Lady Elgin (ship)
 Illustration of the collision from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper , September 22, 1860
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The Lady Elgin was an American paddle steamer that carried passengers and cargo on the Great Lakes between Chicago , Buffalo , Bayfield and Collingwood between 1851 and 1860 . She was a favorite among paying customers and was also called "The Queen of the Great Lakes". On September 8, 1860, the Lady Elgin sank on Lake Michigan in the dark and heavy seas after the collision with the schooner Augusta . Up to 400 people were killed in the worst shipping accident to date on the Great Lakes. Many Germans and Irish were among the dead. 1999 was the wreck of the Lady Elgin in the National Register of Historic Places added.
The ship
The wooden paddle steamer Lady Elgin was built in 1851 at the traditional Bidwell & Banta shipyard in Buffalo ( New York State ), where many passenger ships were built for use on the Great Lakes. The 77 meter long steamship had two decks and two side wheels, each 9.7 meters in diameter . On November 5, 1851, the ship was registered in Buffalo. The ship was named after Mary Louisa Lambton, Lady Elgin (1819–1898), wife of the Governor General of Canada 1847–1854, James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin .
The client and original owner was the Buffalo-based transportation company Patchin & Appleby, founded by businessmen Aaron Drake Patchin and Gillman D. Appleby. The owner then changed several times. From May 24, 1853, the Lady Elgin Thaddeus W. Patching from Buffalo, from June 1, 1854 to the New York & Erie Railroad Company, and from May 16, 1856 to Albert T. Spencer from Chicago. On July 6, 1860, Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, an American entrepreneur, financier, and fur trader, bought the ship. Before putting it into service, he had it renovated in Chicago.
In her time, the Lady Elgin was considered one of the most elegant steamers on the Great Lakes and was nicknamed Queen of the Great Lakes ("Queen of the Great Lakes"). She was a favorite among travelers. At the beginning of her service the ship shuttles between Buffalo and Chicago, later between Chicago and Collingwood in Ontario. At the end of her career, she also called at various other ports on Lake Michigan, Lake Erie and Lake Superior . In addition to the regular scheduled services, the ship could also be chartered for excursions. This was the case, for example, in February 1855 when the Ontario, Superior & Union Railroad rented the steamer.
Accidents
During her nine years of service, the Lady Elgin was involved in various accidents. On May 28, 1852, she collided with the schooner Florence on Lake Erie . In September 1854 she sank off Manitowoc, Wisconsin after hitting a rock, was lifted and repaired. In the following year there was an engine failure on the open sea. On October 30, 1857, it was damaged by fire . On June 24, 1858, she rammed a reef off Copper Harbor, Michigan . Just two months later, she was stranded on Lake Superior on a sandbar near the Au Sable Point lighthouse .
On October 23, 1859, the Lady Elgin had to be towed into the port of Marquette, Michigan after her keel broke. A month later, she had to be towed again after damage to her piston engine off Point Iroquois . The American historian and writer John Brandt Mansfield, who studied the history of shipping on the Great Lakes and wrote several books about it, described the Lady Elgin in his most important work, History of the Great Lakes, as "one of the greatest known maritime horrors" .
Downfall
Drive to Chicago
On Thursday evening, September 6, 1860, put Lady Elgin in Milwaukee ( Wisconsin ) from under the command of Captain John "Jack" Wilson from Dooley, Martin, Dousman, and Company Dock. A lot of the passengers were members of the Irish Guard Union, an association of Irish immigrants from Milwaukee, to a speech by the senator from Illinois , Stephen A. Douglas , in Chicago were traveling. Douglas was a candidate for the upcoming US presidential election and was on an election tour. They were mostly from the Third Ward borough; including city and county employees, blue-collar workers, youth, and the Milwaukee City Band. But numerous other passengers who wanted to travel on to Bayfield were also on board.
The ship reached Chicago on September 7th, where members of the Association attended Douglas' speech and boarded the Lady Elgin that same evening to return to Milwaukee. In Chicago, the British newspaper publisher Herbert Ingram , founder and editor of the Illustrated London News , and his eldest son Herbert, who was 15 years old, got involved.
The ship cast off at around 11.30 p.m. That evening, the passengers on the paddle steamer were entertained by a German brass ensemble . On the return voyage, there were an estimated 600 to 700 people on board the paddle steamer. On the night of September 7th to 8th, 1860, when the Lady Elgin crossed Lake Michigan, there were stormy winds and high waves. It was raining heavily, which severely impaired visibility. Most of the passengers went to bed early, but many stayed in the ship's saloon, where there was dancing and music.
Collision and sinking
At about 2.30 a.m. the brightly lit and widely visible Lady Elgin was spotted by the schooner Augusta seven to nine miles from the shore between Winnetka and Evanston . The 39 m long, 226 GRT Augusta from the Bissel & Davidson company, coming from Port Huron , was not illuminated and therefore could not be seen on the bridge of Lady Elgin in time.
The bow of the sailor, completely overloaded with its timber cargo, bored into the port side of the steamer directly in front of the side wheel. It remained stuck for a moment, but the forward movement of the Lady Elgin released the Augusta from the gaping leak. After the collision it was believed aboard the Augusta that the Lady Elgin had continued her voyage unimpaired. Since the sailing ship was damaged, attempts were made to reach Chicago as quickly as possible. On board the rapidly declining Lady Elgin ordered Captain Wilson, the freight to offset the flip side to throw overboard. In this way, the hole in the ship's hull on the port side was supposed to be brought above the waterline. The 60 cattle were also to be thrown overboard, but only one could be pushed over the edge of the deck. In addition, Wilson set course for the land to allow the ship to run aground before it could sink. Meanwhile, coal trimmers in the coal bunkers below deck tried to plug the leak with mattresses.
On the starboard side, a lifeboat was launched under the command of First Officer George Davis, whose crew, at the command of the captain, was to determine the extent of the damage. However, it could not return to the ship because it was moving too quickly. Another boat leaked and could not be used. Doors were kicked in to wake sleeping passengers. An uncontrollable panic quickly broke out. The bow had touched the bottom of the lake and was stuck. 20 minutes after the impact, the steamer capsized to port and broke apart, throwing passengers, cattle, planks and debris through the air. As the ship sank, the top deck partially broke away from the hull .
Struggle for survival
The stormy night was flashed by lightning, in the glow of which a great carpet of rubble and people could be made out. Hundreds of passengers drifted in the troubled water and clung to the wreckage. Large numbers of people were pushed underwater by huge breakers and drowned before they could reach the bank. Very few could swim and hardly anyone had had the time or opportunity to put on a life jacket. A larger group of survivors had gathered on the separated upper deck, which was floating freely in the water. As the night progressed, the deck, gradually shattered into smaller pieces by the waves, drifted toward the beach near Evanston. When the remains of the deck reached land after dawn, many of the people on it were thrown against the rocks on the shore by the still strong surf.
Only two of the four existing lifeboats with a total of 18 people in them reached the bank. About a dozen people survived on the remains of the severed upper deck. A member of the German band survived by holding onto his bass drum . The number of survivors ranged from 98 to 155, depending on the source. Many of them spoke of Captain Wilson's efforts to save as many lives as possible. Wilson had gone down with his ship. Between 350 and 400 people died in the largest shipping disaster to date on the Great Lakes. These included numerous members of the Irish Union Guard as well as the Black Yaeger Club and the Green Yaeger Club, associations of German citizens of the city of Milwaukee. The exact number is not known because the passenger list went down with the ship and it is also assumed that numerous travelers were on board, whose names were not recorded.
In the weeks after the sinking, numerous bodies were recovered from Lake Michigan. Between mid-September and early October 1860, up to ten funerals per day took place in the neighboring communities. 32 Milwaukee children were orphaned while 158 more lost one parent each. Herbert Ingram and his son, whose body was never found, were also among the dead. In memory of the two, two lifeboats that bore their names were later donated by the bereaved for the Lincolnshire coast .
Legal consequences
Lady Elgin's owner , Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, was paid an insurance sum of $ 12,000. Hubbard and the insurance company stated that the ship was still theirs after its sinking. The captain of the Augusta ¸ Darius Nelson Malott was arrested and brought to court in Chicago. He was acquitted of the charge of neglecting the navigation of his ship . However, the Cook County investigative court ruled Augusta's second officer , George Budge, incapacitated and blamed him entirely for the disaster. Budge had led the ship at the time of the collision, as Captain Malott had already withdrawn around midnight.
It was estimated that the Augusta 's ship's command spotted the Lady Elgin for the first time about 20 minutes before the collision, but had misjudged the distance due to the heavy rain. The rescue equipment and the lighting of the ships that sailed on the Great Lakes were more strictly regulated. Stricter safety inspections came to the fore. A new rescue station was built at Evanston.
Commemoration
Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward, now a listed building and inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, was particularly hard hit by the disaster. The Irish community has been significantly decimated. Today a plaque commemorates the tragedy there. There is also a memorial in the Calvary Cemetery, as many of the recovered victims were buried there.
The American composer and lyricist Henry Clay Work (1832-1884) wrote the song Lost on the Lady Elgin , which was sung in the years after the disaster at gatherings and celebrations of affected families and also at public events. The Irish Cultural and Heritage Center of Wisconsin local history museum in Milwaukee has raised $ 200,000 in donations for a bronze statue in memory of Lady Elgin .
The wreck
The wreck of the Lady Elgin lies at a depth of 15 to 18 meters a few miles from the city of Highwood, Illinois. It was only found in May 1989 by Chicago-based wreck diver, hydrograph and salvage specialist Harry Zych. After legal disputes he has owned the wreck since 1999. The remains of the broken ship are spread over four rubble carpets, from which many objects have been removed over the years. Divers wishing to explore the wreck require approval from Harry Zych's Lady Elgin Foundation.
The Lady Elgin wreck was added to the registers of the Chicago Maritime Society (CMS) and the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago (UASC), and finally to the nationwide National Register of Historic Places in 1999 (registration number # 94000362).
literature
- Mark L. Thompson. Graveyard Of The Lakes . Wayne State University Press (Detroit), 2000
- Mark S. Braun. Chicago's North Shore Shipwrecks . Transportation Trails (Illinois), 1992
- Pete Caesar. Lady Elgin is Down . Great Lakes Maritime Research Institute (Superior), 1981
- Dr. Peter Charlebois. Sternwheelers and Sidewheelers: The Romance of Steam Driven Paddleboats in Canada . NC Press Limited (Toronto), 1978
- James P. Barry. Ships of the Great Lakes: 300 Years of Navigation . Howell North (Berkeley), 1973
- Dwight Boyer. True Tales of the Great Lakes . Dodd, Mead & Company (New York), 1971
- William Ratigan. Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivals . William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company (Michigan), 1960
- Dana Thomas Bowen. Shipwrecks of the Lakes: Told in Story and Picture . Freshwater Press (Cleveland), 1952
- Charles Martin Scanlan. The Lady Elgin Disaster, September 8, 1860 . Cannon Printing Company (Milwaukee), 1928
- John Brandt Mansfield. History of the Great Lakes . JH Beers & Company (Chicago), 1899
Web links
- Link to a detailed website dedicated to Lady Elgin
- Overview of technical and historical data
- Illustrated table with key data for Lady Elgin
- The Wreck of the Steamer Lady Elgin (extensive essay by Brendon Baillod)
- Illustrated doom summary on a Wisconsin state education page
- News of the Day (Report in the New York Times, September 10, 1860)
- The Lady Elgin Disaster (report in the New York Times, September 13, 1860)
- The Lady Elgin on a list of wrecked Great Lake steamers
- Lady Elgin's entry on the National Register of Historic Places
- Text and sheet music for the song Lost on the Lady Elgin
Footnotes
- ↑ a b Bailey, Isabel: Ingram, Herbert (1811-1860) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , online version (accessed February 6, 2012).
- ↑ http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/IL/lake/vacant.html Entry at National Register of Historic Places.com
Coordinates: 42 ° 6 ′ 0 ″ N , 87 ° 42 ′ 0 ″ W.