waves to crash onto the full length of the ship. And so above deck and below, with canvas and rudder and with faltering engines, they fought the terrible wind and sea.

  At noon Second Mate James Frazer took the watch, relieving Myers; but now First Mate Charles Van Rensellaer and Captain Herndon stayed on deck with him. As always, when he came on, Frazer noted the weather: the gale continued, but he thought the waves had abated a little.

  In the saloon of the long deck cabin, those waiters who were left tried to follow routine, and set the table for lunch. But no one could sit at the sinking, rising, tilted-over tables; and dishes crashed onto the floor. So they simply passed out food to those passengers who even wanted it, to eat from their fingers as best they could.

  Thomas Badger, experienced sea captain but with no authority here, again left his cabin, and headed for the hatchway down which, as I believe, he could look into the engine room. He doesn't say so, but apparently the hatchway lay on the raised side of the tilted ship, because looking down it, Badger still could see no water below. But he could see or hear the engines turning, and returned to his cabin. If he was dying to wander down into the engine room, he would have refrained, I think: George Ashby had been chief engineer on this ship for six years; this was the forty-fifth trip he'd made in her.

  And the engines were turning, as Badger had noted, but ever more slowly as the water climbed higher up the boilers, cooling them still more, continuing to lower the pressure while it heated the bilge water. And now steam began rising from this heated water sloshing along the starboard side of the tipped ship. Then the water overflowed into the coal bunkers, steam filled the air there, it put out the lamps, and suddenly the men passing coal could no longer see.

  Coal-passing stopped, and pressure in the boilers dropped. Ashby ordered an assistant to get up steam in the donkey engine boiler, which was smaller, and hurried up to the top deck and "reported to Captain Herndon the state of affairs in the engine room."

  I see Herndon—young, not much past forty, and of "slight figure" —standing on that howling deck, his head averted from the wind, Ashby's mouth shouting at his ear. And then: you wonder what he felt at the order he now had to give: men passengers were to be organized into bailing gangs. And those of his crew he could spare, possibly the remaining waiters, were sent down to steerage with axes to chop up the wooden bunks for fuel. And you wonder what the passengers felt as the captain's boy, Garrison, now walked the length of the deck cabin saloon crying out, as one passenger remembered it, " 'All hands down below to bail.' " The ship lay careened on her side, and the passengers knew she was in trouble —Virginia Birch spoke of the awful "crackings of the timbers"—but until this moment they hadn't known the ship was leaking. Mrs. Thayer, who'd been frightened earlier by the "plunging and careening" of the ship, said that now: "… My fears were painfully verified." All my quotations, incidentally, are from news publications of the time.

  But: "After the first excitement caused by the news that the steamer had sprung a leak," said Mrs. Frederick S. (Adie) Hawley, a passenger, "the women were very calm…. I saw no weeping…." Mrs. Hawley had been terribly seasick for the past few days, like many others, but she was up now; had to be, I suppose, in this storm, for the Hawleys' children were with them: William, only two years old, and DeForest, a five-month-old infant. Now, in the saloon, Adie Hawley watched one passenger, she said, rather dramatically pull off his coat, and leave to go help bail, walking as best he could in the tilted ship. The other men were leaving, too, including her husband, Frederick.

  "Rich New-York socialite" Frank A. Jones was a friend of Captain Herndon's, and as Jones remembered it, Herndon now said to him, " 'You must take off your broadcloth, and go to work!' " I don't know whether Jones thought his good clothes still mattered, or whether he was just making a lark of this, but he immediately went belowdecks, and "borrowed a pair of sailor's pantaloons, red shirt and coarse boots, and with the glazed cover of a cloth cap on his head reported himself in working cost
ume."

  I suppose there is always an officious take-charge man around, if the crowd is large enough. And one showed up now. "The people were pretty quiet and orderly," said passenger John Taylor, but "one man … named Miller, a passenger, took a position at the top of the steps leading to the steerage; he drew his revolver, and threatened to shoot down any one who refused to work at the pumps and attempted to get upon deck. I saw him strike one person a smart blow in the face; that was all the fighting and disturbance that I noticed. After a time any man that wanted to come up was not prevented."

  The women sat waiting in the long deck cabin. "The sea broke over [the ship] in avalanches," said Virginia Birch, "completely swamping the cabin and staterooms, and the vessel would be so completely buried that it was as dark as Erebus."

  On deck, Frazer said to the captain that they ought to get the ship headed into the wind, but Herndon replied that he'd been trying just that all morning, and couldn't. "I then proposed to keep off before the wind," Frazer said—which I think meant keeping the ship as close into the wind as possible—"and he told me to do what I could…."

  Even though no longer fully headed into the wind, they were able to keep on course, but the gale continued to increase, and finally the Central America was forced off course to the southeast. Up to then Frazer thought "the ship behaved well," but now, listing heavily to starboard, her great paddle wheels barely turning with the last of the steam, the Central America at last fell off into the trough of the sea, and the tremendous waves began crashing onto the entire length of the deck.

  First Mate Van Rensellaer ordered Frazer to "rig the bilge pumps" —deck pumps, I think, which worked by hand. "The lee pumps worked well and discharged water abundantly," Frazer said, but here on deck, like Ashby below, they could use only half the pumps. Those on the high side of the tilted ship "did not work, there not being water enough to supply them."

  In his cabin Captain Badger felt the ship lurch, as it fell off into the trough, I expect, and another passenger, eighteen-year-old Henry O'Con-ner, was thrown right out of his bunk. Captain Badger immediately went out to look down his hatchway again. He "saw the engines moving very slowly indeed," and then, even as he stood looking at them, they stopped.