The Sea Hunters Read online

  The Commodore personally scrutinized every inch of her construction, and conceived a number of advanced innovations in her design.

  He insisted on the finest seasoned white oak and yellow pine for her beams and floor timbers. Integral strength was assured by a stress plan lifted from Town @ patent for Bridges. The hull was super-strong, with a heavy box frame, unusual for most ships before or since.

  No safety feature was overlooked. Her smokestack was well cased through the decks, and cinders were passed through a wide pipe fitted in the hull that expelled them into the sea. No exposed woodwork was installed near the boilers or steam pipes. The Lexington even had her own fire engine, complete with pumps and hose. Three large lifeboats hung in their davits behind the paddle wheels along with a life raft that was tied to the forward deck.

  The boat went into service on Monday, June 1, 1835, and was an immediate success. At first, she ran as a day boat between Providence, Rhode Island, and New York. TWo years later, she was switched to the Stonington run. Her passenger accommodations were advertised as luxurious and expensive. Lady passengers were especially courted, Vanderbilt providing all the niceties they enjoyed. Food was superb and the service second to none.

  Either Commodore Vanderbilt sailed under a lucky star or else he enjoyed an acute sixth sense. In December of 1838, Vanderbilt's toughest competitor, the New Jersey Steam Navigation and Transportation Company, made the Commodore an offer he couldn't refuse. They paid him $60,000 for the fastest boat on the Sound, and then spent another $12,000 refurbishing the interior and converting her boiler furnaces to burn coal. His brother, Jake, agreed to stay on as captain of the Lexington until the family's new boat was launched.

  Manchester pulled a lever that rang a bell in the engine room and called down through a voice tube. "We're in the clear now, Mr.

  Hemstead. Your boys can shovel on the coal."

  "As you wish, captain," the chief engineer replied loudly over the tube.

  Smoke spewed out her tall stack, thickened and mushroomed. A white bone grew and arched up around the bows as the Lexington leapt forward. The water beneath her huge paddle wheels seethed and boiled.

  To Manchester, she was like an unleashed greyhound. He never failed to be stirred when the big engine flexed its muscle and hurled the hull across the water as fast as if not faster than any other boat ever built.

  He checked the thermometer again. Already the pointer hovered at zero.

  Not a good night to stand outside, he thought. He glanced down at the water skimming past the hull, spreading into the wake, and couldn't imagine the horror of finding himself immersed in it this night.

  Most captains of the passenger boats plying the Sound were not comfortable mingling with the passengers and remained aloof in the wheelhouse or their cabins during most of the trip. But George Child was a warm and friendly man. He felt it was his duty to show courtesy to his passengers and reassure any, and there were a fair number, who were fearful of traveling on a steamboat.

  As Child stepped into the main cabin fifteen minutes before the call to dinner was announced, he looked over the passengers, who were seated in groups, conversing sociably around the stoves. Job Sand, the tall, distinguished headwaiter, moved around the cabin serving refreshments. Although Sand was white, the other five waiters, the kitchen help, Joseph Robinson, the boat's esteemed chef, and Susan Holcomb, chambermaid, were all black.

  Without checking the boarding list, Child guessed there were approximately 115 passengers who had paid the $1 fare, meals extra.

  Deck passage was 50 cents, but there were no takers tonight.

  Counting his crew of 34, there were almost 150 men, women, and children on board the Lexington for the run to Stonington. It was as though the boat held a miniature city.

  Several card players were seated at the tables, quiedy engrossed in their game- TWo well-known Boston comedy actors, Charles Eberle and Henry J. Finn, kept the conversation lively as the cards were dealt.

  Never ones to ignore an audience, they had generously offered to act out a scene from their new play after the passengers had dined.

  Peter McKenna, a businessman from New York, won the first pot.

  Mothers and fathers gathered on the sofas and entertained their young children with stories and toys purchased in the city. Mrs.

  Russell Jarvis, described as a woman of uncommon beauty, kept her two lively daughters occupied by counting beams from the lighthouses rising around the danger points of the Sound. James Bates scanned a newspaper while his wife read aloud from a book of poetry to their young boy and girl. Parents with two children seemed to be the rule on board the Lexington this Monday. William Townsend was giving his wife a hollday by taking their two girls on a trip to Boston.

  On a more somber note, the funeral party of Harrison Winslow were sitting quietly off to one side of the cabin by themselves. His widow, Alice Winslow; her father-in-law, William Winslow; and Harrison's brother, John Winslow, were accompanying the body, stowed in its coffin with the other cargo belowdecks, for burial in Providence. On the opposite end of the cabin, Mary Russell giggled happily with Lydia Bates, a young woman her age. Mary had been married the day before in New York, and was returning to her home without her new husband to break the news to her parents.

  A party of merchants stood around the stoves discussing business and debating politics. Banker Robert Blake politely disagreed with business proprietors Abram Howard, William Green, and Samuel Henry over the New York bank's tightening of interest rates. John Leniist, treasurer of the Boston Leather Company, had nothing good to say about the bankers, who had recently charged his firm a high rate of interest on a loan to increase inventory.

  The lounge was heavily attended this trip by sea captains, who had made port after months at sea and were traveling to their own firesides and their cherished loved ones. Captains J. D. Carver, Chester Hillard, E. J. Kimball, David McFarland, John Mattison, Theophilas Smith, and Benjamin Foster, who was returning from a three-year voyage to India, took turns swapping sea tales with each other.

  Other notable passengers included Dr. Charles Follen, a respected professor of German literature at Harvard College, and Adolphus Hamden, of Hamden's Express, who was transporting $20,000 in silver coin and $50,000 in bank notes for the Merchants Bank.

  Dinner was served at 6 P.m. by Job Sand and his staff of waiters.

  Chef Joseph Robinson and his assistant cooks, Oliver Howell and Robert Peters, offered passengers a choice between mutton with boiled tomatoes and baked flounder in a wine sauce with rice.

  Amid the clink of glasses and the soft murmur of voices engaged in small talk, none of the 115 souls assembled around the dining tables could have known that, except for one man seated among them, this would be their last meal on earth.

  Shortly after 7:30, the first mate, Edwin Furber, came to the wheelhouse door and alerted Captain Manchester that the boat was on fire. Manchester immediately stepped outside and stared aft. Flames were coming through the promenade deck around the smokestack casing.

  He scanned the darkened shoreline and took a quick bearing. The boat was well past the beacon at Eatons Neck Point and approaching the lighthouse on Old Field Point, both on the Long Island side of the Sound.

  The lights of Bridgeport to the north appeared further away. He immediately took the helm from steersman Johnson and swung the wheel hard-a-starboard in a vain effort to Turn the boat and beach her on Long Island.

  Seemingly out of nowhere, Captain Child rushed into the wheelhouse. "We've a fire on board!" he shouted. "Set a course for the nearest land!"

  "I'm bringing her about now," Manchester answered, "but the wheel is not answering the helm."

  Together, the three men gripped the spokes and applied their strength in an effort to steer the boat toward safety four miles and twenty minutes away. Suddenly, the wheel spun out of their hands.

  "She's not responding," Johnson muttered in dazed bewilderment.

  "The fire must have burne
d through the port steering rope below the wheelhouse," said Child.

  Now out of control, with the engines still turning, the Lexington began helplessly running in wide circles. Child leaned out the door and gazed toward the stern. The beautiful boat, once the pride of the Vanderbilts, was vomiting fire and smoke from her entire Midsection.

  He realized with sickening certainty that his boat and everyone on it was lost.

  Leaving Child and Johnson, Manchester ran outside and called to the deckhands to operate the fire engine and break out the water buckets.

  The deckhands appeared frightened and confused. They attempted to put the fire engine into operation but they couldn't seem to find the buckets. At that moment smoke poured into the wheelhouse. Child and steersman Johnson were forced out on the deck, choking and coughing from the deadly fumes.

  Second Mate David Crowley rushed to the center of the boat and found flames leaping from several bales of cotton. At that point, the fire had yet to spread to the boat's woodwork. He organized the deckhands and the dining-saloon waiters into a bucket brigade and began throwing water on the growing holocaust. Short on buckets, they spilled the Merchants Bank's silver coins from their wooden crates onto the deck and hurriedly began filling the boxes with water and passing them on to the men nearest the flames. Their efforts made no headway as the flames spread with incredible speed. If cool heads had prevailed early on, the fire might have been contained. Now it became a moment born in hell.

  Any hope of saving the boat had evaporated.

  The blaze quickly forced Chief Engineer Courtland Hemstead and his men from the engine room before they were able to shut down the engines. Immune to the fire, the big steam cylinder kept the paddle wheels turning, making it impossible to launch the boats.

  The Lexington surged on through the dark waters as if driven by some unearthly force.

  The strength of the flames soon overwhelmed the firefighters.

  They retreated past the towering walking beam to the paddle-wheel guards.

  Since it was too late to make their escape, the crew on the forecastle deck were trapped by a wall of fire reaching up to the top of the smokestack.

  To Captain Chester Hillard, who helped strip away the canvas covering the lifeboats, "The Lexington is a gone case."

  Crowley stood by Captain Child and asked, "Sir, what is to be done?"

  Child looked around at the fear etched on the passengers' faces and calmly replied, "Gentlemen, take to the boats." Then he walked aft to direct the launching of the lifeboats. l' Twenty minutes before there were informal pleasantry and relaxed gaiety in the main cabin. Now the entire scene was one of horror.

  Utter confusion and terror swept the passengers. Calm gave way to the inevitable contagion of panic. As one, they made a frantic rush for the lifeboats, brushed aside the crew, who were attempting to ready them for launching, and took possession. Caught up in mindless panic, the passengers flooded into the boats as if they were lemmings; overwhelmed by mass frenzy, they unknowingly destroyed themselves.

  Dangerously overfilling the boats, the passengers dropped them into the black water that was still swirling past, agitated by the thrashing paddle wheels. The boats, along with their helpless occupants, were immediately swamped and swept into the night.

  The remaining passengers were left to fend for themselves, and none of them knew which way to Turn. Few jumped into the water.

  Drowning was nearly as unthinkable as being incinerated. During the early nineteenth century, fewer than ten people out of a hundred knew how to swim. In any event they would have expired within minutes from hypothermia in the frigid water.

  Captain Hillard rounded up a few deckhands and a small band of passengers, and directed them to throw overboard any cotton bales that had not caught fire. After a dozen were heaved over the side, Hillard and stoker Benjamin Cox climbed down and positioned themselves astride a bale, each facing the other. Their combined weight settled the cotton bale until only one-third of it was above the surface of the water.

  The wind was fresh and the cur-rent carried them away from the boat at a speed of a knot and a half As Millard drifted around the stern, he noticed a lady, whom he took to be Mrs. Jarvis, shouting frantically over the railing. Somehow, one of her children had fallen overboard. The men passed the child so closely Hillard could reach out his hand and touch the little body. From its dress and long hair streaming in the water, Hillard could see it was a female. He also saw that she was already dead. Mrs. Jarvis beseeched him to pull her daughter from the icy water, but he was more concerned with saving his own life. This was a time when self-preservation prevailed before the cry of "Women and children first" became a worthy tradition of the sea.

  Hillard turned away from the heart-rending scene, pulled out his watch, and calmly noted the time by the light of the fire. It was just 8 P.m.

  The Lexington would take a long time to die.

  An immense, billowing cloud of black smoke reached hundreds of feet into the sky, blocking out the stars. The main deck had fallen in, and the only parts of the boat the flames had yet to devour were the stern and bows forward of the capstan. Ten people still stood on the stern while thirty more milled around the forecastle, including Manchester.

  "Shouldn't we jump or something?" a dazed Adolphus Hamden asked Captain Manchester.

  "To do so would be to perish," replied Manchester.

  "We can't just stand here and be burned to death." "Every man for himself," Manchester said solemnly.

  He turned away and lowered himself over the side onto a raft of debris. There were two or three other men on it already, and his added weight sank it under the water. He grabbed a piece of the railing that was under water and used it to pull himself onto a bale of cotton that was floating nearby. He found that passenger Peter McKenna had climbed aboard the bale first. Hamden, still on the forecastle, shouted to Manchester.

  "Is there room for another?"

  Before Manchester could answer, Hamden jumped, knocking McKenna off the bale and falling in the water with him. Ignoring Hamden, Manchester hauled McKenna back on the bale. Then he found a length of board that was floating past and began paddling away from the blazing boat. As had Captain Hillard earlier when abandoning the boat, he checked his watch. It was just midnight.

  Lexington had burned for four hours.

  Second Mate Crowley also reached a cotton bale empty of life. He Pulled himself aboard, and with surprising presence of mind stuffed his clothing full of cotton to ward off the frigid night air. He was luckier than the others who had reached the temporary safety of the cotton bales. Without the added weight of a second body, he was able to lie the full length of the bale without immersing his legs and feet.

  Drifting with the current, he could do little but fight to keep warm and identify the different points of land as he floated past.

  The most harrowing escape from the inferno was by stoker Charles Smith. He had just fallen asleep between shifts of firing the boilers when he was awakened by a friend, who informed him there was a fire.

  He quickly rushed to the engine room, attached the fire hose to the water and opened the valve. But he was unable to reach the end of the hose to spray water on the blaze. The smoke and flames drove him aft, where he intended to board one of the lifeboats. He found Captain Child standing by the davits that swung out the starboard lifeboat, and heard him shouting for Chief Engineer Courtland Hemstead.

  In less than a minute, Hemstead appeared, his eyebrows and much of his hair singed away. "You wanted me, captain?"

  "For God's sake, stop the engine," Child implored. "We can't launch the boats while we're underway."

  Hemstead shook his head wearily. "The fire drove us from the engine room before I could shut down the pressure valves. There's no going back in the inferno. I'm sorry."

  Child nodded. "You did your best. Take your engine-room crew and see what you can do to hold back the flames for as long as it takes to get everyone safely off the boat."


  Hemstead vanished in the smoke while Child stepped over the rail and tried to steady the lifeboat as it was lowered with a full load of frightened passengers. At that instant, someone cut the stern line and the boat swung outward, its bow plunging under the turbulence from the rotating paddle wheels. Child fell into the boat. Passengers, Captain Child, and the half-sunken boat drifted away and disappeared into the night, joining the dead bodies already floating in the wake of the Lexington.

  Soon after, the engine finally stopped and the boat began to drift. By waiting another few minutes the doomed passengers in the swamped boats might have been saved. Only four souls would survive.

  Smith climbed over the stern railings, kicked in three cabin windows, and using the sills as footholds, lowered himself on top of the rudder.

  After half an hour,. a young boy climbed down beside him. Smith looked into the face white with fear. He pointed to a cotton bale floating nearby.