Alexander Grant-The Man Who Couldn’t Be Drowned

The strong always won out at sea. It was simply the way of it, part of a natural order.
David L. Shaw, “The Sea Shall Embrace Them”

Alexander Grant didn’t survive a shipwreck—he survived at least four.  Here’s the story of the man who couldn’t be drowned.

Alexander Grant was born in the Gut (or strait) of Canso on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia in 1831. He was destined to be a sailor.  As a child he fell in love with the sea.  He was the best swimmer of his province and practically lived in the cold, bracing water of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  It was widely known no boy or man could stay as long in deep water as he.   That strength would be tested many times.

When he was thirteen, he went to sea in a past-its-prime Nova Scotian fishing schooner.  The cold nights, hard work, poor pay, and bad food did not discourage him; in fact, he seems to have rather liked it.   Over the next three years he served on a variety of commercial vessels learning his trade as a seaman.

In 1847 at the age of 16, Grant was a deck hand on board the brigantine Atlas hauling a load of coal from Windsor, Nova Scotia, to Fall River, Massachusetts.   One hundred miles northeast of Boston, the Atlas was besieged by a severe storm.  The ferocious winds shredded her sails and toppled her masts leaving the ship helpless and tossed carelessly by the huge waves.   The crashing masts injured several sailors including Grant.  The men were on death’s doorstep.  The ship was taking on water and listing heavily on one side. Grant said he was “much surprised by the wonderful nearness of Davy Jones Locker.”  Miraculously, the ship Amazon of Holland appeared and took Grant and his mates on board. Within minutes of their rescue, the Atlas gave a heavy lurch and sank.

The narrow escape from death did not deter Grant.  The sea was his soulmate, the thing he knew best; it was his home away from home.  Grant continued to go to sea in all kinds of vessels in every kind of weather. In his early 20’s he trained as a fireman aboard the new paddlewheel steamships.   A fireman (also known as a stoker) was primarily responsible for shoveling coal into the ship’s boilers to generate the steam that powered the engine and drove the paddlewheels on both sides of the ship. It was a physically demanding job requiring a man to work in extreme heat, dust, and cramped conditions.  The firemen also had to maintain the right amount of steam pressure to ensure the engines could function properly and propel the ship. They worked in shifts of eight hours on and four hours off and played a vital role in keeping the steamship operational. 

Grant was off a ship and home in New York City long enough to marry his sweetheart Margaret Rigg in July of 1854.   Margaret was originally from Ireland and came to America a couple of years earlier with her mother Elizabeth.  The honeymoon was short and a couple of weeks later Alexander was back at sea.  The length of their marriage was soon to be tested.

The SS Arctic Disaster

In September of 1854 Grant was working as a fireman on the American steamer Arctic.  The Arctic was a part of the Collins Line owned by Edward Knight Collins of New York City. Alexander had already made the run on the Arctic from New York to England, and was now on the return leg.The ship left Liverpool bound for New York City with 233 passengers, including 58 women and 22 children, and 174 crew.  Most of the passengers were Americans returning home from summer holidays in Europe.

The Arctic was captained by James C. Luce, a veteran officer with many years at sea under his belt.   She was fast and in calm seas could make 13 miles per hour.  Collins’ main competitor in the passenger ship business was Cunard Lines based in London and Liverpool.  Both touted their luxurious accommodations and the speed at which they could cross the Atlantic.  The quickest route between New York and Liverpool was the northern route that brought the ships through the Grand Banks just south of Newfoundland; a voyage of about 3,000 miles.   The captains were under strict orders from the owners to maintain full speed, no matter the weather.

Seventy miles off the southeast coast of Newfoundland, moving at full speed in a dense fog, the Arctic collided with the iron-hulled French merchant ship Vesta. The much smaller Vesta, with a crew of fifty, was carrying 147 French commercial fishermen from Newfoundland back to their homes in France.

Grant had just come off his watch and was below decks when he felt a bump-bump.  His immediate thought was the Arctic was surely on a rock.  Grant and the other firemen raced topside.   They saw the Vesta with its bow sheared off and taking on water.  The Vesta’s bowsprit had plowed through the bow of the Arctic and broken off.

Captain Luce ordered a lifeboat with his best officer, Gourlay, and several sailors lowered to aid the Vesta which appeared all but doomed.  Within minutes, the Vesta and the lifeboat were swallowed by the fog and those on board the Arctic feared the worst for all those aboard the crippled ship.

As the Arctic stood by and awaited the return of its lifeboat and hopes to regain site of the Vesta, it was discovered that the Arctic had indeed been severely wounded herself.   The Vesta’s iron hull and punched a large hole in the bow of the Arctic below the waterline and the ship was quickly taking on water.  Captain Luce ordered carpenters to place patches from the inside of the hull where water was rushing in.   When that failed, men were lowered from the deck and underneath the waves to attempt to patch the hole from the outside. The water was 45 degrees and brutally cold, numbing the hands and bodies of the sailors within minutes. That also failed.  Mattresses were pulled from the beds of both crew and passengers and sails were cut up to plug the hole; all to no avail.

All of the passengers, and those crew not engaged in attempts to save the Arctic, were gathered at the bow looking down at where the Vesta impaled their ship.   This concentration of weight caused the Arctic to list and forced the damaged bow deeper into the water.  Seawater rushed in even faster.  Captain Luce ordered everyone to the back of the ship to raise the bow and slow the rush of water into her hold.  That helped somewhat, but the water continued to pour in.

The Captain also ordered the ship’s anchors and other heavy pieces of equipment to be moved to the other side of the deck away from the punctured bow.  Some of the crew and passengers manned the four hand pumps on deck. The soft hands of the male passengers soon blistered and bled.  Grant and other firemen also worked the pumps, but even the strongest of them could only do so for a few minutes before they, too, had to rest.   As Captain Luce shouted orders, passengers and crew alike were racing around the deck helter-skelter.   It was chaos.

Luce ultimately decided the only option was to make a run for land, seventy miles away.  Grant and the other firemen were ordered below to man the boilers and generate the maximum steam pressure possible to drive the paddlewheels.  Adjustments were made so the boilers could draw from the water flooding into the hold rather than drawn from the outside as was customary.  It was a race against time.  To survive, the Arctic needed to maintain as much speed as possible and get to land before the seawater flooded the boilers and shut down the engines.

Just as the Arctic was beginning to move, the lifeboat emerged from the fog with officer Gourlay at the helm and his crew manning the oars. Captain Luce shouted to Gourlay to return to the ship as fast as possible. Gourlay’s men pulled hard on the oars but appeared unable to close the distance as the Arctic picked up speed.

Luce also spotted the Vesta.  He couldn’t believe it.  Although severely damaged she was still afloat. ‘How can that be?’  he asked himself.  Then, the lifeboat and Vesta disappeared once again in the fog.   The men in the lifeboat and aboard the Vesta screamed for help.

Captain Luce could not afford to wait for Gourlay or lend assistance to the Vesta.  His sole responsibility was now the safety of his ship and those on board.  He reiterated his order of full steam ahead.   The paddlewheels were groaning because the ship was sinking lower in the water and the engines were howling close to the breaking point.   Suddenly cries erupted from sailors on the bow. “Stop!  Stop!”

One the Vesta’s lifeboats emerged from the fog and was now directly in front of the Arctic. Its bow wave rose over the lifeboat and nearly capsized it.  The oarsmen desperately tried to pull away from the ship bearing down on them.  The lifeboat was drawn into the path of the enormous paddle wheel on the left side of the ship furiously pounding the water. Several men jumped out of the lifeboat into the icy water including Jassonet Francois, one of the fishermen aboard the Vesta who was thrown into the sea during the collision.  David Shaw vividly painted the scene in his gripping book, “The Sea Shall Embrace Them.”

“Francois heard the thump of the wheel as he was slammed against the hull, cutting his arms and legs on the sharp barnacles at the waterline before he was sucked under.  All went dark for a moment.  Water began to fill his lungs.  On Arctic’s deck, the crowd on the port side, which accounted for most of the female passengers, watched in horror as the wheel caught the lifeboat and drove it under while smashing it into shards of wood.  The men in it got caught in the floats, wedged in tight, as the wheel plunged them down more than seven feet below the surface.  Their agonized wails pierced the air for only a second.  The ladies turned away, shuddering and crying.

“Many of the men stood fixed in place, not believing what they were seeing.  The bodies of those in the boat rode the aft end of the wheel up under the paddle-wheel box,  where the force and compression of the impact ripped off their limbs and crushed their heads and torsos, freeing them from the floats  As they came down out of the front end of the paddle-wheel box, their broken bodies flew outward through the air and splashed into the sea.  They were instantly driven under the wheel again and disappeared.  It was as if they had never existed.”

One of the Arctic’s passengers, Ferdinand Keyn, a 20-year-old German sailor, spotted a few of the other men in the water about to be crushed by the paddlewheel, and took swift action.  He seized a length of rope and threw one end into the water and held fast to the other.  One man tried to grab the rope but was crushed.   Same with another. As Jassonet Francois shot to surface, the paddlewheel looming over his head, he spotted the rope and seized it before he too was smashed by the wheel.  The forward motion of the fast-moving ship dragged him under the water, but he did not let go.  He clawed his way to the surface pulling himself up the rope one hand over the other.  The nimble Keyn was joined by two crewmen and they pulled Francois onto the deck where he lay barely conscious and near death.    He expelled copious amounts of seawater from his stomach and lungs.

Francois was the only person in the lifeboat who was saved.  The other six were torn apart.   Jassonet Francois had dodged death twice that day only to find himself aboard a ship whose own fate was in grave doubt.

As the fog briefly lifted, Captain Luce caught sight once again of the Vesta.  He was incredulous that not only was she still afloat, it was moving.  What the captain didn’t know is that the Vesta incorporated new design features including a steam-driven propeller, instead of a paddlewheel, and three watertight bulkheads.  Even though the Vesta’s bow had been ripped off in the collision, the other two bulkheads remained sealed and protected from the influx of water.  Thus, the Vesta remained afloat, its boilers and engine room were intact, and her captain, Alphonse Duchesne, was able to slowly maneuver his damaged vessel to the south coast of Newfoundland.

The crushing of the Vesta lifeboat and dismemberment of six of her crew was a pivotal moment.   The Arctic carried the minimum required six lifeboats with a seating capacity for only half of those onboard. She was now down to five.  That was more than enough to get all 80 of the women and children safely off the ship and many male passengers. The ship continued to take on more water than could be pumped into the boilers or overboard, and as she sank lower in the water her speed was greatly reduced. Billowing steam and black smoke poured from vents on deck confirming the boilers were being extinguished by rising seawater.  It became readily apparent to many of the crew members that the ship had no chance of making land and remaining afloat.  Some began to leave their posts and make their way to the remaining lifeboats.

“Women and children first” was the law of the sea, but many of the crew began to question why passengers’ lives were more important than theirs.

The scene turned into panic.  Captain Luce ordered his officers to guard the lifeboats.  As some of the women and male passengers desperately worked the handpumps, several of the crew members and some of the stronger male passengers rushed the lifeboats. Guns, knives and clubs were drawn.  Several melees broke out on deck.

Thirty passengers, including a few women and children, quickly filled one boat. Captain Luce put the Arctic’s butcher and a quartermaster in charge and the boat was lowered to the water with the captain’s orders that it remain tied to the ship. Luce wanted to keep the lifeboats together. The butcher defied the order and cut the tether to the ship. The lifeboat disappeared into the fog.

Amidst the chaos, Luce allowed Second Officer Baalham and three other sailors lowered in another lifeboat with orders to remain close to the ship and take on women and children when the ship went down. Baalham’s boat did pluck several others from the water, but they were all men.

Some of the officers were able to load one of the lifeboats with about 20 women and children.  As it was being lowered, one of the ropes became fouled and the boat flipped spilling all of its occupants into the water. To the horror of those on deck, the women and children thrashed helplessly in the freezing waters.  Within minutes they were dead.

Mutiny broke out on the Arctic and Luce lost control of his ship.  A mad scramble was made for the last two lifeboats.  Passengers and crew fought to gain seats.  Women and children were trampled. Chief Engineer J. W. Rogers and several fellow vigilantes, armed with pistols and clubs, fought off other crew and passengers and stole one of the lifeboats. The remaining boat was overwhelmed by other men. As boats were lowered, men jumped from the deck twenty feet above and crushed and maimed those in the boats below.

As the last of the mutineers rowed off, the remaining boilers were snuffed out, the engines quit and the Arctic was literally dead in the water.   Luce ordered the few remaining crew remembers and those willing male passengers to make as big a raft as possible.   They cut down masts, pulled apart the deck and tore off doors and hatches.  They lashed the ensemble together with ropes.

Third Mate Francis Dorian, with the help of several sailors, was able to salvage the boat that fouled and flipped the women and children into the water. They climbed in after first removing the oars to discourage further hijackings. They were lowered into the water and maneuvered the boat, paddling by hand, to where the raft was being built to help with the final assembly.

Alexander Grant was one of the few remaining on the ship.  He described the last moments for the Bedford Gazette three years later.

“Grant worked manfully with the others.  But as the day wore on, and two and three o’clock came in that deadly, cruel fog, the doomed steamer sank lower and lower in the waves; and everybody knew that death was approaching.  The agony culminated as four o’clock drew near and Grant, with the experience of one shipwreck in his mind, prepared for the worst. With one of his messmates he seized the forehatch cover and threw it overboard a few moments before the Arctic sank.  Happily, it struck the water in advance of the ship, and thus avoided the whirlpool of the final catastrophe.  Grant and his companion found themselves, a few minutes after four, alone on the ocean, in bitterly cold water and a heavy sea.  They could see fragments of the wreck floating at a distance, and they fancied human beings were clinging to them; but the waves ran so high that they were soon alone with the waters around and heaven above them.”

On September 27, 1854, four hours after the collision with the Vesta, the Arctic went down in the frigid waters of the Grand Banks forty-five miles southeast of Newfoundland. Grant and his mate were forced to stand on the forehatch, back-to-back, with water up to their waists, the sea constantly breaking over them. They held on by a rope which they had fastened to the hatch. They spotted Dorian’s lifeboat several hundred yards away. He and his crew were using bits of plank, ax handles and their own hands to paddle their boat. Grant called out, but the wind carried his voice the other way.

They were not alone in the water.   James Smith, one of the 2^nd class passengers, built a raft with three deck planks about a foot wide, ten feet long and an inch thick lashed together with some rope and handspikes.  Shortly before the Arctic went down, he dropped his raft in the water and lowered himself down by a rope held fast to the deck.   It was stable enough for him to stand on it, but he couldn’t sit down. The water was too cold for that.  Smith recalled,

“I kept hovering on my little raft within about 200 or 300 yards  of the sinking ship…In this position I saw three different small rafts like my own leave the ship, one of them with three and another with two of the firemen [most likely Alexander Grant and his shipmate] standing erect on them, and a third with the Frenchman [Jassonet Francois] we had already picked up [from the Vesta], and one of the mess boys of the ship sitting on it.

“I noticed also a couple of large empty water casks lashed together with five men on them, apparently passengers, leave the ship, and drifting towards me; while within about fifty yards they capsized with the force of a heavy swell, giving their living freight an almost immediate watery grave. Three of them, I noticed, regained the top side of the casks only to be immediately turned over again, and the casks separating I saw no more of them. My heart sickened at so much immediate death, and still I almost longed to have been one of them.”

Seventy-five passengers, including four women, and a crewman, Peter McCabe, made it on to the hastily-built large raft as the Arctic slipped beneath the surface.  McCabe was a young man from Ireland who was a last-minute addition to the crew.  It was his first ocean voyage and he was one of the stewards for the 1^st Class cabins.  McCabe remembered the ghastly scene aboard the raft.

“There we were, in the midst of the ocean without the slightest hope of assistance, while every minute one or more unfortunate fellow passengers were dropping into their watery grave from shear exhaustion.  Those who had life preservers did not sink, but floated with their ghastly faces upwards, reminding those who still remained alive of the fate that awaited them…. Some of them floated off, and were eaten and knawed by fishes, while others washed under the raft, and remained with me, staring blankly up at me, until I was rescued. I could see their faces in the openings as they were swayed to and fro by the waves, which threatened every moment to wash me off…

“Very few words were spoken by any, and the only sound that we heard was the splash of the waters or the heavy breathing of the poor sufferers as they tried to recover their breath after a wave had passed over them. Nearly all were submerged to their armpits, while a few with great difficulty could keep their heads above the surface.  The women were the first to go. They were unable to stand the exposure more than three or four hours. They all fell off the raft without a word, except one poor girl who cried out, in intense agony, “Oh, my poor mother and sisters.”

Captain Luce and his son were standing on a paddlewheel box when the Artic went down.   They were separated and both sucked down under the water.   They popped to the surface propelled by their life vests.  The paddlewheel box which had broken off when the ship sank broke the surface next to them as if it was shot out of a cannon.   Luce and his son were both struck by the box.  Luce’s head was severely gashed and Willie was crushed and killed. Luce climbed into the overturned box which was about 12 feet square.  He tied a piece of rope across the width of the box to hold while standing.  Sitting in the freezing water was a quick death.

Twelve others made their way to Luce’s box including the German sailor, Ferdinand Keyn, whose quick thinking saved the Frenchman, Jassonet Francois. A mother and her two children also made it into the box.  All were forced to stand and hold fast onto the rope or the person in front of them.   The box sank low in the water with the weight of its passengers, and one of the 12 jumped out to take his chances in the sea.   As he drifted away, his head slipped under the water not to be seen again.

That night Grant and his mate managed to remain standing on their hatch cover, holding tightly to the rope, and bending their knees to keep their balance as swell after swell tried their hardest to knock them off.   Grant  described their plight.

“Shortly after morning broke they saw a sail; to their inexplicable delight she was bearing down upon them; they watched her, minute by minute, with an anxiety which cannot be pictured.  Before noon she shifted her course, and their hearts died away as they watched her gradually diminishing, till she disappeared altogether.  Oh, what a despairing moment that was!  But before sunset on that day another sail hove in sight.  They watched her intently; she too was bearing down upon them; in an hour or two, at most, she would be near enough to see them. They comforted each other. They talked of their providential escape. They watched the stranger as her topmasts, her mainsail, and even her hull came into view. They addressed her. They were ready to shout to her. They forgot the icy coldness of the water, and the agonies of long-suppressed hunger.

“But while they were gazing the wind shifted and, almost within sight of them, the strange ship jibbed her sails and went off on another tack.  Night fell on a blank horizon. Another frigid night of standing in that cold water, without food or drink, with the bleak Newfoundland wind blowing over them, well-nigh exhausted Grant’s strength.  Neither he nor his companion talked much the next morning.  They scanned the horizon silently and saw nothing. Hunger and thirst and fatigue were doing their work; a heavy wave came over and washed them off their frail support. It tasked their strength to the utmost to regain their place.  Hour after hour wore on, and their clutch of the rope grew more and more feeble.  Their legs were suffering with the cold.”

Unbeknownst to their occupants, the five pieces of wreckage occupied by Smith, Grant and his mate, the three other firemen, Luce and his dwindling party, and Jassonet Francois all floated fairly close to one another with the current taking them eastward over the Grand Banks.  On the morning of the third day in the water, there were only Luce, passenger George Allen and the German sailor Keyn in the paddle-wheel box.  One by one the others had succumbed to exhaustion and hypothermia.

For the men on the wreckage, hope and strength were fading.  At one point, Keyn pulled out his pocketknife and plunged the tip of the blade into the inside of his wrist. Blood erupted from the puncture and Keyn brought the wound to his lips and sucked.  The blood pumped into his parched mouth and into his empty stomach.   Allen grabbed the knife from Keyn before he could do any further damage to himself.  Allen screamed, “Do you want to die?  Do you?”   And Keyn whispered, “Yes.  I want death to come.”    Allen tore off a piece of his shirt and bound the wound tightly to stop the bleeding.

That morning, the sailing ship Cambria captained by John Russell spotted Francois standing on his piece of wreckage. The young cabin boy who Francois had protected on his raft had died a few hours earlier.   After Francois was pulled aboard, Captain Russell approached the shriveled Frenchman and asked him what happened.

“As a reply the captain received  a flurry of rapidly spoken French mixed with broken English.  Something about a shipwreck, other survivors.   Jassonet pointed and jabbed the air to windward.  He swung his arm to show the direction in which the other survivors might be found. He made signs with his hands, pretending they were rafts rolling on the waves… Captain Russell climbed  to the main topmast and scanned the ocean.  To his amazement, he discovered four other pieces of wreckage carrying human freight scattered over several square miles.”

The raft bearing three of the firemen were the next to be rescued.  Then Captain Luce, Allen and Kehn in the paddlewheel box were brought aboard.

Grant and his companion were quickly losing strength and hope, until Grant caught a glimpse of something on the horizon.

“At noon they saw a sail. They had been so cruelly disappointed the day before that they hardly dared to hope. But they looked earnestly and steadily at the stranger.  She too was bearing down upon them. Every quarter of an hour they could perceive her increase in size. It seemed doubtful whether at best, she could help them, for the sea was running very high, and Grant and his companion were being constantly washed off the hatch.  Eight times that day Grant was swept into the sea.

“When the strange ship was a mile or so distant she hoisted a flag. What a thrill it sent to the hearts of the poor fellows!  They knew what it meant.  That piece of stuff told them there was help near.

“They were washed off again and again, but the nearness of salvation gave them strength to regain their hold. It was six in the evening—six hours after Grant had first seen her—that one of the Cambria’s lifeboats rowed up and took them on board.  Smith was picked up next and the last to be rescued.”

Grant had spent almost fifty hours in the in the open frigid waters.  “I thought then,” he said, “that I had suffered as much as any mortal man could.”

With the last of the ten survivors safely aboard the Cambria, Captain Russell put his ship about once more and doubled back over the area in search of others. She found no one else.

The Cambria brought those rescued to Quebec on October 13. From there they took a steamer to Montreal and boarded a train for the three-day journey to New York City, where Grant was reunited with his wife of two months.

Two days after the Arctic sank, Captain Wall and the Canadian bark, Huron, rescued Peter McCabe from his raft.  The 75 passengers who started out on the raft with McCabe had all died.  The Huron also picked up  31 men from one of the Arctic’s lifeboats including Third Mate Francis Dorian, twenty-five crew members and five male passengers.  Some of those rescued from the lifeboat were reluctant to talk about the disaster or extremely vague. Several of the crew elected to remain in Canada rather than return to New York.

That same day, forty-five men made it safely to Newfoundland in two of the Arctic’s lifeboats: fourteen male passengers, twenty-eight crewmen, and three officers including Second Officer Baalham. Two months later, Officer Gourlay’s lifeboat, initially put out to aid the Vesta, was found drifting on the Grand Banks. All of its oars were inside the boat, but it was otherwise empty. The following month the fifth lifeboat was found washed ashore in Newfoundland with no one in it. The other lifeboat was never found. The Arctic’s butcher and Chief Engineer Rogers were not among the survivors.

Of the 407 on board the Arctic when she left Liverpool, 320 perished: 109 crew members, and 212 passengers including all 80 women and children.  Among those lost were the wife and two children of the ship’s owner, Edward Knight Collins. Of the 86 survivors, only twenty-two of them were passengers.

The Vesta arrived safely, although severely damaged, in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Jassonet Francois no doubt thought himself the luckiest man alive having survived the wreck of both the Vesta and Arctic over the course of three days.

At the time, the sinking of the Arctic and the loss of 320 souls was the worst peacetime maritime disaster in American history.   The mutiny by its crew and the loss of all women and children were a huge stain on the reputation of the Collins Line.

The Arctic tragedy in terms of loss of life and Francois’ title of “luckiest man alive” would be significantly eclipsed in three years.

The SS Crescent City Wreck

After recuperating at his home in New York City, Grant went back to work and took a job as a fireman aboard the 1,289-ton sidewheeler steamer, SS Crescent City.  Crescent City was one of several steamships owned by the U.S. Mail Steamship Company.  Her sister ships included the SS Empire City, SS Illinois and SS George Law named after one of the principal owners of the company.  The George Law was later renamed the SS Central America.  

In 1847, Congress facilitated and subsidized the delivery of mail by steamships from coast to coast.  George Law’s company had the contract to deliver mail (as well as passengers and goods) from New York City to Chagres (which later became Aspinwall) on the east coast of Panama. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, led by William Henry Aspinwall, held the contract for the Pacific coast.

The East and West coasts could not have been more different in 1847.  The United States was at war with Mexico who controlled the California territory.  Except for the Native Americans and some soldiers and trappers, the entire non-native population of California was less than 10,000.  The U.S. wouldn’t get control of California and gold wouldn’t be found there until 1848.    Thousands of easterners began settling the Oregon and Washington territories in the mid 1840s when those lands were claimed by the British who ruled Canada.   U.S. President James Knox warned Britain that American control of the Oregon and Washington territories was “clear and unquestionable” as part of the “manifest destiny” of the country.  In 1846, the U.S. and Great Britain struck a deal ceding control of the Washington and Oregon territories to the U.S., in return for the U.S. relinquishing claims to lands within Canada to the north, including Vancouver.  Oregon wouldn’t become a state until 1859, and Washington not until 1889.

Which is all to say that in 1847, there wasn’t a lot of mail to be exchanged with Americans living on the West coast.  Of course, that changed dramatically and practically overnight when the precious metal was discovered the following year at Sutter’s Mill in Northern California and hundreds of thousands of folks raced West to strike it rich, or make money off the backs of those trying.

In those early years, the mail, goods and passengers were ferried across the 60-mile isthmus of Panama by boat, mule and foot. Although dangerous and choking with swarms of disease-carrying mosquitos, it was a far cry faster than travel by ship around Cape Horn at the tip of South America.   That 17,000 mile journey between New York and San Francisco could take between five and nine months.  And the treacherous and volatile seas at the Cape known as Drake’s Passage were renowned for sending many a vessel and its occupants to Davey Jones Locker.

Nonetheless, many of those lured by the Gold Rush, especially those lugging heavy mining equipment, preferred the Cape Horn route.  That all changed when the railroad line across the isthmus of Panama was completed in 1855.  A trip that used to take at least three gritty days was reduced to four hours.  And one could now complete the trip by steamboat between San Francisco and New York in a little over three weeks.

The Final Voyage of the SS Central America

The SS Central America arrived at Aspinwall, Panama on September 2, 1857.   Alexander Grant was on board and working as one of the eleven firemen. 

Capt. William Lewis Herndon bid adieu to the passengers who had boarded thirteen days earlier in New York City.  Grant had another painful goodbye with his wife, Margaret, and their almost one-year-old son, William.

That same day, the SS Sonora arrived on the Pacific side of Panama with her passengers who boarded in San Francisco on August 20.  In addition to bags of mail, the Sonora carried a precious shipment of $1,600,000 in gold extracted from the mines in Northern California and freshly minted into coins and bars in San Francisco and desperately expected by banks in New York, Many of the passengers who boarded in San Francisco were miners returning home and they carried an equal amount of gold coin and dust in their baggage. The total amount of gold on the ship would have a value today in excess of $600 million. On September 3 the passengers, gold and mail made the four-hour trip by rail car across the isthmus to Aspinwall.

Captain Herndon greeted his fresh set of passengers as they boarded the Central America.   Grant was working on deck and did a double take as he made eye contact with one of the passengers.   It was the African American, George Dawson, his crew mate aboard the Crescent City.   They shook their heads in disbelief and smiled.

With everyone and the gold safely on board, the Central America began her return voyage to New York City with a stop in Havana.  The four-day leg to Havana was smooth and uneventful.  The weather was fair with the customary light winds.   The ship spent the night of September 7 anchored in Havana harbor.  A few of the passengers ventured into town, but most elected to stay on board. Havana was in the grips of a yellow fever epidemic.

The Central America was struck by a massive hurricane on September 10. Much has been written about what the passengers and crew suffered and endured over the next three days in a life and death struggle to keep the Central America afloat.

A Silver Cup

MARY SAWYERS SWAN COOK (1839-1924)

Oliver Perry Manlove

We’ll pick up the story with the final hours on the Central America.

By the afternoon of September 12, the winds continued to howl and monstrous waves battered the Central America.  She had sprung leaks in her hold and was taking on enormous amounts of seawater in spite of the valiant efforts by both crew and passengers to bail out the water by hand using pots, buckets and anything else that could hold water.    Like the Arctic, the Central America’s hull was not divided in separate sections that could be sealed from damage and water intrusion.  Her boilers were inundated by inrushing seawater and were snuffed out the day before.   Her sails had been ripped to shreds and her masts cut down and heaved into the sea in a failed attempt to create drag and keep the ship pointed into the wind.

In a stroke of luck, the brig Marine came upon the disabled Central America in the early afternoon. The next few hours could not have been more different from the travesty and chaos that unfolded on the Arctic.   Captain Herndon and his officers maintained control of their ship, in spite of the fact everyone knew the ship was doomed.   Herndon gave the order “women and children first,” and that order was by and large obeyed.    Captain Hiram Burt and his small crew of ten brave men aboard the Marine, herself severely damaged by the hurricane, took safely on board his much smaller vessel all 60 women and children.

Captain Herndon was also on the hurricane deck, or what was left of it, dressed in his finest uniform with his trumpet in hand.  He borrowed a cigar from one of the passengers and lit off one more distress rocket low in the sky.  The men tossed the raft over the side of the ship and Grant and several others jumped aboard.  Dawson hesitated, deciding not to abandon ship until the Captain gave the order.  A few minutes later, Herndon barked out his final order. “Buckle on your life preservers!   We’re going down!”

The Captain had with him on board his 11-year-old son, Willie, who was physically disabled.  Also on board were the wife and two children of her owner Edward Collins.

As he looked for a piece of wreckage, another man grabbed Dawson’s neck from behind. Dawson pulled the man’s arms off his neck, breaking one of them in the struggle.  The man slipped under the surface and did not reappear. Before he, too, drowned, Dawson quickly found three pieces of broken deck and clung on for dear life.

Eleven men including Grant were clinging to the hurricane deck.  They included George Buddington, third assistant engineer; Patrick Carr, fireman; coal passers John Banks, James Kinnelty and Patick Evans; and Richard Gilbert, an engineers’ messman.  The other four were passengers whose names Grant did not know. Grant recalled,

“The Central America went down about a quarter to nine o’clock, to the best of my recollection.  The night was very dark, with a few stars to be seen in the skies; there was no lightning nor rain. We could see over one hundred persons all around us, clinging to pieces of the wreck.  They were all around us, crying for help; but, as the sea was washing over us every moment, and the wind blowing very heavy, we all had just as much as could possibly attend to save ourselves from being washed from the deck… We heard cries for help all around us up to daylight.”

It wasn’t a ship, but instead the raft he helped build with Grant.  Eleven men were crammed on top. The men refused Dawson’s request to climb aboard, the raft already several inches under water from the weight of the eleven men it supported.  Dawson was permitted to grab hold of a rope trailing in back of the raft and, with the precious pieces of board tucked under his other arm, was carried behind.

First Engineer John Tice

Soon after reaching the raft, Dawson and the others spotted a ship [most likely the Ellen] about five miles away, and too far to signal her. She remained in sight until mid-morning when it disappeared over the horizon.   The night the Central America went down and into late Sunday morning, the Ellen rescued 49 of the passengers and crew who had gone down with the ship.

Later that morning, John Banks died from exhaustion and swallowing too much salt water.  He was rolled off the raft.

Grant said that “Before night three more died who were passengers whose names I do not know.  They died from exhaustion and swallowing salt water as wave after wave continued to break over the raft.  These we also threw overboard.”

The raft was now sufficiently lightened to allow Dawson to climb on top.  Throughout the day on Sunday, several men wearing life preservers floated past them.  Many of them asked whether they had anything on the raft to eat or drink, and the answer was always “No.”   Some of the men on the raft talked a little about the chances of rescue.  Grant shared some of his stories of surviving wrecks. They’d been in the ocean over 24 hours, and their sufferings for want of water became more acute.

[Grant’s diary:] “That evening, just before dark, we picked up another passenger, whose name I do not know.  He was supporting himself in the water by a piece of board, and was very much exhausted.”

Over the course of the long night, four more died and were rolled off the raft: Buddington, 27, Carr, 28, Evans, 18, and Gilbert, 35.  Only four remained:  Grant, Dawson, Kinnelty and another passenger whose name was not recalled.

[Grant’s diary:] “Monday.—On Monday, we saw nothing of any more of the passengers or of the wreck; nothing transpired on that day worthy of note; there were four of us out of twelve alive.”

On Tuesday, their 4^th day in the water, they saw another man floating near the raft on a large, wide, plank.  He looked a great deal better off than the four on the hurricane deck.  They talked a bit about how they were getting along.  The man said he preferred to stay on his piece of wreckage rather than get on the raft.  A strong wind and rising, heavy sea came up around sunset and carried the man away from the raft.  They never saw him after that.

[Grant’s diary:] “Some hours prior to night coming on, Kinnelty, one of the coal passers, became deranged, and was wholly unconscious of his condition, and during that night both he and one of the survivors of the hurricane deck, a passenger whose name I do not know, died from exhaustion and swallowing salt water.  There were now but two—myself and Dawson—left out of the twelve persons who were at one time on the hurricane deck with us, I being the only survivor of the ten who had started from the wreck on the deck when the ship went down.  We were both very much exhausted, but resolved to do the best we could to save our lives.”

On Wednesday the sea was not quite so rough as it had been, although there was a pretty good swell rolling.   A dog fish weighing several pounds jumped on the raft.  Dawson grabbed the fish while Grant slammed its head with the butt of his knife.  However, the fish’s skin and meat were so tough they could barely cut it or eat it. They hardly satisfied themselves by slowly chewing small bites made all the more difficult with the inability to muster any saliva.  The next day, Thursday, it was more tender and the men were able to eat a little more of it.

Their raft floated near a man who was supporting himself on a small plank.  He swam to the raft and was helped aboard. He was a passenger with the first name of Frank and wore a large ring on his finger with the initials F. B. (There were two passengers with the initials F. B.: 1^st Class passenger F. A. Bokee from Massachusetts, and steerage passenger F. Barr, neither of whom survived the wreck.)  Frank was in bad shape and worse off than Grant and Dawson.  He became delirious and his rants and cries were incomprehensible.  Despite efforts to comfort and quiet him down, Frank collapsed on the raft and died.

Dawson’s own condition had become so intolerable that he too was very near the point of giving up. He pleaded, “Mr. Granty—for God’s sake, Aleck, look out and see if you can see anything!”   Grant got to his knees and squinted over the cloudless horizon.  After a few minutes he did a double take and, with a thin, raspy voice called out, “Dawson!   I see a boat.  And what looks like an oar raised with some piece of cloth attached to it!”

[Grant’s diary:]  “I saw a boat about three miles off, but could not tell whether there any one in it or not, but thought there was.  I resolved, however, to reach it if possible; and accordingly I divested myself of all but my under clothes, and tying a life-preserver around me, I jumped into the sea, and swam toward the boat with all my might.  I cannot say how long I was before I finally reached the boat, but before I got to her I discovered a man sitting down, and trying to scull the boat toward me.  On reaching the side of the boat, the man (who proved to be Mr. John Tice, the 1st Assistant Engineer) helped me in…

It generally takes a good swimmer about two hours to swim three miles.  Grant had spent the last six days hanging on for dear life to the hurricane deck.  Over the two days before the ship went down he and fellow crew members had worked themselves to the point of exhaustion with little to eat and barely any sleep.   One by one, eleven men died from exhaustion and were rolled off the hurricane deck.  They had no fresh water and only a few mouthfuls of dog fish to sustain them.    Yet, Grant had enough strength left to jump into the water and swim three miles!   Only a man who spent his boyhood practically living in the ocean off Newfoundland and hardened by thirteen years at sea in some of the worst conditions imaginable could pull off such a feat.

“I left the ship on a board just as she went down.  I had no life-preserver, and had no time to get one.  I saw others with them on struggling in the water—they seemed to do little good. The last object I saw was Captain Herndon as the ship was sinking; I have no doubt that he has perished.  I drifted away from the others almost immediately, and was three days on that board expecting every moment to be my last.  On the third day I fell in with a boat that was about half full of water.  I swam to it, got in with great difficulty, and succeeded in bailing out the water.  I was two days in the boat when I fell in with a portion of the hurricane deck, and two men, Grant and Dawson, succeeded in getting into the boat with me.  The others all perished…  All that time we had nothing to eat, and not a drop of fresh water.  Most of the time the sea was breaking over the boat.  We suffered everything but death.  No man could describe what we endured.”

Dawson took Tice’s advice to tie his handkerchief about his head and keep it wet. The three of them were alive, but barely.  On Friday and Saturday their sufferings were appalling. They had lost their sense of hunger and any desire for food, but their thirst created indescribable tortures.

On Sunday morning, September 20,  eight days since their ship went down, the men’s spirits were lifted when they spotted a brig on the horizon. They took turns standing and waiving the oars in the air, but to no avail.  The brig did not see them and sailed out of site after a couple of hours. The dwindling prospects for rescue only added to the nightmares of their condition.  That night Dawson lay in the bottom of the boat, wishing that death would come and end his suffering.  Adding to their misery, a rising sea broke over them every few minutes.

On Monday morning, the men were awakened with more water.   Fresh water!  It rained for a solid hour and the three were practically dancing with glee.  Tice grabbed a bailing pail to captured some rain.  Dawson did the same with a silver cup tied to his waist. James Birch, a fellow passenger and acquaintance, gave the cup to Dawson right before the Central America went down.  It was a birthday present for Birch’s one-year-old son, Frank, and believing Dawson had a better chance at survival, Birch asked Dawson to deliver the cup to his wife and son in Swansea, Massachusetts should Dawson make it and Birch not.

Their good fortune continued. As they drank the delicious nectar, they caught sight of another brig.  They could hardly trust their eyes and feared it a cruel mirage.  But as it drew nearer, hope was rekindled in their hearts.  They shouted with what little voice they had left, and enthusiastically waived their shirts to attract attention.  Grant hoarsely cried out, “She sees us!”  as the brig bore down upon them.  They grabbed the oars and with what little strength they had left, urged their boat toward her and, at last, sank down exhausted when their boat made contact with the brig Mary.

Captain Colin Shearer instantly assessed their deplorable condition and ordered a sailor to jump down into their boat.  He passed a rope around each as they were carefully pulled up on deck by other crew members.  The Mary, based in Scotland, was on her way from Cuba to Cork, Ireland with a load of molasses.

Grant said, “Shortly after five o’clock we were picked up by the vessel, where we were received by all hands with the utmost kindness.  Everything was done for us that could be.  The boat in which we were saved was also taken on board the Mary with us.  When we got on board the vessel, we were so much exhausted that we could not stand alone… We remained on board the Mary [for a week] until the following Monday, when Captain Shearer fell in with the bark Laura, Captain Wilmassen, from Bremen, Germany, with 400 German passengers for New York, and asked the captain if he could take us on board, which he readily consented to do, and immediately sent his boat off for us.  Here we were also received with the utmost kindness and attention, and nothing was left undone by the captain, passengers or crew, for our comfort.”

Grant, Dawson and Tice were transferred to the Laura on September 28, and together with the 400 German immigrants, arrived at Castle Garden on the southern tip of Manhattan on October 5.

The first news of the sinking of the Central America reached New York and the Eastern seaboard on  September 18, and by the 19^th those who had been rescued by the Marine and Ellen was widely reported.  After a few more days of no additional news of any more rescues, it was mournfully presumed that everyone else had perished.   On October 2, the New York Herald ran an article listing Grant, Tice and Dawson as dead.  

So, it was not surprising that when Mrs. Grant was informed that her husband was indeed alive, she refused to believe it.  She became indignant with the person who brought her the news and accused him of trifling with her feelings.  But when Grant arrived by carriage at his home at 36 Vandam Street in Greenwich Village, his wife’s joy and gratitude were beyond description.

However, as was the case with everyone who was touched by the Central America disaster, one person’s joy was another’s worst nightmare. A New York Times reporter wrote:

“What was joy to her [Mrs. Grant], however, proved to the utter grief and woe to another poor woman living on the same floor with her, named Wilson, whose husband [George Wilson, steerage waiter, age 30] was one of those lost by the wreck. The news of Mr. Grant’s safety fell like a thunderclap on her, and upon hearing that he had no intelligence from her husband, she swooned away and continued from one fainting fit to another, for several hours, before she could command sufficient strength to resist her feelings.”

The three survivors were mere skeletons, their faces and bodies covered with open boils; their hands and feet swollen and blistered. They could scarcely move a hand or speak.  A reporter recoiled when he saw Grant.

“He looked like one risen from the grave.  The intense sufferings which he had undergone on the steamer, then on the raft, and lastly in the boat, were visible in every lineament of his face.  He looked like one who, having been brought to death’s door by a scorching fever, had just passed the crisis of the disease.  His large, manly face was white and almost fleshless, showing the bony outlines with ghastly distinctness, and his black, scarred lips looked as though in his agony he had frequently bitten them through. But the most shocking traces of suffering were in his eyes.  Naturally large, they were now preternaturally distended, and wore a fixed, straining, sleepless expression, as though still looking from the frail raft along the dreary horizon for a friendly sail.  His voice too was hoarse, and hollow, and boils had broken out upon his body from prolonged exposure to salt water.”

Dawson, Tice and Grant became instant celebrities.  They were hounded by reporters and curiosity seekers who hungrily consumed the statements of their horrific ordeal.  Growing weary of the attention, and still not recovered, Dawson reached out to a friend of his, Henry Sampson, who brought him to his house in New York City.  Sampson was also working on the Crescent City with Grant and Dawson when it wrecked in the Bahamas in December of 1855.

A total of 161 were saved by the Marine (109), Ellen (49) and Mary (3); 101men, and all 32 women and 28 children. Captain Herndon and James Birch were not among them.

Here is a breakdown of the fate of those aboard the Central America.

*Women and children
**22 crew and 27 male passengers made it aboard the Marine; 2 crew were rescued by the Mary (Alexander Grant and John Tice); and five crewmembers were rescued by the Ellen

What happened to Tice, Dawson and Grant?

George Dawson returned to Oroville, California and his job as a porter at the St. Nicholas Hotel.  As a person of color he suffered intense discrimination brought to a head by the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case in 1857 that held the Negro was so inferior to the white man they were never intended to be citizens and thus were stripped of all rights under the Constitution.. In 1858 he and 800 other Black Pioneers accepted the offer by the Governor of British Columbia to resettle in Vancouver and enjoy the same rights as British subjects. In September of 1860, three years after his miraculous rescue, he was reported drowned in the Gulf of Georgia while traversing by canoe from Victoria to the Fraser River.

John Tice married the year after his rescue and had four children in Brooklyn, New York. For the next 21 years he served as a steamship engineer. His final voyage was on the steamship Emily B. Sonder as Chief Engineer. On December 10, 1878, the ship was struck by a hurricane and sank not far from where the Central America went down.  Fifty were lost including ten passengers. There were two survivors, both members of the crew. Tice wasn’t one of them. 

Alexander Grant was reunited with his one-year-old son, William, and wife, Margaret, and they continued to live in New York City for several more years.  When the Civil War broke out, Grant joined the U.S. Navy Marine Corps.  In December of 1861, Corporal Grant was stationed in the Marine Corps barracks at 8th and I Streets in Washington D. C.  Because of his extensive experience at sea, he was made Fireman 1st Class aboard the steamship USS Montgomery. The Montgomery blockaded Confederate ports in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic seaboard for the duration of the war.

After the War, Grant continued to work on steamships through the 1880’s. Grant’s widow filed a pension claim with the Union Navy in 1891. It’s not known where or how Alexander Grant died, but if one was a betting man, it wasn’t by drowning.

References

Normand E. Klare, “The Final Voyage of the Central America,” The Arthur H. Clark Company (1992)

David W. Shaw, “The Sea Shall Embrace Them-The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic, The Free Press (2002), pages 164, 174, 178

Q. David Bowers, “A California Gold Rush History,” The California Gold Marketing Group (2002)

New York Herald, October 12, 1854

New York Daily Herald, December 27, 1854

“Statement of John Tice-First Engineer,” The Washington Union (District of Columbia), October 6, 1857

“Statement of George Dawson,” Chicago Tribune, October 9, 1857

“Statement of George Dawson,” The National Era (Washington D.C.), October 15, 1857

“Statement of Alexander Grant,” Chicago Tribune, October 9, 1857

“Statement of Alexander Grant,” The National Era, October 15, 1857

The Morning Chronicle (London, Greater London, England), October 20, 1857

“Alexander Grant-The Man Who Couldn’t Be Drowned,” Beford Gazette (Beford PA), October 30, 1857

“Sufferings of Alexander Grant,” Trinity Journal (Weaverville, CA), November 14, 1857

William H. Painter, “Loss of Honor: The Sinking of the Sidewheeler Arctic,” Historical Society of Old Yarmouth, May 2005

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