Portland (ship, 1890)
.jpg) Drawing by the marine painter Samuel Ward Stanton, 1895 (Stanton died on the Titanic in 1912 )
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The Portland was a passenger ship put into service in 1890 by the American shipping company Portland Steam Packet Company, which was used in passenger and freight traffic between Portland in Maine and Boston in Massachusetts . On November 26, 1898, the ship sank on the Massachusetts coast in a severe storm , killing all 192 people on board. The storm was named after the ship and went down in history as the Portland Gale (in English "Portland Storm"). The sinking of the Portland is also one of the worst shipping accidents on the New England coast to date and is also called "the Titanic of New England" by locals .
The ship
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The 2,284 GRT Portland was commissioned in 1889 by the Portland Steam Packet Company (later New England Shipbuilding Company) based in Bath, Maine, and built by the New England Shipbuilding Corporation. She was the largest ship of her shipping company and one of the largest and most luxurious passenger ships in New England. Its hull was made of wood and it had two paddle wheels . The Portland carried passengers and cargo on a daily basis from Portland to Boston, leaving every evening at 7 p.m. at the India Wharf Pier in Portland and calling into Portland the following morning. She operated this route together with the ship Bay State . It took the steamer eight to nine hours to cover the 100 mile route. The passage cost one US dollar per person.
Portland Gale
Later known as The Portland Gale , the natural disaster was a storm that struck the New England coast on November 26-27, 1898. It originated on the Virginia coast when two low pressure areas met and migrated north. In Cohasset , Massachusetts, storm surges hit the coast more than ten feet high, and winds reached hurricane proportions on Nantucket . Dozens of houses were destroyed, and numerous roads, railways and telephone lines were badly damaged. The Hull roller coaster and Duxbury Harbor had suffered . A total of 141 ships and boats were sunk by the storm and 456 people were killed. The storm also changed the course of the North River , which now split near the town of Scituate .
Sinking off Cape Ann
On Saturday, November 26, 1898, the Portland cast off in Portland at 7:07 p.m. under the command of Captain Hollis H. Blanchard for another crossing to Boston. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving . She had 127 passengers and 65 crew members on board. During the descent there was snowfall and strong gusts of wind. Due to the bad weather, many ships that left Portland returned to port and waited for the weather to improve. Captain Blanchard allowed the voyage to continue. Among the passengers on this trip were soprano Emily Cobb, who was scheduled to sing at First Parish Church in Portland the following day, and Elias Dudley Freeman, a prominent lawyer, member of the Governor's Council and former Senator for the state of Maine.
The Portland was last seen around 9 p.m. by the schooner Maude S between Thatcher's Island and Eastern Point, about 30 miles northeast of Boston. It passed Cape Ann near the town of Gloucester . Her superstructures were already showing severe storm damage. Shortly afterwards, the ship got caught in the foothills of a blizzard , which was accompanied by strong winds , and disappeared. The steamer was not equipped with wireless telegraphy , so no emergency calls could be made to other ships.
None of the 192 people on board survived the tragedy. Since there were no survivors, the exact circumstances of the doom could never be clarified. It is assumed that the accident occurred between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., as all the wristwatches of the dead who were later recovered had stopped during this period. One of the suspicions was that the Portland had run aground on the very dangerous cliffs of Peaked Hill Bars. The area around this reef was also called the Graveyard of New England ("New England Cemetery").
On the morning of the following day it was noticed that the ship had not returned to Portland. At the same time, the first bodies washed ashore on Cape Cod . The families of the passengers and crew members were told that there was nothing to worry about. At 5.45 a.m. on November 27, signals from a ship's horn were heard in that area, but they could not be assigned to any ship. Some thought this was Portland . Wreckage washed up between High Head and Chatham in the days and weeks following the disaster. It was noticed that there were neither lifeboats nor life rafts underneath. A total of 40 bodies were recovered, the rest disappeared. The decision of Captain Blanchard, despite the obviously bad weather, to continue the voyage and not to return to the port of Portland was heavily criticized afterwards.
The sinking of the Portland is one of the most serious shipping accidents on the New England coast to date and is also known as "the Titanic of New England". The city of Portland was badly hit with many prominent citizens on board, including teachers, shopkeepers, and members of prominent families.
The wreck
The wreck of Portland lies in the Marine Reserve Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary , located between Cape Ann and Cape Cod extends. It was undiscovered for long and was by employees of the US National Oceanic and until 2002 Ozeanografiebehörde National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found (NOAA). The seabed of Stellwagen Bank was searched using the American Underwater Search and Survey, which ultimately identified the remains of the ship. In September 2003, a NOAA research team, along with staff from the National Undersea Research Center at the University of Connecticut (NURC-UConn) and a camera team, returned to the wreck for a TV documentary for The Science Channel to film and photograph.
The wreck was first visited by divers in autumn 2008. The five Massachusetts men made three 10 to 15 minute dives to the wreck, which is 140 meters below the surface. A four hour long decompression had to be performed after each dive . According to the regulations of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, no finds were allowed to be removed from the wreck. No human remains have been found, according to the divers. The exact position of the Portland remains under lock and key to avoid the wreck being looted.
On 13 January 2005, the wreck was Portland in the monument list National Register of Historic Places (registration number 04001473) was added.
See also
literature
- Freitas, Fred and Ball, Dave. Warnings Ignored! The Story of the Portland Gale - November 1898 . Fred Freitas and Dave Ball, 1995.
- Melton, Mary. Lost With All Hands: The Portland Gale of 1898 . Penobscot Press, 1999
- Bachelder, Peter Dow and Smith, Mason Philip. Four Short Blasts: The Great Gale of 1898 and the Loss of the Steamer Portland . The Provincial Press, 2003
Web links
- "The Portland Gale: A Montauk Mystery" - An essay by Lee F. Gruzen
- "Ship of Doom" - An essay on the misfortune of John Richardson
- Pictures of the Portland
- Summary on the disappearance of the Portland
- Entry in the Miramar Ship Index
- Over the Portland Storm, November 1898
- List of ships sunk or damaged by the Portland Storm
- Portland crew list
- WRECK OF THE PORTLAND - New York Times report, December 1, 1898
- Portland data on wrecksite.eu