Category: Passenger Ships

SS Columbia: The Ship That Proved Edison Right

In 1880, a passenger steamship named the SS Columbia was launched in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was built for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and she was intended to carry passengers and freight between San Francisco and Portland. Her lasting claim to fame, however, came after the company’s president, Henry Villard, witnessed Thomas Edison’s New Year’s Eve demonstration at Menlo Park. Villard was fascinated by Edison’s new incandescent lighting system and decided to have it installed aboard his new ship. The Columbia became the first commercial installation of Edison’s system. I want to thank Jim Adams for a post about electricity that spurred me on to finish this.

In the spring of 1880, Edison’s incandescent light was still largely experimental. His team now had to install delicate glass bulbs, primitive wiring, and early dynamos aboard a ship that would constantly pitch, roll, and vibrate. Dampness and salt air presented additional problems. It was one thing to make electric bulbs glow during a demonstration at Menlo Park. It was another to keep them burning aboard a steamship traveling around South America.

Edison entrusted the shipboard installation to a team that included his associate Francis Upton. The men ran insulated wiring through the passenger spaces and connected more than one hundred lamps to dynamos below. On May 2, 1880, the system was tested in New York, and electric light filled the ship’s saloon and cabins. Passengers could not operate the cabin lights themselves; a steward controlled each one from a locked rosewood box outside the room. The system had worked at the pier. Now it had to survive a ten-week voyage around South America.

When she set sail on her maiden voyage from New York to Portland, Oregon, she was a floating wonder. The route required sailing all the way around South America, as the Panama Canal did not yet exist. During a stop in Rio de Janeiro, the Emperor of Brazil even climbed aboard just to witness the spectacle of her glowing electric interior. The voyage was a massive success; Edison’s dynamos performed flawlessly, and the ship proved to the world that electric lighting was safe and practical for everyday use.

For the next 27 years, the SS Columbia became a reliable ship of the Pacific Coast, carrying passengers and cargo between Portland and San Francisco. She braved the rough storms and even earned a reputation for heroism, rescuing survivors from the wreck of the SS Alaskan in 1889. She was a symbol of progress, smoothly bridging the gap between the old world of wooden sailing ships and the new era of steel and electricity. She was also at a dock in the 1906 San Franciso Earthquake (you can see her listing in the pictures below) but survived.

Her fate would change on a dense, foggy night on July 21, 1907. While navigating off the coast of Shelter Cove, California, the SS Columbia had a lumber schooner named the San Pedro coming at her. Both ships were going at an unsafe speed through the fog. Before Captain Peter Doran could steer clear, the San Pedro crashed directly into the Columbia’s starboard side. The San Pedro’s bow tore deeply into the Columbia’s starboard side, opening her hull to the sea. Water poured in rapidly, and the steamship began settling by the bow.

The collision jolted sleeping passengers awake and sent them rushing onto a sharply listing deck. Outside, darkness and thick fog concealed both the surrounding water and any ships that might be close enough to help. Captain Doran remained at his post while crew members and passengers tried to lower lifeboats, distribute life preservers, and throw anything that could float into the sea. Some boats were launched, but the Columbia sank too quickly for all of them to be used.

Captain Doran showed immense bravery. He stayed on the bridge, refusing to leave his post, and shouted instructions through the dark to help lower the lifeboats until the ocean rose up and carried him away. The crew and several heroic passengers worked entirely by touch. They frantically untied lifeboats, handed out life jackets, and threw anything that could float into the sea. Only a few lifeboats were successfully launched before the ship’s angle became too steep.

As the bow sank deeper, the stern of the Columbia lifted high into the air. Terrified passengers clung to the deck railings until they could no longer hold on. In roughly 8-10 minutes after the collision, the steamship slipped beneath the waves. Surviving passengers and crew were left floating in the freezing, foggy void, clinging to overturned boats, deck chairs, wooden doors, and wreckage, waiting in the dark to see if anyone would rescue them.

There were 251 aboard the ship. Tragically, 88 people lost their lives in the disaster. 163 people survived the sinking and were successfully pulled from the ocean. Three ships helped to rescue the Columbia’s passengers. Three ships took part in the rescue. The San Pedro, the vessel that had struck the Columbia, became an unexpected refuge. Her large cargo of redwood lumber helped keep her damaged hull afloat, and approximately eighty survivors reached or were pulled aboard her. The steamships George W. Elder and Roanoke also arrived and assisted at the scene. The George W. Elder took survivors aboard and later helped tow the damaged San Pedro toward shore.

A ship famous for bringing light to the sea was ultimately lost in darkness and fog.

The San Pedro after the collision… I don’t know how she made it, but she survived the collision. I can’t believe she was floating at this point!

The SS Columbia lying on her starboard side at the Union Iron Works after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Bear Photo Company.

SS Princess Alice: Tragedy on the Thames

Yes, this is another sinking, but what the passengers found themselves in after the ship went down is something no one should ever experience. I said it in my Mark Twain post, and I can’t say it enough: maritime regulations are written in blood. The sinking of the SS Princess Alice is another painful reminder of that truth. It also reminds us that some disasters are made worse not just by what happens on the water, but by conditions that should have been addressed long before tragedy struck.

On September 3, 1878, the crowded passenger paddle steamer was returning to London after a day excursion along the Kent coast. Some children were asleep, and a band was still playing as the ship rounded Tripcock Point near dusk. Then the Princess Alice and the much larger collier Bywell Castle suddenly found themselves on a collision course.

The iron bow of the Bywell Castle struck the Princess Alice near her starboard paddle box. The smaller ship broke apart and sank in about four minutes. Passengers were in the water before many of them understood what had happened.

The investigations did not produce one simple answer. The coroner’s jury found that both vessels had contributed to the collision. The Board of Trade blamed the Princess Alice for failing to follow the proper navigation rule, while the High Court later held both ships responsible.

Although the Bywell Castle survived the collision, her crew immediately turned their attention to rescuing survivors from the Thames. They were joined by police, watermen, dock workers, and ordinary citizens who rushed to help. In disasters like this, history often remembers the ships, but it should also remember those who risked their own lives trying to save people they had never met.

The ship went down at the point where enormous amounts of untreated sewage and industrial waste from London entered the Thames. About an hour before the collision, nearby outfalls had released an estimated 75 million imperial gallons of untreated sewage, about 90 million U.S. gallons, into the Thames.

Survivors found themselves struggling not only in the water but in what contemporary accounts described as foul, polluted sludge. Some survivors who were pulled from the river later died after swallowing the polluted water. Several survivors who were pulled from the river later died from swallowing the sewage water. Between 600 and 700 people died. They didn’t keep a correct ship manifest, so the exact number is not known.

That tragedy had consequences far beyond the sinking itself. It shocked Victorian Britain and added urgency to efforts to improve London’s sewage and public health systems. In other words, the Princess Alice wasn’t just a maritime disaster; it became part of the story of modern sanitation.

The collision put hundreds of passengers into the Thames. Years of neglect made the river itself part of the disaster. After this, things started to change and raw waste would not go into the river. London built purification and treatment facilities directly at the existing Barking (Northern Outfall) and Crossness (Southern Outfall) pumping stations.

SS Princess Alice sinking after colliding with the SS Bywell Castle on the River Thames, United Kingdom, drawing by Q Michetti, engraving by Francesco Canedi from L’Illustrazione Italiana, Year 5, No 39, September 29, 1878.
unknown artist; The Wreck of the ‘Princess Alice’; The Stroud District (Cowle) Museum Trust Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/the-wreck-of-the-princess-alice-62554

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.

SS Eastland: Chicago’s Forgotten Disaster

This was one of the tragic shipwrecks, and it happened while she was still 20 feet from the dock. That makes it all the more sad. As we will see, the ship should not have been allowed to carry passengers because of a problem she had all along. She had a narrow hull and concrete decks, which made her top-heavy, especially after lifeboats were added after the Titanic disaster. It reminds me of the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland. It was so fast that no one had time to adjust.

The passenger steamer SS Eastland was built in 1903 and spent most of her career carrying immigrants and excursion passengers on the Great Lakes. She was not a large ocean liner, but she could carry thousands of people on short trips. From the beginning, however, the ship developed a reputation for being unstable. Captains and crew members reported that she tended to list from side to side, especially when heavily loaded. Several incidents occurred during her early years where cargo had to be shifted or passengers moved to correct dangerous leans. Imagine that, ok, everyone, shift to the left, we are leaning too far. Don’t worry, we are fine.

The problems became worse after the Titanic disaster in 1912. New safety regulations required ships to carry enough lifeboats for everyone aboard. While the new rules were well-intentioned, the added weight of lifeboats, rafts, and equipment was placed high on the SS Eastland. Since the ship already had stability problems, the extra weight made matters worse. Those lifeboats weighed a little over a ton each. Engineers and inspectors believed the vessel was safe, but concerns about her tendency to lean never completely disappeared.

On July 24, 1915, the Eastland was tied to a dock on the Chicago River. More than 2,500 employees of the Western Electric Company and their families were boarding for a company picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. As passengers crowded aboard, the ship began to lean first one way and then the other. Crew members tried to correct the problem by moving people and adjusting ballast tanks, but it was too late. At approximately 7:30 a.m., the ship rolled onto its side while still tied to the dock. The disaster happened so quickly that many passengers were trapped below decks. In the end, 844 people lost their lives, making it one of the deadliest maritime disasters in American history.

What makes the Eastland tragedy especially haunting is that it happened only a few feet from shore. Rescue workers, police officers, and ordinary citizens rushed to help, but many passengers were trapped inside the overturned vessel. Investigations followed, but no single person was ultimately held responsible. Historians still debate whether the disaster was caused by poor design, added lifeboat weight, management decisions, or a combination of factors. Today, the Eastland is remembered as one of Chicago’s greatest tragedies and a reminder that even a ship sitting safely at a dock can become a disaster when stability problems are ignored.

Some of the people who pitched in and helped. George Halas, long before he became the founder of the Chicago Bears, Halas was a young employee of the Western Electric Company. He was supposed to be aboard the Eastland that morning, but arrived late after being assigned another task. Instead of being a victim, he spent the day helping rescue survivors and recover bodies from the river. He later said it was one of the most horrifying things he had ever witnessed.

Captain Harry Pedersen and the crew of the nearby tugboat Kenosham rushed to the scene. They helped pull passengers from the water and cut into parts of the overturned ship to reach trapped survivors. Several tugboat crews from the Chicago River did the same thing. They acted immediately, often without any regard for their own safety. The Chicago Fire Department, police officers, and ordinary citizens also played a major role. Many people were trapped inside rather than thrown into the river. Rescuers used axes, cutting torches, ropes, and ladders to break into the hull. Some worked for hours in dark, flooded compartments searching for survivors. Others performed first aid on the docks as victims were brought ashore.

Tugboat crews, firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, and ordinary Chicago citizens all jumped into action. The ship capsized in only a few minutes, but the rescue effort continued for days. It is one of those moments where you see the worst of a tragedy, but also the best of people.

Some disasters are remembered because people had impossible choices. Others are remembered because people had almost no time to make any choice at all.

Next week, we will be diving into one of the most infamous and complex shipwrecks of all time.

SS Waratah: Australia’s missing ship

This ship was and still is a huge mystery. Usually when a ship vanishes, something is left behind. There wasn’t a life ring, lifeboat, or debris washing up anywhere after she went down that was confirmed. This is one of the most sought-after shipwrecks anywhere. Not for money but for answers. What happened in that storm in 1909? There was also a man who got off the ship at its last stop because he kept having horrible dreams that told him to get off that ship.

The SS Waratah was built in 1908 for the Blue Anchor Line. She was designed to carry passengers and cargo between England and Australia. At nearly 500 feet long, she was considered a modern and comfortable ship for her day. Some even called her the “Titanic of the Southern Seas,” although she sailed before the Titanic. Her early voyages seemed successful, but passengers reported that the ship tended to roll heavily in rough weather.

In July of 1909, the Waratah left Durban, South Africa, bound for Cape Town with 211 passengers and crew aboard. She carried a cargo that included lead ore concentrate, which some later believed may have affected her stability. After leaving Durban, another ship reported seeing the Waratah in heavy seas. Then she disappeared. The Waratah had no Marconi system (it wasn’t required by law at this time), so there were no distress calls. The ship and everyone aboard vanished without a trace.

A massive search was launched along the South African coast. Ships scoured thousands of miles of ocean looking for survivors or debris. Nothing was found. Some believed she may have been overwhelmed by a rogue wave. Others thought a sudden shift in cargo or a design flaw caused her to capsize. A few even suggested she may have been caught in an unusually powerful storm and sunk before anyone could react.

One of the most interesting stories connected to the Waratah is a passenger named Claude Sawyer. Sawyer had traveled on the ship from Australia and became concerned about her during the voyage. He thought she rolled too much in rough weather and seemed unstable. When the ship arrived in Durban, South Africa, he decided not to continue to Cape Town. Instead, he got off the ship and later sent a telegram saying he believed the Waratah was top-heavy.

After the ship disappeared, Sawyer testified at the official inquiry. He described several strange dreams he had during the voyage that left him uneasy. He also spoke about watching water in a bathtub remain tilted as the ship rolled. To him, it seemed as if the vessel was not righting itself properly after each movement. Whether those observations meant anything is still debated today.

He repeatedly dreamed of a strange man standing before him. The figure was dressed in unusual clothing he did not recognize. In one hand was a long sword. In the other was a blood-stained rag. Sawyer said the figure seemed to place the sword between them as if warning him away. He became convinced the dreams were trying to tell him that he should leave the ship at the first opportunity.

What we do know is that Sawyer trusted his instincts. He left the Waratah at Durban and watched her leave. The ship departed with more than 200 passengers and crew aboard and was never seen again. More than a century later, the mystery remains unsolved, and Claude Sawyer is remembered as the man who stepped off one of history’s most famous missing ships just before it vanished forever. He tried to warn other passengers, but they would not listen. Who can blame them in a way? I remember flying to Chicago, and I had the worst feeling about the flight. I’m here and still writing, so of course, nothing happened.

Whether Claude Sawyer truly had a premonition or simply trusted his gut is something we will never know. Sawyer’s strange story remains one of the most haunting parts of the mystery. For more than a century, many expeditions have searched for the Waratah. Several wrecks have been mistaken for her over the years, only to be ruled out later. As of today, the ship has never been positively located.

Coming up soon…Riverboats, Great Lakes Ships, Military ships, Expeditions, Ocean Liners, and maybe a lighthouse down the road.

SS Endurance: Shackleton’s Arctic Ship

This ship was lost for 107 years before she was found in 2022. This post is just as much about explorer Ernest Shackleton as the ship. What an expedition he led. He took an 800-mile journey in a 23-foot boat to get his people rescued after his ship The Endurance went down.

The Endurance was built in Norway in 1912 as a tough wooden ship designed for Arctic conditions. In 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton bought her for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton wanted to cross Antarctica on foot, something no one had ever done.

The ship left England in 1914 and headed for the Weddell Sea near Antarctica. Before the expedition could start, the ice closed around the ship. Endurance became trapped in January 1915. For months the ship drifted helplessly with the ice while the pressure slowly crushed the ship’s mast timbers. Shackleton’s men watched the vessel groan, bend, and break until they finally abandoned her in October 1915. A month later she slipped beneath the ice and disappeared into the Weddell Sea. There is this film clip of the Endurance folding in because of the ice pressure.

The ice build up caused millions of tons of pressure on the ship and warped the hull. The ship was built to withstand cold, but it was more a ship designed for Arctic tourism and hunting voyages. It was not made to withstand the pressure of Antarctic ice bearing down on it. So, Shackleton and his crew abandoned ship when they saw it was sinking slowly.

Shackelton and his crew camped on floating ice for months before sailing in small lifeboats. They eventually reached the desolate Elephant Island after nearly 500 days away from solid ground. Shackleton then made an incredible 800-mile open boat trip with 5 men (on a small boat not designed to do this) to South Georgia (British Overseas Territory located in the Southern Ocean) to organize a rescue while most of the men had to wait until he got someone. It took them 17 days to reach South Georgia Island, some 800 miles to the northeast. This after capsizing three times in 24 hours. They got a rescue team and went back to Elephant Island to get the rest of the men.

Every man survived! The story turned Shackleton into a legend and made Endurance one of the most famous lost ships in history. For decades people wondered where the wreck rested under the Antarctic ice and deep water. After many failed searches, the wreck was finally discovered on March 5, 2022, after 107 years, by the Endurance22 expedition. Using underwater robots and modern sonar equipment, the team found the ship nearly 10,000 feet below the surface of the Weddell Sea.

The wreck was amazingly preserved because the freezing Antarctic water has no wood-eating organisms. The name “Endurance” could still be clearly seen across the stern. Explorers said it looked almost like the ship had sunk yesterday. The wreck was found only a few miles from the position originally recorded by Captain Frank Worsley back in 1915. It was one of the great shipwreck discoveries of modern times. Notice how well preserved the ship is.

I want to add that if you have any ships you want to know more about, let me know. I have around 30 posts in scheduled and drafts and I add them every day. I haven’t even ventured into the Military ships yet…they will be coming as well.

FG004E SHACKLETON EXPEDITION, 1915. /nShackleton’s ship, ‘Endurance,’ stuck in the ice in the Weddell Sea during the Antarctic expedition, 1915.

The Shackleton Story. One of the most courageous stories I’ve ever heard.

TEV Wahine: When Safe Harbor Wasn’t Safe

I’ve been posting about the Titanic for the past few weeks. With my obsessive mind, I started to look at other shipwrecks like the Lusitania, Britannic, and other wrecks. Obbverse (who rode on this ship the year before) mentioned this ship when I started the Titanic series. It was a terrible, tragic event that happened in New Zealand.

The passenger ferry TEV Wahine (Turbine-Electric Vessel) left Lyttelton for Wellington on April 9, 1968, on what should have been a normal overnight crossing. The Wahine was one of New Zealand’s best-known ships. It was a state-of-the-art turbo-electric roll-on/roll-off passenger ferry built in Scotland for the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. Entering service in 1966, she operated the overnight route between Lyttelton and Wellington.Modern for the time, steady in rough seas, and trusted by passengers who made the trip regularly across Cook Strait. But as the ship approached Wellington Harbor the next morning on the 10th, one of the worst storms (Cyclone Giselle) in New Zealand history hit hard.

Winds were over 100 miles per hour in places. Waves smashed into the ship, and visibility disappeared in rain and spray. Captain Hector Robertson tried to guide the ferry through the harbor entrance, but the storm pushed the Wahine onto Barrett Reef around 5 a.m. The impact tore open the hull and started the chain of events that doomed the ship.

The Wahine had survived rough weather before. But the storm kept hammering the ship. Water flooded in and the engines eventually failed. Lifeboats became dangerous in the huge seas. Some were smashed against the ship while others overturned in the surf. Rescue efforts were difficult because helicopters and small boats were fighting hurricane-force winds themselves. Some passengers survived by floating for hours in the freezing water while local fishermen and rescuers pulled people from the harbor. Others never made it. There were 734 passengers and crew on board. Fifty-one people lost their lives that day, another died several weeks later, and a 53rd victim died in 1990 from injuries sustained in the wreck, making it one of New Zealand’s deadliest maritime tragedies.

The sinking of the Wahine shocked New Zealand much like the Titanic disaster shocked an earlier generation. It became one of those moments people remembered for the rest of their lives. Today, the Wahine disaster is still remembered in New Zealand as both a tragedy and a story of courage from passengers, rescuers, and crew. All were caught in a storm that few ships could have survived.

Before I end this, here is where a community came together. Quartermaster Tom Dartford commanded a lifeboat through 20-foot (6 meters) swells, rescuing over 100 people. Constables John Bowman & Paul Dogget: Members of the Police Dive Squad who rushed to the harbor and pulled over 100 freezing, heavily clothed passengers out of the freezing sea and into their small boat. Local Residents fought the storm and ran to the surf and pulled in strangers and carried them to their homes.

I have included two documentaries. The bottom video is just a quick 5-6 minute video, and the top one is an in-depth documentary. (Pictures at bottom)