Early American History: Disasters Befalling the Immigrant Ships in Passage to America

Disasters were frequent on immigrant ships and sometimes occurred when the vessel was almost on American shores. The packet ship Powhatan, a wooden schooner built in 1839 with 250 German immigrants on board, went aground in a storm off the coast of New Jersey on April 15, 1854. The vessel broke in two and all on board perished. The many bodies and salvageable items that washed ashore were placed in a storehouse. When the coroner arrived, he noticed that there was no money to be found on any of the bodies. Meanwhile, the women of the neighborhood had made burial garments while the men made coffins, and the bodies were placed in a trench in an old Quaker cemetery. A pile of cut-open leather money belts of the type immigrants filled with their life savings was found under a tree later, all of them empty. One suspected culprit later left town in disgrace.

For a long time, the area was said to be haunted by the poor victims of the wreck. A monument was erected in memory of the lost passengers in 1904. From the tragedy of this shipwreck, because of the poor condition of the lifeboats and the lack of rescue training in what could have been a far less tragic incident, the U.S. Life Saving Service was born. There were 64 more shipwrecks between 1847 and 1856 in this immediate area.

Until 1855, one out of every six passengers died or became dangerously ill at sea. In December of 1853, a Bremen sailing ship, the ‘Anna,’ carrying 40 passengers too many, arrived in Baltimore with an epidemic of cholera on board, 12 passengers having died at sea. After two weeks at sea, some passengers had nothing to live on but hard bread, prunes and watery soup. However, Bremen was in general a good port from which to emigrate, and the ships of France and England were much worse. In 1854, Bremen had the lowest percentage of ships arriving in North America with cases of cholera on board, and the figures were Bremen, 6 per cent, compared to London’s 25 per cent.

The New Era carried 374 German immigrants in steerage and eleven more in cabins when she ran aground on November 13, 1854 on the bar off of Deal Beach, New Jersey. Although personnel from three life saving stations gathered to help, they were unable to launch a boat because of the extremely rough seas. A lifeline was finally made fast and some of the crew were rescued by this method. However, 248 persons lost their lives.

In the other area of the States, 588 Wends from Saxon and Prussian Lusatia had left Germany in September, 1854, for Serbin, Texas. Their ship, the “Ben Nevis,” was only 146 feet long when the immigrants were stuffed on board. Of the 588 people, 76 of them died along the way, mostly of cholera. When the ship docked at Galveston 3 months later, only 512 of them were still alive. This loss was below the one-in-six death rate typical of immigrant ships from Germany. The plague ship was placed under quarantine. When the remaining immigrants finally arrived in Houston in January, only the small children were given shelter and most people had to sleep on the ground. The few with money bought oxen and began the 200 mile journey overland to Serbin while others walked. They did not arrive until late in March, having spent the entire winter around camp fires.

538 passengers were jammed on the new ship “Austria” as she made her third voyage from Hamburg to New York on September 13, 1858. A barrel of tar used to disinfect the steerage fell over, a fire broke out and set the wooden berths with their straw filled sacks ablaze. Immediate disaster ensued, people panicked, and realizing nothing could be done to save the ship, flung themselves into the sea. There were only 89 survivors.

The danger was far from over for the immigrant once he reached the bigger ports of the USA. Other ships on inland waters which carried the immigrants from their ports of arrival to other regions of the USA had horrible disasters. One such “appalling calamity” occurred on Lake Erie during the season of 1841, with the burning of the steamboat Erie on the night of August 9, off Silver Creek in the same waters where the another steamer had burned in 1838.

The Erie was commanded by Capt. T. J. Titus, and had been in Buffalo for a few days being freshly painted. She started out at about four o’clock in the evening for Chicago. 33 miles out from Buffalo, a small explosion was heard and the whole vessel was immediately in flames. The passengers, surrounded by fire, dove into the water, many to be seen no more. Over 100 persons were drowned. The immigrants on board included many Germans with an estimated $180,000 of gold coin to start their new lives. It all went to the bottom of the lake.

On June 17, 1850, within feet of shore and also on Lake Erie, a wooden, 600 ton steamship named the G. P. Griffith sank and 286-300 people, mostly German and Scandinavian immigrants, lost their lives. The Griffith was built in 1847 especially for the booming immigrant trade and also carried freight. For three years, it took immigrants and freight from Buffalo to Toledo. Immigrants normally slept on deck.

On Sunday morning, June 16, 1850, she steamed out of Buffalo in good weather. Sometime later, sparks were spotted shooting up between the smokestacks, and after realizing that a fire, which started below from a new lubricating oil, could not be extinguished, the ship headed for shore, the wind created from its high speed fanning the fire. The life boats could not be lowered since fire prevented access to them.

Finally within 200 yards of shore, and reaching water only eight feet deep, most of the immigrants could not swim but jumped overboard in panic anyway, their families separated and screaming, pulling one another down in their misery with some being swept into the churning paddlewheels. When the ship’s engine ran out of steam, it still surged ahead from momentum and struck a sandbar. The fire, which had swept to the back of the boat now raced forward rapidly and exploded, and the remaining immigrants leaped or were blown into the water, many landing on top of each other. The ship hit the beach broadside and continued burning.

Only 37 people survived. Many of the immigrants were said to have drowned because of the excessive weight of their money belts, or coins sewn into their clothing. Local residents rescued those who survived and then retrieved the dead. They buried 47 men, 24 women, and 25 children in a mass grave on a knoll overlooking the spot of disaster. It was Lake Erie’s worst disaster. None of the gold or money belts were ever reported as being found, in case you’re wondering.