A Bump in the Night: The Wreck of the Atlantic (from Lake Erie Stories, by Chad Fraser)

 

Amund Eidsmoe gazed out over Lake Erie and saw a road to a better life.

The Norwegian immigrant and his small family had arrived in Buffalo in late August, 1852, after a four-month odyssey that had taken them across the Atlantic Ocean and then by rail from Montreal.

Born in 1814 in the Valdres region of Norway, Amund’s upbringing was humble, to say the least. With his parents struggling to raise six children, there was little time for childhood pursuits; young Amund had to go to work as soon as he was able. But he was more than up to it –– he quickly mastered the lathe and, along with his brothers, turned out a wide range of trinkets, from pepper grinders to spinning wheels. It wasn’t much, but every little bit helped the Eidsmoes make ends meet.

At the age of sixteen, Amund’s father sent him to a seminary to study. Two years later, he graduated with the recommendation: “very quick in learning: a teacher and choir leader position.” Upon his return home, Amund took the hint and became a teacher at a small school in his neighbourhood. But even though he enjoyed the work, he took the job because his church had financed his studies and expected a return on its investment. Amund’s new job was a seven-year commitment and offered very meagre pay.

On top of that, his domestic life was changing, as he describes in his own unpublished account of his life, which he penned in 1902 at the remarkably old age of eighty-seven:

When I had served the seven years I was compelled to, I received an increase in salary and taught in all 16 years. In that time I had married and two children were born of this union, one boy and one girl. My wife died after four and a half years of married life and our little girl died at the age of two and a half years. I married again in 1849. Then I became aware of the fact that the school salary was going to be too small and decided to wander out to America.

 

What had been drawing Eidsmoe and his Norwegian countrymen, along with most other immigrants, to the New World over the previous two hundred years was straightforward: cheap land. As the United States expanded westward, there was an abundance of opportunity for hardworking men like Amund. He planned to be among the first of what would become a large number of Norwegians to settle in the American Upper Midwest.

But the trip to Buffalo had been rough; after Amund and his family, which now included the boy from his previous marriage and a little girl, had said goodbye to their relatives for what they all knew would be the last time, they arrived at the port city of Drammen only to learn that the ship they had booked passage on had left without them. This unexpected hardship forced the Eidsmoes to find temporary accommodation in Drammen and the surrounding area for a total of nine weeks until another vessel could be fitted out.

But to their great relief, departure day finally arrived. The Eidsmoes brought aboard their own food supply, which was already stretched by the unexpected layover, and all of their possessions in a few small trunks. Amund provides his perspective of the voyage: “On the ship we were always in danger of falling from the heaving and plunging of the waves and in our rooms we were thrown from one wall to the other, now up and now down. It continued in this manner for eight weeks and four days until we arrived at Quebec.”

The steamer took them down the St. Lawrence River as far as Montreal, where the Eidsmoes and their fellow Norwegians were unloaded and moved onto a train bound for Buffalo. But their misfortune was far from over: while the baggage was being offloaded from the ship, one of the Norwegians slipped off the pier and fell into the harbour. Passersby scrambled to try and reach the panicked man, but he was hopelessly trapped between the vessel and the dock. Finally, he disappeared beneath the surface and did not reappear. On the train, Amund and his family found themselves sharing a seat with the man’s freshly widowed wife and child. “She was overcome with grief,” wrote a still-saddened Amund fifty years later. “It was a pitiful sight to see and think about.”

But as they started their rail journey, things started to look up. The immigrants were, after all, now into the last leg of their ordeal. Amund, able to see Niagara Falls out the window as the train sped by, wrote: “From our car we could see in the distance the Niagara Falls, where grandeur is beyond my power of description.”

From Buffalo, Lake Erie beckoned. When Amund and his family laid eyes on the vessel that would carry them into the U.S interior, the practically brand-new paddlewheel steamer Atlantic, their hearts must have soared.

***

 

The Atlantic was barely three years old when she sailed from Buffalo on the evening of August 19, 1852. She was a big ship for her day, clocking in at eighty-one metres in length and 1,048 tonnes. And elegant: she was endowed with eighty-five staterooms and could carry over three hundred passengers. The Atlantic was also no slouch in the speed department, and made her owner, E.B Ward of Detroit, proud by setting a Lake Erie speed record up to that time, cruising from Detroit to Buffalo in 16.5 hours.

But the Eidsmoes and the more than one hundred other Norwegians aboard would know little of the luxuries the Atlantic had to offer. Many scattered across the deck, searching for any corner in which they could spread out and get a decent night’s sleep. But none felt terribly put out. After all, they would be safely in Detroit by the next afternoon.

Later that evening, the Atlantic steamed into Erie, Pennsylvania, to take on even more passengers, again mostly new immigrants. The sidewheeler was now so overloaded that seventy had to be left behind on the dock. As it turned out, these would be the luckiest people involved with the Atlantic saga, though they certainly didn’t feel so at the time.

The Atlantic’s clerk later estimated that there were between 500 and 600 people aboard when they left Erie, with about 150 in the cabins and 350 to 450 scattered about the deck. By this period, Great Lakes skippers knew well not to tempt Lake Erie’s often-changeable weather The Atlantic’s captain, J. Byron Petty, showed a serious lack of judgment by letting so many passengers onto his boat. It would be the first of many decisions taken that night that would have horrific consequences.

It was about eleven o’ clock by the time Petty ordered the wheelsman to ease the Atlantic out toward the open lake. While the crew settled in for what looked like another routine crossing, things were far from comfortable down on deck, as Amund notes:

There were many people and all wanted to find a place to sleep. As many as found room went down into the cabins, but many had to prepare their beds upon the deck. I and my family were among the latter. The deck was crowded with every conceivable thing: baggage, new wagons, and much other stuff. So we lay down to rest but sleep was not of long duration.

 

The lake was calm, and various sources record visibility that night from a light mist to heavy fog. What is clear is that as the Atlantic steamed toward Long Point, a sandspit protruding some forty kilometres out from the Ontario shoreline, it would have been difficult to see much.

At about two o’clock, the Atlantic passed the Long Point lighthouse. In the wheelhouse, the second mate, James Carny, and the wheelsman, Morris Barry, strained their eyes into a mist Carny later described as “smoky.”  Barry, quoted in the Buffalo Daily Republic tells what happened next:

We passed Long Point light at two o’clock on our usual course... Should think in twenty minutes after, the 2nd. Mate, who was on watch, called my attention to a light on our larboard bow ... It was two small lights, very dim, couldn’t tell what it was, but I saw no signal lights supposing it to be a vessel. Had no idea on what course she was sailing.

                                   

The light was from the freighter Ogdensburg, headed on the opposite direction, toward the Welland Canal, having departed Cleveland around noon with a load of grain. She was a propeller-driven vessel about the same size as the Atlantic, and in her wheelhouse a similar scene was playing out as her crew tried in vain to see what might be looming ahead. De Grass McNeil, the Ogdensburg’s first mate, was on duty that night. At a coroner’s inquest on August 21, McNeil gave his version of events, which were published in the Buffalo Daily Republic of the same date:

About half past one saw the steamer. She had a light aloft and two white lights at the center and another signal light in front of the wheelhouse. When I first saw her she was probably three miles distant… I judge from her course that we should pass a half mile south of her, upon nearing her, she appeared to have changed her course and to be making across our bows. I now ordered our engines stopped. It was about ten minutes before the collision seeing that we were likely to strike together. I ordered the engine to back, and the wheel to be put hard a-starboard. I shouted as hard as I could.

 

The Ogdensburg caught the Atlantic on her port side, about ten metres forward of the paddlewheel, her bow slicing the steamer open down to the waterline. As the Atlantic shuddered with the impact, the passengers on deck were rudely awakened to see the Ogdensburg’s prow suddenly towering over them. Instantly, pandemonium broke out as they scrambled out of the way of falling masts, toppling trunks and crackling timbers. Below, cabin passengers were already beginning to flee rooms that were starting to flood.

But amazingly, the atmosphere in the vessels’ wheelhouses was a stark contrast. Obviously unaware of the severity of the damage to the Atlantic, Carny decided to keep the paddlewheels turning at full speed, but ordered the steamer’s course changed toward the Canadian shore.

Meanwhile aboard the Ogdensburg, McNeil ordered a full reverse, and just as quickly as she had come, the Ogdensburg’s bow eased out of the gash she had carved into the side of the passenger steamer and disappeared into the fog. Then, probably noting that the Atlantic was continuing on under full steam, McNeil ordered the Ogdensburg put back on its regular course. Two kilometres on, he decided to order the engines shut down and the ship checked for damage. It was then, just as the hum of the engines was dying off, that the Ogdensburg’s crew picked up the first signs of trouble; though they didn’t want to believe their ears at first, there was no denying it. The sounds they heard wafting through the calm, damp air could only be screams.

***

Aboard the Atlantic, things quickly went from bad to worse. With the engines still under full steam, large amounts of water rushed in through the gash in her side and flooded the lower decks, soon extinguishing the boilers. Now beginning to panic themselves, the crew quickly lost control of the situation, starting with Captain Petty, who emerged from his cabin to help to launch one of the first lifeboats. But just as the craft was being lowered, he slipped and fell headfirst into it. Probably concussed, Petty was made a bystander to the terrible events that were only beginning to engulf his ship. Amund tells what he saw:

It seemed as if even the wrath of the Almighty had a hand in the destruction. The sailors became absolutely raving and tried to get as many killed as possible. When they saw that people crowded up [trying to come up from the lower decks] they struck them on the heads and shoulders to drive them down again. When this did not help, they took and raised the stairway up on end so the people fell down backwards again. Then they jerked the ladder up on the deck. All hopes were gone for those that were underneath. Water filled the rooms and life was no more.

 

By this time, passengers had begun throwing whatever they could find that might float –– trunks, deck chairs, even bedding –– over the side before leaping themselves. The Norwegians, many of whom could not understand English, were among the first to do this. As a result, more than half never lived to see the end of the long journey they had started so many months before.

As it turned out, the safest place to be was on the ship itself. When the bow slipped beneath the surface, an air bubble buoyed up the stern, giving those who remained there enough time to wait for the return of the Ogdensburg, whose lights they had spotted racing back toward the scene. When she arrived, these fortunate survivors simply stepped across to her deck.

But the Eidsmoes had a more difficult time. When the bow went under, the water washed over and swept them into the lake. Miraculously, they were able to stay together and, with his wife and two small children clinging to his back, Amund treaded water for several minutes until crewmen from the Ogdensburg spotted them and pulled them to safety. Of his unexpected salvation he wrote: “When I discovered that all of my family were alive, I was full of joy, as if I had become the richest man in the world, despite the fact that we had lost all of our goods.”

The Ogdensburg circled the debris field three times, until well after dawn, her crew pulling survivors from the water as they found them. But eventually an eerie silence fell over the wreck site. There were no more lives to be saved. At seven o’ clock in the morning, about an hour after the Ogdensburg had sailed away, the air bubble that had been supporting the Atlantic’s stern bled away, and it, too slipped beneath the surface.

The scene aboard the Ogdensburg as it steamed back toward Erie with its wretched human cargo must have been heatbreaking, as frightened and exhausted mothers searched for lost children, and wives scoured the deck for their missing husbands. Because of the haphazard manner in which the Atlantic had been loaded, there is no way to know exactly how many went to the bottom of Lake Erie with her on that dark night, but the estimate is somewhere between 200 and 300, making the Atlantic tragedy the fifth-worst in the history of the Great Lakes.

***

Amund Eidsmoe and his family made it to Wisconsin, but not without the help of Milwaukee’s German community, which raised US$450 in cash and US$350 worth of clothes for the Atlantic survivors. Of their generosity, Amund wrote:

… the Germans were very kind to us and had taken up contributions so we were all supplied with money and clothes. A merchant, named Carlsen, was very kind to us and gave me a suit of clothes and $30.00 in cash. There were probably those who received more, but I was glad that they had helped us this much.

 

From Milwaukee, it was out to the Wisconsin countryside, where the Eidsmoes finally got down to the business of farming. But it was not quite over for them; two years later, a rival claim on their property forced them to abandon everything once more and move to Green County, where Amund’s brothers were settled. While still a humble farmer, Eidsmoe couldn’t resist his original calling and became the first teacher in the newly formed English school division there.

And he never lost his optimism, even in tough times. In his twilight years, he wrote:

On the first of January, 1900, our children had a postponed Golden Wedding for us (November Thanksgiving, 1899). Two weeks later my wife died quietly and peacefully, after an illness of but three days with lung fever. I thank God earnestly for his care over me so far. If he has laid a burden on me he has also, fatherly, helped me to carry it. If I could prepare myself for a blessed departure from this world and my passing away be as my dear wife's, my wish would be fulfilled. God help me I Amen.

 

Unlike his fellow passengers on the doomed Atlantic, Amund got his wish. He died quietly on November 11, 1903, barely two years after penning his narrative. He was eighty-nine years old.