Month: August 2026

SS Fleurus: The Day the Circus Ship Caught Fire

I decided to cover this ship because of Shirley. You will meet Shirley halfway through the article. The SS Fleurus disaster was a remarkable rescue in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. In 1963, a converted passenger and freight ship carrying the Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers Circus caught fire at the wharf and began sinking. Town residents, firefighters, and circus workers suddenly found themselves trying to rescue not only people, but elephants, lions, horses, zebras, and other animals from a burning ship.

Fleurus was built in France in 1926 for Canada’s Anticosti Shipping Company. She was launched on March 28, 1926, and completed the following month. Long before her unusual career as a circus ship, she carried passengers and cargo through the Gulf and along the St. Lawrence, including service to Anticosti Island.

In 1963, the Al G. Kelly and Miller Brothers Circus bought the aging Fleurus and refitted her as a floating base for a Canadian coastal tour. Instead of moving everything overland, the circus could sail its performers, equipment, and animals directly from one port town to another. Spaces aboard the ship were adapted for the performers and a menagerie that included big cats, horses, zebras, and three adult elephants. To complete the transformation, the hull was painted the circus’s vivid orange.

After two shows in Yarmouth, Fleurus was being loaded for the short trip to Shelburne when a fire broke out in the engine room. Smoke quickly spread through the ship, and firefighters rushed to the wharf. But fighting a fire aboard a ship creates another problem. The tremendous amount of water being pumped aboard had nowhere to go. As water accumulated inside Fleurus, her stability worsened and she began listing toward the wharf. The firefighters were battling the flames while the water they needed to save the ship was also helping pull her down.

That list may have helped save some of the animals. With the ship leaning close enough to shore, rescuers laid heavy planks between the deck and the wharf and began leading the elephants across. One of those elephants was named Shirley. A crane was used to lift animal cages from the upper deck while firefighters stood nearby in case any of the frightened big cats escaped. At one point, a sling carrying a cage containing two lions broke, but the cage held and the lions survived.

There were other close calls. A horse named Sparkle escaped into the harbor and became trapped beneath the wharf. Circus worker Bob Dawson went into the water and managed to guide the frightened horse back out. A Brahma bull also ended up in the water and swam to shore.

All the performers and almost every animal survived. One zebra, trapped below deck as the ship settled, was the only animal fatality recorded by the Nova Scotia Archives. Fleurus was eventually towed away and deliberately sunk, while the circus lost much of its equipment and possessions. Today, the story is remembered less for the loss of the ship than for what happened beside that Yarmouth wharf, where firefighters, circus workers, and local residents came together to save animals from a burning and sinking vessel.

One of the most remarkable survivors of Fleurus wasn’t a person at all. Shirley was an Asian elephant born in 1948 who spent about twenty years performing in circuses. Her life after Fleurus would become a story of its own. She survived a badly broken leg in 1974, and three years later was moved to the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo, where she lived as the zoo’s only elephant for 22 years.

By 1999, Shirley was getting older, and her caretakers wanted her to have more room and, perhaps more importantly, the company of other elephants. Her longtime caretaker, Solomon James, accompanied her to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

Something remarkable happened after she arrived. Shirley immediately showed an extraordinary reaction to another elephant named Jenny. The two strained to reach one another through the bars separating their stalls. It was eventually discovered that Shirley and Jenny had performed together in the same circus 24 years earlier. They appeared to remember each other.

For the next seven years, Shirley and Jenny were nearly inseparable. Their reunion and relationship were featured in the PBS documentary The Urban Elephant. Shirley remained at the Tennessee sanctuary for the rest of her long life. She died there in 2021 at the age of 72. The timeline of Shirley PLUS her time in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

SS Pacific (1875): The Fatal Collision

This is the SS Pacific that sank in 1875. There was also another SS Pacific that sank in 1856 (I’ll cover it later). That one had no survivors, but this one did.

Reading about this ship reminds me how life can change in an instant. This story really got to me because only two people survived, and just one of them was a crew member. That leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how a collision with a wooden sailing ship could sink a steamship so quickly. More than 150 years later, the SS Pacific remains one of the great maritime mysteries.

The SS Pacific was built in 1850, and by 1875, she was already showing her age. She had even sunk once before, in 1861, before being repaired and returned to service. On November 4, 1875, she departed Victoria, British Columbia, bound for San Francisco with an estimated 275 to 300 passengers aboard. Among them were wealthy gold miners returning home, families, and several prominent citizens. In addition to her passengers, she carried valuable cargo, including an estimated 200 pounds of gold dust and coins, worth millions of dollars today. She was commanded by Captain Jefferson Davis Howell, a Confederate Civil War veteran and the brother-in-law of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

At around 10:00 that evening, the Pacific encountered the sailing ship Orpheus, which was heading north. According to later testimony, the crew of the Orpheus mistook the Pacific’s single masthead light for the Cape Flattery lighthouse and unknowingly crossed into the steamer’s path. The crew aboard the Orpheus heard the Pacific sound her whistle, but in the darkness and poor visibility, the two ships were unable to avoid each other.

According to Captain Charles Sawyer of the Orpheus, the Pacific struck his ship with a glancing blow. The heavily built Orpheus was damaged, but her hull remained watertight. After checking his vessel and finding no serious leakage, Sawyer believed the Pacific had continued safely on her voyage. He had no idea what was happening behind him.

Sawyer later recalled: “I made up my mind that she would hit us, and shortly afterward, she blew her whistle and immediately struck us; the blow was a light one. She had evidently stopped her engines and was backing [up] and gave us a glancing blow. When, after I found I was not seriously damaged, I looked for the steamer. I just saw a light on our starboard quarter, and when I looked again, it was gone.”

Fog was one of the greatest dangers faced by ships before modern navigation equipment and still afterward to a degree. A captain could know exactly where his ship was supposed to be and still have no idea what was a few hundred yards ahead. Ships relied heavily on lookouts, whistles, bells, and careful estimates of their position. The safest answer was usually to slow down, but schedules and confidence sometimes worked against caution. In heavy fog, two ships could be dangerously close before either crew ever saw the other.

One detail that surprised me was learning that the Pacific’s crew had reportedly filled several lifeboats with water to help counter the ship’s list caused by the uneven weight of her paddlewheels. It was an inventive (really genius) idea that may have temporarily stabilized the vessel, but it also left those lifeboats far too heavy to launch in an emergency. Whether that decision made any difference will never be known. Within minutes of the collision, the Pacific was overwhelmed by the sea and disappeared beneath the waves. Almost everyone aboard was lost, taking with them the answers to what really happened during those final moments.

Only two people survived the disaster. One was passenger Henry F. Jelley; he was awakened by the noise and commotion. He went on deck, where the crew told him an accident had occurred, but that the ship had sustained no damage. Reassured, Jelley went below again, but just as he climbed into bed, the vessel shuddered under his feet, and he heard the roar of water. He got off the ship and managed to cling to a section of the pilothouse until he was rescued the following morning.

The other survivor was Neil O. Henley, Pacific’s quartermaster, who was asleep in his bunk around 10 p.m. when he heard the crash and woke to find water rushing into the ship “at a furious rate.” He threw on a jacket and hurried up the companionway. “On reaching the deck, all was confusion,” he later recalled. Henley survived for several days on floating wreckage before finally being rescued by a passing vessel.

Unfortunately, neither man witnessed the actual collision. Both were below deck when the ships struck, so neither could explain why the Pacific failed to avoid the Orpheus or exactly what happened on the bridge during those final moments. The officers, helmsman, and Captain Howell all went down with the ship, taking the answers with them.

By now, the Pacific was sinking fast. The cranes holding the lifeboat would not release, but as the ship rolled, the smaller vessel touched the water. Someone on deck cut the fastenings with an ax, freeing the lifeboat. But the craft, overloaded with people and still half-full of water from the earlier attempt to balance the Pacific, capsized, losing women, children, and men. Exactly how quickly the Pacific sank will probably never be known. With only two survivors and no surviving account from her bridge, much of what happened during her final minutes disappeared with the ship.

All the ships I’ve covered that involved collisions have one thing in common. 9 times out of 10, the ship that rams into the other ship usually survives, except with the SS Pacific. At the Canadian coroner’s inquiry, witnesses testified that Pacific’s hull was rotten and leaked badly. Even more, a piece of Pacific’s bow was reportedly found caught in Orpheus’s rigging. The jury concluded that the relatively light collision should not have caused such catastrophic damage if Pacific had been sound and substantial.

For nearly 150 years, the Pacific rested undisturbed beneath more than 1,000 feet of water, beyond the reach of divers and hidden from the world. Then, in 2022, a search team announced they believed they had finally located the long-lost wreck off the Washington coast. The depth, the location, the paddlewheel remains, and recovered artifacts all strongly point to the wreck being the Pacific, and salvage work continues.

Perhaps the greatest treasure isn’t the gold at all. If the wreck can answer even a few of the questions that have lingered since that November night in 1875, it may finally tell us why one of the Pacific Coast’s worst maritime disasters happened. I read somewhere that sometimes history keeps its secrets for generations, but every once in a while, the sea gives one back.

Closing note here: the Pacific almost represents the end of an era. She was built in 1850, when sidewheel steamers were at their peak. By the time she sank in 1875, propeller-driven steamships were becoming the future. In a way, her story bridges two generations of ship design.

Please excuse the awful graphics of this short…but there aren’t many short videos on this. The ship looked nothing like what is on here.

SS City of Benares: The Voyage Meant to Save Children

The voyage of the SS City of Benares was meant to save children. Britain was under attack, and parents were being asked to make an almost impossible decision. Should they keep their children close while bombs fell around them, or send them across the Atlantic to safety? Some of their homes had been destroyed in the bombing as well. The Children’s Overseas Reception Board (CORB) had already helped thousands of children reach Canada and other countries without tragedy. There was every reason to hope these children would be among them.

She left Liverpool on Friday, September 13, 1940, with naval military escorts. On board were 406 people, including 90 children evacuated via the government’s CORB program to protect them from the Blitz. The first few days of the voyage were good ones, and the children were having an adventure. By September 17, the convoy reached a point roughly 250 miles west of Ireland. As planned, the destroyers assigned to the convoy detached to escort another convoy, leaving the merchant ships to continue on their own.

That night, a severe storm struck, causing heavy seas and gale-force winds. Out in the dark, the German submarine U-48 spotted the silhouette of the City of Benares. At 11:45 PM, a torpedo struck the ship’s stern. It struck right below where the children were sleeping, throwing them from their bunks into the freezing water rushing in. The children’s escorts risked their lives and went below to get as many as they could.

The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Hurricane arrived 24 hours later and pulled 105 shivering survivors from the water, but the vast majority of the children had already succumbed to hypothermia or drowning. In total, 258 people died, including 77 of the 90 CORB children. Now, Lifeboat 12, carrying Mary Cornish, Father Rory O’Sullivan, six of the CORB boys, and dozens of others, had drifted away from the main search area and was missed by the destroyer. For the next eight days, those aboard the lifeboat battled hunger, thirst, storms, and exhaustion before finally being spotted by an RAF flying boat and rescued by HMS Anthony.

While adrift in the Atlantic for eight days, Mary Cornish did what she knew how to do. After risking her own life by returning below decks to search for more children, Mary Cornish spent eight days adrift in Lifeboat 12 doing what she knew best. She comforted children. She kept them moving. She made up games. She gave frightened boys something to think about besides the endless sea around them. Sometimes courage doesn’t look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like a schoolteacher refusing to let children lose hope. After they were found, she wasn’t seeking recognition. After the rescue, she was honored for her bravery, and Elspeth Huxley even wrote a book about her called Atlantic Ordeal: The Story of Mary Cornish. I have a few stories about the children, Mary, and other heroes on the companion page. They are worth checking out with one of the children earning a commendation for brave conduct.

It’s easy for us to say today that we would never have put our children on a ship crossing the Atlantic during wartime. But we know how the story ends. Those parents didn’t. They had already watched France fall. They saw London being bombed night after night and heard reports that Germany was preparing to invade Britain. Faced with those frightening realities, many believed sending their children overseas offered the best chance of keeping them safe. They didn’t know if Britain would even survive.

The CORB program had already transported 2,664 British children overseas between July and September 1940. Most reached safety without the kind of disaster that struck the City of Benares. The City of Benares wasn’t just a tragedy for the families who lost children. It was also heartbreaking for the families whose children had already arrived safely in Canada and elsewhere through CORB. The program had been working. That success is precisely why other parents were willing to trust it. The government shut the program down after this event.

The German crew of U-48 reportedly did not learn until later that children had been aboard. Several crewmen were said to have expressed shock and regret. Some later accounts claim that their commander, Heinrich Bleichrodt, never fully recovered from the knowledge of what his torpedo had done. However, the extent of his personal remorse is difficult to know. Unlike the RMS Lusitania, there is no evidence that the City of Benares was carrying ammunition or other military cargo.

Most people have never heard of the City of Benares. They should. It reminds us that history is not only made by famous leaders and great battles. Sometimes it is written by ordinary parents trying to protect their children, and by ordinary people like Mary Cornish who refused to give up hope when everything around them was slipping away.