Steamship - Central America - Sept 1856

US Central America left Havana at nine o'clock on the morning of the 8th

Sunk - Sept 12, 1856

Capt Badger's Statement:

Captain Badger, one of the rescued passengers of the Central America, states that the gale increased until 2 o'clock on Friday, the 11th inst., when it was perceived that the engine had stopped, and the ship fell off into the trough of the sea, which caused her to make considerable water around her lee shaft and the lee lower dead lights.  It was afterwards ascertained that the cause of the stoppage of the engines was the neglect of the fire and engine department of getting coal along from the bunkers to the fire room fast enough to keep up the fires, consequently, all the engines stopped, as well as all the pumps attached to the engines.  The deck pumps were out of order, and, at Capt. Badger's suggestion, companies were organized, while the steward's gauges and deck hands went down to pass the coal along.  By this time the fires were put out, and the water became so heated in the hold of the ship, and the steam engendered was so great that they were compelled to abandon passing the coal.  The ship then lay at the mercy of the waves, but still did not labor hard.  We then started several gangs at balling as the only hope of saving the ship.  At my suggestion the Captain ordered the foremast to be cut away, which was done about 6 o'clock.  From 4 o'clock till 8 the water was kept at bay.  An attempt was made to raise steam in the donkey boiler.  Berths were torn and thrown into the furnace to raise the steam to start the pumps, but all to no avail.  The cause I could not learn.  A drag was prepared but failed, and the ship continued in the trough of the sea.  Bailing still went on vigorously and was kept up all night by gangs, who were changed as often as they became exhausted.

Towards morning the men were beginning to fall, and the water to increase and grow up in the hold of the ship. At 4 o'clock on the morning of Saturday, the 12th, the gale abated, with a heavy sea running.

They were encouraged by myself and others with the assurance that the ship would hold out.  Every passenger remained cool, and seemed to forget his danger in the united efforts to save the vessel.  There was no weeping or exhibition of despair, even on the part of the females.  At eight o'clock another attempt was made to raise steam in the donkey boiler, to pump the ship, but without avail.

One proposed to box the pumps, but on inquiry no carpenter or tools could be found, and the water gained rapidly.  The lee shaft was shrouded in heavy blankets to stop the leak, but the water burst through.  At 2 o'clock on Saturday a sail was reported to wind ward, and at half-past three she came under the stern.  Boats immediately were lowered, but were stove instantly by the sea.  Three boats still remained, one in a bad condition.  At 4 o'clock the work of removing the ladies and children to the deck of the Marine was commenced.  The brig begin much lighter that the ship, had by this time drifted away to leeward.  The distance was considerable, and the boats were long in making the trips, and there being a heavy sea but few could be carried at a time.  After sending the ladies and children, the engineer and some fifteen others were embarked on the brig. By this time it was dark. The work of bailing was still kept on, but the water gained faster and faster upon the vessel.  As the boats successively approached the ship, a simultaneous rush was made by the passengers to get on board, and it was apprehended that the boats would be filled and stove. It was now dark.  About two hours before the sinking of the ship, a schooner ran down under our stern, but could not render any assistance for want of boats.  The work of bailing went on until within an hour of her going down.  Two lights of the above vessel were now seen far to leeward.  Rockets were fired from the wheel but went downward.  The immediate sinking of the ship followed.  Capt Herndon remained on the wheel up to the moment of her going down, which was 8 o'clock on Saturday night.  I was standing on this quarter-deck.  Some jumped over, and pat out from the now rapidly descending ship, and seized on whatever they could.  No one shrieked or cried, but all stood calm.  The Captain behaved nobly, and said he would not leave the ship.

I promised him I would remain with him, as also did the second officer, Mr. Frazer.  All at once the ship, as if in the agony of death herself, made a plunge on an angle of 45 degrees, and with a shriek from the engulphed mass, she disappeared, and five hundred beings floated out on the bosom of the ocean, with no hope but death.  At 1 1/2 o'clock in the morning the Norwegian bark Ellen came running down with a tree wind.  The cries of distress reached those on deck, and they hove to, under short sail.  The task of rescuing the passengers was nobly commenced, and by 9 o'clock the next morning forty-nine of them had been picked up.  Diligent search was made until 12 o'clock, but no more could be seen.  They then bore away for Norfolk, with a fair wind, and arrived at Cape Henry on the 17th, where myself and four others embarked in the pilot-boat and arrived in Norfolk.

Mr. George, a most intelligent passenger, has given us a thrilling account of the fearful scene.  He was one of the hundreds who had supplied themselves with life-preservers, pieces of plank, ect, and preferred to await the ship's going down to leaping overboard in anticipation of her fate.  When she went down stern foremost, after giving three lurches that made every timber quiver, and which were to every quaking heart as the throes that instantly preceded her dissolution, he was dragged with the4 rest on board of her some twenty or twenty-five feet beneath the surface.  He heard no shriek, nothing but the seething rush and hiss of waters that closed above her as she hurried, almost with the speed of an arrow, to her ocean bed.  Night had closed in before the vessel sank, and he was sucked in by the whirlpool caused by her swift descent, to a depth that in its seeming was unfathomable, and into a darkness that he had never dreamed of.  Compared with it, the blackest night, without moon or star, was as the broad noonday.  He was rather stunned than stifled, and his sensations on coming to the surface were almost as painful, from their reaction, as those which he endured at the greatest depth to which he sank.  When he became conscious, after the lapse of a minute or two, he could distinguish every object around him for a considerable distance.  The waves as they rose and fell, revealed a crowd of human heads. Those unfortunates who had lost their life-preservers or planks while under water, owing to the force of the whirlpool, were frantically snatching at the broken pieces of the wreck, which, breaking from the ship as she continued to descend, leapt above the surface, and fell back with a heavy splash. Their cries arose, that mingled into one inarticulate wail, and then the lustier and less terrified shouted for assistance to the bark Marine, which was far beyond hailing distance.  The waves dashed them one against another, at first, but speedily they began to separate, and the last farewells were taken.  One man called to another, in our informant's hearing,  "If you are saved, Frank, send my love to my dear wife," but the friend appealed to, answered only with a gurgle of the throat.  He was washed off his plank, and perished as his companion spoke.  Many were desirous of separating themselves as far a possible from the rest, being fearful lest some desperate struggler might seize hold of them, and draw them under.  Others afraid of their loneliness, called to their neighbors to keep together.  Generally, they strove to cheer each other, as long as they remained within hearing, and when the roar of the waves drowned all but the loudest shouting, the call of friendship, or the cry of despair, was heard in the distance, and infused confidence, or increased dismay, in many a failing bosom.

It was when he had drifted far from the companionship of any of his fellows in misfortune, that Mr. George began to realize his situation.  The night was quite dark.  Occasionally, as the driving clouds parted and gave a glimpse of sky, a star or two would be visible, but this was very seldom and offered but the faintest gleam of hope that the morning would dawn fair and calm.  The swell of the sea was great, and successively the poor floaters, holding on to their planks with the energy of despair, were riding on the brink of a precipice and buried in a deep valley of water.  Our informant, like many of the rest, was seized with the fear of sharks.  Respiration was very difficult, owing to the masses of water which were constantly dashed upon them, as wave after wave rolled by.  For two or three hours the water was not unpleasantly cold, and it was not till about 1 o'clock on the morning of Sunday, when they had been nearly five hours in the water, and a fresh, chilling wind arose, that their limbs began to feel benumbed.

Some of the incidents described to us as occurring before or about that time were truly thrilling.  One man, floating in solitude, and terrified at his loneliness, after shouting himself hoarse to find a companion, saw at length a man with two life-preservers fastened about his body drifting towards him.  His heart leapt with joy at the welcome sight, for the feeling of desolation which had overcome him was terrible to endure.  He called to the other to join him, if possible, and made every exertion to meet him half way.  There was no reply, but the other drifted nearer and nearer.  A wave threw them together.  They touched. The living man shrieked in the face of a corpse.  The other had been drowned by the dash of the billows, or had perished from exhaustion.

When, rising and falling with the swell of the waves, the lights of the bark Ellen were first discerned by the survivors in the water, the thrill of hope that at once filled every breast amounted, in may well be believed, to a perfect ecstasy.  Let Mr. George speak for all.  He says: "I never felt so thankful in all my life.  I never knew what gratitude was before.  I do not know whether I cried or not, but I know I was astonished to hear my own laughter ringing in my ears.  I do not know why I laughed.  That verse, "God moves in a mysterious way," kept passing in and out of me - through me, rather, as if I had been the pipe of an organ.  It did not come to me by my own volition, but somehow made me remember it.  When the lights approached nearer, a score of voices sprang up around me, crying "Ship ahoy," "Boat ahoy," and they I began to shout too.  And I had never any doubt that I should be saved, till I saw the lights pass by, about half a mile from where I was, and recede in the distance.  Then I began to give myself up for lost indeed. But I slowly drifted toward her again, till I could make out her hull and one of her masts, and presently I floated close to her, and shouted, and was taken up.  When I got on the deck I could not stand.  I did not know till then how exhausted I was.

Our informant, before he was thus happily rescued, encountered six men clinging to a log of wood, two of whom were washed off in his sight, within a short distance of the bark.  The others must have afterwards shared the same fate, as they were not taken on board the bark and were never again seen.

The Empire City Purser's Report:
The Empire City, Capt John McGowan, left her wharf at Norfolk, VA, at 10 1/2 o'clock AM on the 18th for this port.  She had been vitalized and coaled during the previous two days for a thorough cruise in search of the missing steamer Central America, of whose ultimate safety, however, non on board felt any misgiving.  But on the day of appointed departure, at 5 o'clock AM, a pilot-boat came up from outside, anchored in the stream near us, and we were soon boarded by a gentleman, one of four passengers, who electrified us with the announcement of the total loss of the Central America, foundered at sea at 8 o'clock PM on the evening of the 12th inst. during the late severe gale, carrying down with her most of her officers and crew, near 400 passengers, and $1800,000 in treasure.  Our informant had been picked up on the night of the disaster, floating about on fragments of the wreck with 48 others, by the Norwegian bark Ellen, Capt. Johnson, from Belize, Honduras, bound to Falmouth, England, which vessel he reported then coming up the bay in tow of a small steamer.

It was likewise understood that all the women and children, some of the latter, infants, in all 56 in number, had been saved in the steamer's boats, before she sunk, and put on board the brig Marine, of Boston.

"Sir," said our informant, "500 men with Death yawning before them at any moment, stood solid as a rock, nor made a movement for the boats until women and children had been all safely transported to the brig, after which about 40 of the crew and male passengers in a few trips reached the latter vessel before the steamer went down.:

Capt. McGowan, abandoning his previous intention, immediately got his ship under weigh, steamed down the harbor, and when near the light-ship, spoke the bark with her quota of the saved.

Hailing her, he proffered a passage to New York to all who chose to accept, the majority were taken on board, and with a parting round of three hearty cheers for their preservers, we proceeded on our course hoping to fall in the brig and relieve the women and children.  Within three miles of Cape Henry a vessel was descried ahead in tow of a propeller bound in, and immediately speculation was rife as to whether she might or might not prove to be the vessel we sought.  Glasses were leveled at her by anxious groups gathered forward, and as we rapidly closed together, certainty succeeded surmise, and to the joy of all, she proved to be the brig Marine, in tow of the City of Norfolk, propeller, her low and confined decks, swarming with  wretched-looking objects, many of them women and children, wringing their hands, and weeping and laughing by turns hysterically.  Our boats were speedily lowered and Capt. McGowan, in the first, boarded the brig in person, caressed, embraced, and, indeed, half-strangled by the poor women, who three themselves upon him as he reached the deck.

As boat-load after boat load reached our ship's side and ladder, each tried with the other in assisting them to our decks, and in short time the greater portion were comfortably quartered in our cabins.  To the bystanders, the recognition and greeting between the two parties - mother, claiming son, and husband wife, the eager scanning of each face in agonizing fear and expectation, the joy or grief manifested as recognition or disappointment awaited the gazer, was touching in the extreme, straining the heart-strings and moistening the eyes of many hitherto unused to such manifestation.  A portion remained on board the brig, preferring to go up to Norfolk, and when all who wished had been taken on board, the Empire City again started with her freight of unfortunates for New York.

Ninety-six in all were reported to have been saved by the brig, exclusive of the colored stewardess, who died from exhaustion shortly after having been taken from the wreck.  All speak in the highest terms of the attention paid them and the humanity displayed by the officers and crews of both brig and bark; former, conveying the women, was about to serve out her last ration of water, and had not an opportune supply of provisions been received from a passing vessel, they must have been driven to great straits with hunger as well as thirst.

The bark Ellen had previously had all her boats stove in the gale, and every individual of those saved by her were drawn on board by lines thrown them, as she sailed through the drifting masses of drowning men - her Captain handling his vessel as only a sailor could, going ahead, getting sternway on her and drifting to leeward, as the cries about him from those whom he could not see through the darkness of the night dictated.  Their escape is unequaled in the annals of marine disaster and relief.  The officers of the Empire City, grieving for the loss of their brother officers, have yet a feeling of pride and satisfaction in knowing that they died at their posts striving to save life to the last, and point to the fact that all the women and children were saved (not an infant lost) as an instance of self-devotion, coolness and manliness seldom exceeded, if equaled.  Should it please Providence hereafter to place them in the same strait, they with no nobler culogium.