Was The Lady Elgin Cursed?
By James Donahue
Some
said the side-wheeled steamship Lady Elgin bore a curse from the day it was launched at Buffalo, New York, in 1851. That is
because the engine and boilers came from the Cleopatra, an ocean slave trader that was confiscated by the U. S. Navy.
But nobody dreamed that the Lady Elgin would be remembered as one of the worst disasters in Great Lakes history.
When
she was sunk in a collision on Lake Michigan, off Winnetka, Illinois, on September 8, 1860, an estimated two hundred eighty-seven
passengers and crew members perished.
The
lady was a monster ship in her day. She measured a full two hundred fifty-two feet in length and boasted over a thousand tons
of displacement, making her one of the largest vessels afloat on the lakes.
On
the day of the crash, the Lady Elgin was steaming north from Chicago with about three hundred excursionists, fifty ordinary
passengers and a crew of thirty-five officers and men, all bound for Milwaukee. Many of the passengers were members of the
Milwaukee Light Guardsmen, the German Black Jaegers, and German Green Jaegers, who were returning from an excursion trip to
Chicago. They were preparing to join Union forces in the Civil War and were in the windy city that week to raise money for
guns and equipment.
The
Lady Elgin left Chicago the night of September 7, and steamed into a thunderstorm on Lake Michigan which by 2:00 AM developed into a full northwesterly gale. Capt. Jack Wilson wasn’t worried
though. He turned the bow of his command directly into the wind and the vessel was weathering the storm well.
Disaster
came unexpectedly at 2:30 AM when the two-mast lumber schooner Augusta came out
of the darkness and collided with the steamer’s port side. The Augusta, under
the command of Capt. Darius Malott, was sailing from Port Huron to Chicago with a cargo of lumber.
Malott
later said the vessel was under heavy sail when the storm struck. The crew was preoccupied with getting the sails reefed and
the vessel under control when the lights of the steamer were seen close off the starboard bow.
Malott
said he ordered the helm put hard about, but the ship didn’t answer her rudder. Within minutes the schooner collided
with the steamer, at the midships gangway just forward of the wheel, putting a large hole in the side of the Lady Elgin’s
wooden hull. The Augusta quickly pulled away from the steamer and was blown off before the wind into the night, with her foresails
wrecked and her bow badly crushed and leaking.
Because
of the storm Malott said he couldn’t return to the scene of the collision, but continued on to Chicago where he reported
the accident. He said he never dreamed the collision sank the steamer, which was more than twice the size of the Augusta.
But
the Lady Elgin was, indeed, fatally wounded. Bedlam broke out on her decks as soon as people realized the steamer was sinking.
The Lady Elgin was only ten miles off the Illinois coast so Wilson tried at first to run his crippled ship to shallow water.
To
gain time he ordered the cargo and passengers moved to the starboard side. He reasoned that if he could get the vessel to
list in the other direction, he might get the hole in her port side raised above the waterline. Wilson also sent officers
below deck with blankets, mattresses and lumber, doing all they could to plug the hole that was quickly sending the elegant
ship to the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Nothing
worked. The water soon flooded the engine room and put out the fires. The engine crew opened the steam valves to the boilers
to prevent an explosion once the cold water hit them. Then came the order to abandon ship.
The
Lady Elgin was sinking faster than Wilson realized and only two lifeboats got launched. It was said the ship went down about
twenty minutes after the crash.
Many
people found themselves clinging to wreckage, mostly from the deck and upper cabins, which floated away from the hull as the
ship sank under their feet.
Many
were still alive, hanging on to the floating debris, when the drifted close to shore. There the brutal surf, still fanned
by the gale, played a lethal game of death. Hundreds of struggling souls, now exhausted from hours of exposure to the storm-lashed
lake, lacked the strength to endure this final ordeal. They were either dashed to their death on the rocks or drowned in the
surf. Bodies were stacked like cordwood on the rocky coast that day. Only ninety-eight survivors were counted.
The
disaster was so staggering that a stigma was attached to the Augusta from that day on. It followed the schooner everywhere.
Her owners changed the vessel’s name to Colonel Cook but that didn’t
fool anyone. She was always remembered as the schooner that sank the Lady Elgin.
Malott
died three years later when his next command, the bark Major, also sank in Lake Michigan. Strangely it is said the Major lies
within ten miles of the Lady Elgin.