When the Lady Elgin Was Gored to Death: Schooner Days DCCXXXV (735)

by C. H. J. Snider

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MALOTT, master of the plumb-stemmed slab-sided, long-horned fore-and-after Augusta of Chicago, was a man of few words.

A tug was worming the lumber laden schooner through the draw of old Twelfth street bridge, in Chicago, the morning of Sept. 9th, 1860, after a night of squalls and thunderstorms in Lake Michigan, and the bridge tender noticed that the schooner's headgear looked as though she had been in a dog fight.

"Dirty in the lake last night, Captain" said he politely.

"I think I hit a steamer somewhere above Milwaukee," said Malott. And that was all.

At the moment Lake Michigan was fifty fathoms deep over two hundred and eighty-nine men, women and children who had been passengers in the steamer the Augusta "hit."

For his own peace of mind it is to be hoped that Malott did not know this when he spoke to the bridge tender.

THE DANCE OF DEATH

FORTY years ago an old lake sailor told this writer that the Lady Elgin, circling slowly as though her wheel were lashed and unattended, twice crossed the bows of the Augusta, forcing her to jibe to avoid collision. It was dirty work jibing over in the thunder squalls that were blowing. The second time the steamer missed so closely that the oil lamps blazing in her saloon cast momentary shadows on the schooner's deck.

Above the thrash of her paddlewheels and the thundering of the Augusta's flogging headsails came the patter of dancing feet amid the singing of violins and tumpty-tum-tum of pianos, as the orchestra gaily pounded out "Listen to the Mocking Bird."

Dance music on a dirty night has no charms for the savage breasts of men hauled out of their bunks to jibe a fore-and-after while the rain runs up their shirt sleeves. The Augusta swung back to her interrupted course, with her canvas flailing from the steamer's wash.

There was more thunder, another deluge of rain, another wild gust of wind. Out of this fresh outburst of the elements again leaped the steamer's lights, and again came the tantalizing Mocking Bird's refrain. For the third time she was swinging so as to cross the Augusta.

This time the schooner did not clear her. There was a ripping of gingerbread work and a bump and screams. The steamer was struck on the port side, forward of the paddlebox. She passed on her spiral way and the Augusta continued a straight course through a dense deluge.

The master of the Augusta, maddened by the music and the seeming indifference to his discomfort and rights-of-way, may not have understood that the steamer was killing time by circling in order to avoid landing in Milwaukee in midnight thunder squalls. She had on board, in addition to other passengers, two hundred members of the Independent Union Guards of Milwaukee, with their wives and families, returning from an excursion to Chicago. The "night boats" between Chicago and Milwaukee often spent all night in the lake, docking in time for breakfast in the morning, although the run was only fifty miles. The Lady Elgin was one of these night boats, a long.

Malott may not have known that the Augusta was completely invisible to the Lady Elgin. Survivors swore that the schooner was running without lights. They may have gone out in the rain, and if they had not, the heavy showers would hide them. The only lights the schooner would have would be two lanterns, red and green, and these were not always used in the 1860s. Nor could Capt. John Wilson, master of the Lady Elgin, have realized how deadly was the thrust of the schooner's long bowsprit and wall-like bows.

IN BOOK AND BALLAD

IGNORANCE of the immediate facts as dense as the black night between the two vessels must have veiled the calamity, or the Lady Elgin's whistle would have been screaming for help immediately, and the Augusta would have been heaving to or lashing herself alongside in an effort to rescue the perishing. But the schooner went on, and the Lady Elgin went down. She sank in three hundred feet of water amid heart-rending scenes which lived long afterward in the mournful Come-all-ye's of the lakes. "The Loss of the Lady Elgin" was a waterfront ballad of many excruciating stanzas. Would be obliged if any freshwater salt would send in a copy. It was also a lesson in one of the old public school readers.

Capt. Wilson headed west for Milwaukee after the crash and set his crew to rolling barrels to the starboard side to keep the injured part above water. After twenty minutes, in which the Lady Elgin, being a fast steamer, went over five miles, she began to settle, her engine room flooded. Everything was wild confusion although women passengers sat silently in the saloon their hands clasped in prayer. Two hundred head of cattle, carried on the lower deck, were forced overboard to lighten the ship. Their drowning bellows handed to the din. Only one lifeboat was ready. It had only one oar and was battered against the side of the steamer. Two other boats got away, one with thirteen in it. They reached shore. The other boat had eight in it, and four of these drowned.

The engines fell through the bottom of the steamer. The upper-deck cabins floated off, with scores of passengers clinging to the superstructure. It broke into five fragments, from which survivors were picked off by rescuing tugs next day after hanging on for many hours. Capt. Wilson went down with his ship. The drowned included thirty-five Canadians, two hundred and fifty Americans, and some English visitors, among them Herbert Ingram, M.P., for Boston, Lincolnshire, and founder of the Illustrated London News, and his son. Of nearly four hundred people on board the Lady Elgin, only ninety-eight were rescued.

The Augusta and her master may have been equally innocent instruments of the tragedy. Malott went on about his business, but the Augusta was a haunted ship after the facts came out. The Averys sold her, B. G. Simpson, of Detroit, bought her. He renamed her Col. Cook, perhaps after the first Col. Cook lost two years before in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

What American hero first honored the Cook clan by accepting a colonelcy is unknown, but his name certainly brought little luck to the vessels who bore it. The rechristened Augusta commenced to have difficulty in getting crews. The watch on deck "saw things" at night, lights that went round and round and were never there, and the boys in the bunks heard clawings and scratchings and scrapings of dead folk's fingers on the planking outside. Of course it was only rats and rot gut that produced these phenomena, but that did not make it much easier to ship a crew or to keep one after shipping. The second Col. Cook spent much of her time laid up on the banks of the Detroit River, But she kept going until 1894, when she went ashore abreast of Euclid, a suburb of Cleveland, on Lake Erie. Her crew was taken off by lifesavers, but she was left on the beach and went to pieces.

COMPLICATED QUARTETTE

THERE were two Augustas and two Col. Cooks in the lake marine, and the distinguishing of them is somewhat difficult.

The first Col. Cook was an American schooner of 327 tons register, commanded by a Capt. Humphrey, in 1858. In that year she left Detroit with a cargo of staves and lumber for Liverpool, but she was wrecked in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and became a total loss. This eliminates her from the picture as her wreck occurred two years before the Augusta-Lady Elgin collision.

There was another schooner named Augusta, three-masted, built in St. Catharines for Sylvester Neelon in 1872 and measuring 372 tons. She was 139 feet on deck, 23 ft. 6 in. beam and 11 ft. 8 in. depth of hold, slightly larger than the two-masted Augusta. The three-masted one was owned in Toronto by the Conger Coal Co. and Capt. Alex Ure, from 1899, and was wrecked at Port Credit at the end of 1900. She was often confused with the other Augusta.

The two-masted schooner Augusta was built in Oswego, either by Baker or by James Navagh, for Thos. G. Avery and Co., of Chicago, in 1855. She registered 357 tons and was 126 feet on deck, 25 feet 6 inches beam, and 11 feet deep in the hold, calculated to carry 15,000 bushels of wheat through the Welland Canal on 9 feet draft, and to work in the lumber and timber trade.

It was while ploughing up Lake Michigan with a cargo of lumber for Chicago on the dark, stormy night of Sept. 8th, 1860, that this Augusta gored the Lady Elgin to death.

LOSS OF THE LADY ELGIN

Sir,-—During a talk the other day with other boat owners, the name "Lady Elgin" came up. One of our group was very interested in her, and wished to find out more about her. I scanned through my back copies of your "Schooner Days" which I prize most highly, to see if something about her was available, Having found nothing of her prompts me to write you this letter. Would it be possible that you may be able to help us in this matter? From information I can gather she was lost on Lake Huron on Sept. 8, 1860, through collision with the schooner Augusta. Of 385 persons aboard some 287 were lost. Hoping you may be able to give us more information about her, with not too much trouble or time, I remain,

G. E. FARQUHAR,

16 Emerald Cres., Burlington.

Commodore Burlington Yacht Club.

Eyes left, Commodore, Your formation is incorrect as far as Lake Huron" is concerned, but the old Third Reader, with a harrowing woodcut, said the disaster occurred "on Lake Superior," which is equally far from the fact. But there is the story.

—Compiler Schooner Days.

THE LADY ELGIN—Typical lake passenger paddle-wheeler, tied together by timber arches, of the 1860s. She was built by Bidwell and Banta at Buffalo, 1855, at a cost of $96,000 and was 258 ft. long, 33 ft. 7 in, beam, and 14 ft. 4 in. depth. She was an Upper Lakes favorite and for one season plied between Chicago and Collingwood.