Forgotten News

by Jack Finney

  Inside the long deck cabin "when the cry of 'Sail, ho!' was heard," said Mrs. Frederick Hawley, "our feelings of joy at the prospect of deliverance then overcame us, and many wept, but they were tears of joy." And —don't we know also?—some embraced, some grinned crazily, some babbled while others went silent, unable to talk, and some would have spoken only a wordless cry. While others would have suddenly covered their faces, unable to look any longer at that steadily swelling expanse of sail. "… we all thought that we would be saved," said Mrs. Hawley, and she went to her husband.

  Frederick Hawley, a man of about thirty-five, an original forty-niner, was one of the men still down below bailing, and there Adie Hawley asked if he wasn't tired. She said he replied, " 'Yes, I am tired, but I can work forty-eight hours in the same way, if necessary. I am working for your life, for you and my children,' " and I'm willing to believe that those are Hawley's actual words or close to them, come down to us over a century and more; that that is how people felt then, and was the way he phrased it.

  Up on deck the experienced sea eyes of Herndon, Frazer, the other ship's officers, and Captain Badger could now pick out the thin stroke of black against the storm sky that was the single mast of the approaching ship, and make out the shape of her sail. Then her hull, then it was most clearly a ship, and after that it was here, and every staring person aboard the Central America could see that this ship, too, had experienced the awful gale. One of its two masts had snapped off in the storm, and she sailed toward them now, downwind, with only the canvas of her remaining foremast.

  She was the brig Marine, so close now they could read her name; a tiny ship. Then she passed across the stern of the Central America not a hundred feet away, her captain estimated. Our people could see the faces of her crew, and for a moment the two ships were so close "a cracker could have been thrown from our vessel to her," passenger Frank A. Jones thought, standing watching in his borrowed red shirt and pantaloons.

  Herndon spoke his order, and James Frazer drew in breath to shout across the gap: They were in a sinking condition. Would the other ship stand by, and take off their passengers?

  Yes, he would, shouted Hiram Burt, the Marine's captain, and "the passengers on the Central America cheered," said one newspaper's account, "believing that they were now all safe."

  But not all of them thought so. Although the "weather had moderated," James Frazer said, "the wind southeast," the waves were still enormous, the ship's lifeboats small, and they'd be loaded to capacity: the truth was, said Frank Jones, "we did not think that [the lifeboats] could live."

  It was their only chance, though, and: "The captain came down," said Mrs. Bowley, "and told us that the ladies would be saved first." Then, in their cabins, women strapped life preservers on their children and themselves. These were mostly of tin but some were cork, and those who understood, or whose husbands did, chose cork if they could, because the tin ones dented easily, and then leaked. Speaking to their children and their husbands, the women got ready … and now a curious thing happened.

  The women knew or were now told that in transferring from ship to lifeboat to ship again in this dangerous sea, they might be dropped into the water; and of course the men didn't know what was in store for them at all. So now many passengers, men and women both, seem to have decided that they could not weigh themselves down with gold, heavy as lead. And yet … if you've ever held pure gold in your hand you know that it looks and feels like nothing else; has the look and feel of value like no other substance. And even in these life-and-death moments, many of these people simply could not just walk away from their gold.

  "Treasure belts were opened, and gold was scattered on the cabin floors, lest a few ounces or pounds of weight should decide their desperate contest with the waves. Full purses, containing in some instances $2,000, were lying untouched on sofas. Carpetbags were opened by men, and the shining metal poured out onto the floor and spurned in contempt. One of the passengers … opened a bag and dashed about the cabin $20,000 in gold dust, telling all who wanted to gratify their greed for gold to take it. But it was passed by untouched. Two ladies brought out $10,000 in twenty-dollar gold pieces, and threw them down in the cabin, but no one wanted them. None of the ladies took more than two $20 pieces with them; as they prepared to leave the steamer, many relieved themselves of their weighty garments, except their outside dress."

  Amanda Marvin and her husband left $18,000 in gold. Jane Badger told the captain she wanted to take their one thousand twenty-dollar gold pieces with her in a valise, but it would have weighed sixty pounds, I believe, and he said no, the gold "would have to take its chances with him." Mr. McClough took his $3,000 in gold out on deck, found Alice Lockwood, with whom he'd become acquainted, and asked her to take it to his mother. Although it was nine more pounds to weigh her down, she said she would. "Old Aunt Lucy," a black stewardess, took her money with her, whether in gold or paper I don't know.

  Not everyone bothered with gold, or had it. Mrs. Mary Swan, of Rough and Ready, California, stood in her cabin preparing her baby to leave the ship. Her husband had left the pumps to be with her now. And Mary Swan said "he took me aside and bade me 'Good bye.' He said, 'I don't know that I shall ever see you again.' He was very glad to think that I could be taken off. He wanted me to go, and said that he did not care about himself, if it were possible that I could be saved, and the little child. He told me that he would try to save himself if an honorable opportunity should present itself after all the women were taken off." Then the Swan family left for the deck. They were alive once, the Swans, and that is what happened; that's the way she remembered their last conversation down in their cabin on a sinking ship.

  Also in her cabin, preparing her two children, Adie Hawley spoke to her husband; he, too, had left his bailing long enough to see his family clear. She'd been seasick for days, she said to him now; she had to have his help with the children; she wanted him with her in the lifeboat. "He went and took his money out of the trunk," Mrs. Hawley said, "but made no reply as to whether he would accompany me. My husband took the infant, and Mr. Bobke the oldest child, and we went on deck."

  A young bride, Mrs. McNeil, had apparently told someone she would refuse to leave her cabin unless her husband left the ship with her. Now: "He came into her cabin," said one account, "to persuade her to go without him, but finding her resolute in her determination," he left. Back he came "shortly afterwards, and said that he would go with her."

  A Frenchwoman, Mme. Pahud, had three children to prepare for the lifeboats, and apparently her cabin door stood open, for "many what I knew," a reporter later quoted her, "told me to write to their family and tell them they would not live…."

  Billy Birch had been on deck when the announcement was made, and his wife, Virginia, said that "my husband came to the cabin and asked me to prepare myself to go …." He brought along a life preserver for her, "which I put on. I went into my stateroom for a cloak, followed by Mr. Birch, and I saw my canary-bird in its cage. It was singing as merrily as it ever did. On the spur of the moment I took the little thing from its prison and placed it in the bosom of my dress …."

  "Captain Herndon ordered the boats lowered as soon as the Marine hove to," said Engineer Ashby. In this huge sea each lifeboat would be rowed by four crewmen, a fifth commanding and steering. Boatswain John Black's boat and Quartermaster Finley Frazier's were lowered safely, and "several men stepped forward to get into them," said passenger Frank Jones. "Captain Herndon ordered them to step back, and allow the women and children to enter them. His orders were obeyed with the greatest readiness…."

  Women and children began appearing in their life preservers, the two crews in the water below them fighting to keep their boats from being smashed against the ship's side. As the women stood waiting their turns to be lowered over the side, men offered them gold they'd picked up in the empty cabins below. Fourteen women and children in this first lot, Frank Jones said, Mrs. Frederick Hawley among them, and she knew half the others: M
rs. Badger, Mrs. Thayer and her nurse, Susan; the seasick Winifred Fallon, and her small brother, James, I'm sure; and two of the brides: Addie M. Easton and Mrs. McNeil, whose young husband stood with her, having promised to go along.

  The women were lowered by ropes toward Finley Frazier's waiting boat one by one, Herndon and the purser giving directions. Some of the younger women put a foot into a loop, and held on above their heads, ready to step off into the boat as they reached it. Others had to be lowered sitting, and Adie Hawley said, "it was with the greatest difficulty we could be placed in the boat … we sat in the noose, and held on by our hands."

  Mrs. McNeil's bridegroom husband told her to go first so that he could assist "at lowering her into the boat," but she had trouble. "Mrs. Badger, Mrs. Thayer, and Mrs. McNeil could not reach the boat at the proper instant," Mrs. Hawley said, "and were immersed in the sea, but they were soon hauled on board the boat. They were much frightened, but remained very calm.

  "The little children were passed down, the officers lowering them by their arms, until the boat swung underneath, and they could be caught hold of by the boatmen. It was frightening to see these helpless little ones, held by their tiny arms above the waves. My baby was nearly smothered by the flying spray, as they were obliged to hold him a long time before he could be reached by the boatmen; but when I pressed him once more to my bosom, and covered him with my shawl, he soon fell asleep. The children did not cry, except when the salt water came over us and flew in their faces. We were all without clothing or bonnets, except the thin dresses we had on. I took nothing with me, except a heavy shawl and my watch. Some of the children were without clothing or shoes and stockings … when our boat was full I heard Mr. Hull give the order … to shove off…."

  As Frazier's crew dug in their oars, young Mrs. McNeil sat staring up at her bridegroom husband still standing on the deck of the Central America. He "bade her good-bye, and said that he could not follow her … it was the last time she saw or heard of him …."

  "I looked to see where the vessel was we were going to," Mrs. Hawley continues, "and she seemed to be about a mile and a half away." For the Marine was drifting, the once narrow gap between the two ships widening fast; with only the sail on his foremast, Captain Hiram Burt couldn't fully control her. "The last I saw of my husband," Mrs. Hawley said, "he stood on the wheel house and kissed his hand to me as the boat pulled away from the ship."

  Now women and children were being lowered into John Black's boat. "My husband left his place at the pumps," said Mary Swan, "to assist me into the lifeboat. My babe was put into the boat before I was, the rope was put around my waist … and I was lowered without accident…." Mrs. O'Conner, knowing that she had to leave Henry, her eighteen-year-old son, behind, left the sinking ship with the child she had promised to deliver to his family's friends in Albany. Other women followed, then John Black yelled his order and the boat pulled away. "The last I saw of my poor husband," Mrs. Swan said, "was when he helped me into the boat," and she heard afterward, she said, that he had returned to the pumps.

  A third boat had been lowered but was stove in by the heavy sea. The fourth boat was lowered safely, and put in charge of Quartermaster David Raymond. Ashby launched their fifth and last boat at Herndon's request, and bad luck came Ashby's way once again. A heavy sea, he said, "carried the boat under the lee guard"—the protective structure, I think, covering one of the paddle wheels—"and it was stove in and swamped, carrying me down with it. In a short time I regained the ship's deck."

  The afternoon was wearing on, darkness approaching; they had only the three lifeboats now; and the Marine continued to drift farther and farther away. Each successive trip between the two ships would clearly take longer than the previous one; and it became obvious, presently, that at best there would be time to take off only the women and children.

  So men began prowling the ship for life preservers. Eighteen-year-old Henry O'Conner found a tin one, buckled it on, and then, he said, Engineer George Ashby appeared—I don't know where they were—and threatened to take it. To cut the straps, and pull it off him. Just then, said O'Conner, another passenger came along, and stopped him.

  "The Marine had drifted far from us," said Mrs. Hawley in the first lifeboat, "and we were half an hour in getting to her. [The Marine] was very deeply loaded, and rolled badly. Her bulwarks were nearly level with [our lifeboat] when it was lifted by the sea, and great care was necessary in going alongside, to keep the [life]boat from being swamped."

  The Marine was small; even in calm weather her deck stood only seven feet above the water, and: "Consequently, when the boats from the Central America came alongside … the sea was so high that the [life]boat, when it crested the waves, rose absolutely higher than the deck of the Marine. Captain Burt took advantage of this, and stationed himself on the deck, close to the railing, and told the women one at a time to hold out their hands when he directed. This being understood, two sailors stood by to keep the boat from being precipitated on the deck of the Marine; when the boat rose, Captain Burt stood ready, and, at the agreed signal seized one woman and hauled her on to the deck; in this perilous way every one was taken on board…."

  It was Captain Burt, Adie Hawley said, who "took my little Willy, and the mate received DeForest, playfully saying, as he passed him over the side, 'He is all gold.' My heart was lighter when I saw my children safely on board the brig."

  With his boatload on the Marine, Finley Frazier headed his crew back for the Central America. John Black's boat was still on her way to the Marine, but—the Marine steadily drifting—it was a longer trip.

  Widow Ann Small stood on the slanted deck of the Central America with her two-year-old daughter, waiting to enter the third boat. In her pocket she'd put her "port-monnaie," she said, and "saved it, together with some bills of my husband's ship, but they were all." Captain Herndon, First Mate Charles Van Rensellaer, and James Frazer superintended the lowering of the women over the side, then her turn came, and "Captain Herndon came up and spoke to me. He appeared sad but very firm. 'Mrs. Small,' said he, 'this is sad;—I am sorry not to get you home safely.' " Mrs. Small was to be lowered into the boat before her daughter, and Herndon "stood by me and fixed my shawl and told me that my little one should be lowered down immediately…." They lowered Mrs. Small, but a receding wave drew the boat out from under her, and she was dropped into the sea. They lifted her, tried again, and again she went under, and was yanked out. The third time they got her into the boat, and it immediately shoved off, oars digging in, Mrs. Small's two-year-old daughter left behind on the sinking ship.

  The Marine was now, "I think, some two or three miles distant," George Ashby said, and as David Raymond's boat crawled across the sea toward it, Captain Herndon took Ashby into his room. "He inquired of me if I was armed?" Ashby said. "I answered that the only weapon I had was a knife which had been given to me by a passenger in the morning. He then said he would try and borrow for me a pair of pistols, and"— the two having again gone out on deck, I assume—"asked Mr. Payne, a passenger, for the loan of his, and would have got them but for the fact that they were in his trunk, and that was under water. The Captain then asked me to assist in transferring the passengers to the brig, and directed me not to let a single man get into one of the boats till after all of the women and children were saved."

  Twelve miles across the sea, too small to be seen by the Central America, a little two-hundred-ton schooner fought the subsiding but still-powerful storm. "At 4 o'clock P.M…. blowing heavy, with high sea," said her captain, Samuel D. Stone, "faintly descried, with my glass, a vessel, but could not, at the time, make out her character; she was on my weather bow. As I kept on, in about half an hour I saw that she was a steamer, with all her colors set as signals of distress. As soon as I saw this I hauled my wind, and shaped my course for the distressed vessel; I could see that she was disabled, and was deep in the water."

  But like every other ship caught out in that awful hurricane, the El Dorado had suffere
d. Her "foregaff was carried away, her foresail split to rags, her bulwarks stove…. She sprung her bowsprit so badly … that she leaked…." She was "loaded down to her chains, and the peculiarly shaped barnacles of Matagorda … [covered] her hull, almost up to the chains." Nevertheless the El Dorado began laboring across the miles between the two ships.

  With lifeboats returning to the Central America, Virginia Birch stood with other women, and children, waiting, her worst fear during the storm —that the ship might sink—now being realized. But Billy Birch stood with her, and she felt optimistic: "When on deck I gave my husband a good bye, fully believing that soon he would be with me on the brig." A lifeboat reached the ship, once again her crew fought the little battle to keep from being smashed against the wall of the ship's side, and "Chief Engineer Ashby superintended getting the passengers into the boats," Virginia Birch said. She was lowered in her turn "but was completely saturated by the waves," and several of the women were dipped under. Then, sitting in the lifeboat, drenched, Virginia Birch watched as the children were lowered over the side, and for some reason: "The lowering of the children recalled to my mind my bird, and my first thought was that it had been crushed by the rope about my waist, or else drowned by the waves which broke over us…. I looked and found the little fellow lying quietly under the edge of my dress, unhurt."

  One of the children lowered into the lifeboat was Ann Small's little daughter, sent by Herndon in the care of a Mrs. Kitteridge. Still waiting on deck stood Mrs. Isaac McKim Bowley with her two-year-old, Charles, and one-year-old Isabella, and "I must confess that, being sick and weak, and with these two helpless little ones clinging to me," she said, "I became somewhat discouraged and disheartened. The sea was very violent, and the prospect of out-riding it in such a little frail craft was terrible … neither the lifeboat nor the life preserver [she wore] seemed like safety, for it is impossible to describe the roughness of the waves, and the brig was a great way off…."