Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (10 page)

Behind Virginia Birch in the first boat came the only black woman on board, the stewardess, Lucy Dawson, known affectionately as Aunt Lucy. A stout, older woman, Aunt Lucy fell into the water three times before they could land her in the boat. On one of the dunkings, a wave lifted the lifeboat, which slammed into Lucy, then smashed her against the side of the steamer.

Three more women and five or six more children left the deck of the
Central America
, swung out over the water, and descended into the first of the lifeboats. Four crewmen manned the oars and at the helm stood one man Herndon knew he could trust above all others, the bos’n, John Black. As the oarsmen pushed off and dug in their oars, Virginia Birch heard Captain Herndon yell to Black, “Ask the captain of the brig to lay close by me all night for God’s sake, as I am in a sinking state, and have five hundred souls on board, besides a million and a half dollars!”

A
WAITING THE WOMEN
and children, two more lifeboats now remained at the sides of the steamer, each already beginning to fill, fore and aft, as crews on deck prepared the rope slings, loaded them with passengers, and swung them out over the water.

Before boarding in San Francisco, Thomas Badger had given his wife $16,500 in twenty-dollar gold pieces, which she had sewed up in toweling, in three parcels, and laid flat in a trunk. The trunk sat in their stateroom, now in water up to Jane Badger’s knees as she picked her way among the “rubbish which strewed the cabin.” She found the trunk, unlocked it, took out the gold, placed it in a carpetbag, threw a crepeshawl on top, locked the bag, then had to leave it sitting on the lower berth: It was so heavy, she couldn’t lift it.

In his coat hanging in the stateroom, Badger also kept a memorandum book containing notes and other records of debts owed to him in New York, the sum of which was several thousand dollars. Wading through the water, Jane Badger retrieved the book “with all its contents,” secured in a small bag about $1,500 worth of diamonds, bracelets, and rings, together with a purse containing $40, and made her way back to
the deck. When she found her husband and told him what she had done, he told her to throw away the jewels, anything with any weight to it, but she declined, insisting she would keep them in her pocket.

On deck, Badger helped rig his wife for her descent to the next lifeboat. He bid her good-bye, and Jane Badger swung out over the water; a wave sucked the small boat away from the hull, and she dropped into the sea. On the second try, she landed in the boat but at first could only crouch in the bottom, her legs too unsteady and the sea too unpredictable for her to risk moving to a seat. When she finally moved to a bench, “a lady of remarkable stoutness” dropped from the deck above onto her neck and shoulders so hard she thought the blow had broken her neck. Some of the women in her boat took up buckets to help bail, though their haste, the wind, and the motion of the sea combined to keep much of the water from ever making it over the gunwale.

The men knew they were unlikely to leave the ship, but to coax their wives into the sling ready to be lowered, many allowed their wives to think they soon would be reunited on the brig. Annie McNeill, an orphan of nineteen when she married a man of thirty-three, had retrieved seventeen thousand dollars, chiefly in drafts, plus her diamonds and jewelry. “I am sure I should never have left the steamer had I known that the men were not coming,” she said. “I should never have left my husband.” They had been married five months, and she had no other family. “He constantly assured me that he was going with me until he got me on deck and the rope tied around me, when he said he could take care of himself and wanted me to be safe first.”

In their stateroom preparing to leave, Ada Hawley asked her husband if he would go with her to the brig. He took his money out of their trunk and said not a word. She had been ill for several days, and she needed help with DeForest and little Willy. Her husband grabbed the baby, and a friend carried the older child, and they hurried on deck. Mrs. Hawley looked for the
Marine
, and it appeared to lie about a mile and a half away. She went over the side first, and there she waited in the boat.

“The little children were passed down,” she recalled, “the officers lowering them by their arms, until the boat swung underneath, and they could be caught hold of by the boatmen. It was frightful to see these helpless little ones, held by their tiny arms above the waves. My babe
was nearly smothered by the flying spray, as they were obliged to hold him a long time before he could be reached by the boatmen, but when I pressed him once more to my bosom, and covered him with my shawl, he soon fell asleep. I took nothing with me except a heavy shawl and my watch.”

The instant the boat filled, the order came for the crew to shove off, and Herndon again shouted to the helmsman, “Tell the captain of the brig, for Heaven’s sake, to lay by us all night!”

As the oarsmen set their oars to, Ada Hawley saw her husband. “He stood on the wheelhouse and kissed his hand to me as the boat pulled away from the ship.”

With her husband on deck working, Addie Easton went to their stateroom and put on a “dress skirt to cover my night dress and wrapper, which I afterwards took off, as I thought I might get in the water and it would cause me to sink. Then I went to my small trunk which was in the room and took my dear mother’s miniature, also one of my brother James, and some money. Taking a shawl and putting on a life preserver, I started to go above.”

Just as she reached the door, Ansel came in and told her to hurry. “We shall be saved,” he said, “but the women and children are to be taken off first.”

“I can’t go without you,” said Addie.

At the thought of leaving her husband on the ship, her courage vanished. Ansel told her she had to go, and that he should follow very soon. Then their friend Robert Brown came to the door of their cabin.

“Come, Easton,” he said, “you must hurry. They are taking another boatload now.”

Ansel quickly reached into the trunk, took out a coat, stuffed the remainder of his money, about nine hundred dollars, and some valuable papers into the pockets, and rolled it into a bundle.

When the Eastons and Brown got to the deck, the second boat was nearly full. Ansel found Captain Herndon and asked him how many boats were left. The captain replied, “Only one. We had five but two were dashed to pieces as they were being manned, so we have but three.” He calculated, however, that the three boats could make several trips before dark.

“I left in the third boat,” Addie later remembered. “I said however to Ansel, ‘I don’t want to go till you do.’ He said, ‘You had better go now,’ or something of that kind. I then kissed him and said, ‘I’ll pray for you.’ In a moment I was swinging from the deck, and when a swell brought the little boat underneath, the rope was lowered and I dropped in the bottom of the boat. It was a dreadful moment for we were in great danger of swamping or being stove to pieces. And just then the contents of one of the barrels they were bailing with came down on my head, completely drenching me. Ansel threw me his coat containing the money and also took off the coat he was wearing and threw it to me to put about my shoulders.”

One passenger described the evacuation of the women and children as “a dangerous, heroic and almost superhuman effort” that “can scarcely have a parallel.” But the passenger also noted that “through some strange and mysterious influence there were several young and unmarried men taken in the life-boats to the brig, leaving behind those men who had wives and children.”

Virginia Birch had pleaded with Ashby to allow her husband, Billy, to go with her. “But he refused,” she recalled, “using insulting language.”

Lynthia Ellis, a woman of delicate constitution, dehydrated, and suffering acutely from four days of seasickness, asked that her husband be allowed to go with her to help care for their four children, two of whom were sick, all of whom were young. But the hands refused. “No men would be allowed to go until all women and children were safely off.”

Other women, too, had pleaded with the officers to let their husbands go with them and were refused, yet somehow in the confusion single men now sat at their side. With Addie safely in the lifeboat, Ansel Easton and Robert Brown returned to the bailing gang, but before that lifeboat filled, several men got in with Addie and the other women and children, the crew unaware that three women and at least as many children remained on board the steamer.

One of the men who boarded a lifeboat early was Judge Monson. He had applied to the first officer to allow an elderly gentleman, Albert Priest, to board that third boat. Perhaps realizing the judge was a friend of the captain, the first officer agreed, and the crew lowered the old man.

“I gave Mr. Priest a message to my brother in New York,” Monson said later, “in case I should not be saved myself. Mr. Priest said, ‘Never mind the message, come, Judge, yourself.’ The first officer said, ‘Certainly, Judge, it is your turn—all right, jump in.’ I immediately was lowered into the boat. A moment previous I had not the slightest idea of leaving the steamer then.”

Ann Small was the last of the passengers loaded into the third boat. Mrs. Small was a new widow with a two-year-old daughter. A few weeks earlier, her sea captain husband had died at sea, and she had buried him in Panama. When she boarded the
Central America
in Aspinwall, the American consul had asked Captain Herndon to deliver her and her child to New York. Herndon replied he would personally guarantee their safety. Now as the officers placed her in the rope swing, Herndon came up to her.

“Mrs. Small,” he said, “this is sad. I am sorry not to get you home safely.” Then he turned away, and she saw no more of him.

The boat, tossing at the side of the steamer, waited below for its final passenger. The crew quickly wrapped Ann Small into the harness, swung her out, and paid out line on the harness. Twice she fell into the sea. When at last she made it into the boat, wet and shaken, the oarsmen pushed off to begin the long journey to the brig. Seated in the lifeboat, Ann Small now looked up: On the deck of the steamer high above her she saw her little girl. The crew had wanted the mother lowered to the lifeboat first, so she then could receive her child. But the men in the boat below did not realize that one more tiny passenger remained for them to rescue; they had pushed off immediately, and they couldn’t go back now. As the small boat pulled into the high seas, Ann Small saw her little girl on deck still in the arms of a crewman.

W
HILE
H
ERNDON AND
his crew worked to lower the women and children into the lifeboats, Captain Burt of the
Marine
had made sail, trying to bring his brig to windward, but with only one sail against a gale of wind and a heavy sea he could not succeed. Before the lifeboats could be lowered and filled and set off, she had drifted nearly two miles, now almost an apparition in the storm, at times disappearing altogether.

For most of the women, risking the journey through high seas and a gale wind in such a small boat seemed only slightly less frightening than remaining aboard a ship certain to sink. One woman described the waves as “running mountains high.” Angeline Bowley, clutching Charles and Isabella, later recalled, “After I got safely into the little boat, and my babes with me, I had but little hope of getting to the brig. The water dashed into the boat, and we had to keep dipping it out all the time. Two high waves passed entirely over us, so that it seemed as if we were swamped and sunk; but the boat recovered from them both. The commander of this boat encouraged the sailors to keep every nerve steady, and told them that it would require the exercise of all their skill and courage to reach the brig in safety.”

Almira Kittredge had gone out with three children of other women. “I put one in my lap, another between my knees, and the third I held by the collar. At length I got tired of holding the one by the collar and let him sit down in the boat, the water clear up to his neck. He sat in that condition and never spoke a word.”

As soon as the oarsmen had pushed off, a huge wave rolled over the third boat, half filling it with water. With hills of sea passing under them and the oars frequently knocked from their hands, the oarsmen fought just to keep the oars in the water and the boats from capsizing. “It was a good thing just at this moment,” wrote Addie Easton, “when I felt that I could not keep from breaking down at the parting of my dear husband, that I had to rouse myself for action. The men were all needed to row the boat, the other women were hysterical and so all the long miles we had to go before we reached the brig were spent in bailing the boat.” While the men rowed, several women in the three boats bailed hard with large tins.

A
BOUT TWO MILES
to the lee when the first of the lifeboats shoved off the
Central America
, the
Marine
had drifted another mile before the lifeboats began to arrive. The crewmen had pulled on their oars incessantly for an hour and a half.

In calm weather the
Marine
’s deck rose nearly eight feet from the waterline. In a storm, her decks were awash as she shipped sea after sea. When the first lifeboat came alongside, the oarsmen stood to fend off
against the hull. The waves swelled, then crested, lifting the lifeboat higher and higher until its gunwale towered above the bulwark of the
Marine
. But Captain Burt saw a way to use this to his advantage. He stationed himself on the deck, his feet braced close to the railing. The wind blew and the sea again rose, pushing the lifeboat higher and higher, and Captain Burt yelled for the women one at a time to hold out their hands when he directed. Then, with two of his men standing by to keep the boat from crashing onto the deck, Burt watched the boat rise on the next wave, shouted the signal to the first woman, seized her slippery arms, and hauled her aboard in the moment the lifeboat seemed to hover above the deck.