The approximate 6,000 ships that have succumbed to raging storms attest to the power of the Great Lakes. As I traveled, writing and compiling information for my three-volume travel series, Exploring Michigan's coasts, I heard or read the tales left behind by those ill-fated ships. They add a somber, but compelling backdrop to Michigan’s waterways. 

The Sinking Of The Lady Elgin, On Lake Michigan, On The Morning Of September 8, 1860, Half An Hour After She Had Been Run Into By The Schooner Augusta, Of Waukeegan. Illustration published in  New York Illustrated News, September 22, 1860.

The Lady Elgin slipped beneath the water on September 7, 1860. All ships lost, sunk, or missing are cloaked in sadness, loss, and despair. Some engender rage or anger when it is revealed that human carelessness or stupidity played a significant role. Other catastrophes could not have been avoided. A few shipwrecks capture our imaginations and won’t let go. The Edmund Fitzgerald, because of the circumstances surrounding her last voyage, is still the subject of conversation when mariners get together. Her fame wasn’t hurt by the fact that Gordon Lightfoot penned a ballad recounting the tragedy. But there is no other ship that carries the overtones of intrigue, espionage, or possible sabotage like the Lady Elgin.

Steamer Lady Elgin. 1860. Illustrated London News. October 6, 1860. Photo Wikimedia Commons
 
The Lady Elgin was a monster-sized, side-wheeled steamer 252 feet in length. She boasted more than a thousand-ton displacement. She was one of the largest vessels afloat on the Great Lakes in the mid-1800s. She was built to honor the wife of the Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin.

Lady Elgin at bottom right. Bird's Eye View of Chicago, 1857. Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-05656). Lithograph by Christian Inger, based on a drawing by I. T. Palmatary, ublished by Braunhold & Sonne. Photo Wikimedia Commons

The Lady had her detractors. They asserted she was cursed from the day of her launch in 1851. Her boilers and engine had been salvaged from the Cleopatra, an ocean slave trader ship that was confiscated by the U.S. Navy. The Cleopatra was steeped in grim stories of human beings torn from their homelands and sold as chattel in a strange land. Perhaps the evil that shrouded the Cleopatra marked the Lady Elgin because she used those tainted parts.

When the Lady went down, stories hinted, or in some cases boldly claimed, she was rammed intentionally by the schooner Augusta, which was sent to destroy her. The slavery issue, some argued, was entwined a second time with the Lady Elgin, and a reckoning was demanded. A number of southern states had pulled out of the union and more would follow by the end of 1860. Michigan and Wisconsin threatened secession, but on anti-slavery grounds. The country appeared to be imploding, and the political climate went against President Buchanan.

Wisconsin Governor Alexander Randall declared Buchanan was useless because he refused to take a stand against slave owners. Within the borders of his own state, however, Randall had problems with a militia called the Independent Union Guards that backed President Buchanan. In early March 1860, Randall ordered all guns and munitions of the Union Guard surrendered to the state and per that order, they were seized. 

The Union Guard, furious at losing their weapons, scheduled a special excursion trip aboard the Lady Elgin to raise money to replace their arms. With many Union Guard members and a large number of their supporters aboard, the calamity led to suspicions of a conspiracy. A persistent allegation making the rounds suggested the sinking of the Lady Elgin was no accident.

This much is fact. On September 7, 1860, the day the Lady Elgin went down, she was headed north from Chicago with about 300 excursionists, 50 ordinary passengers, and a crew of 35 officers—all bound for Milwaukee. Most of the excursionists were members of the Milwaukee Light Guardsmen, the German Black Jaegers, or the German Green Jaegers, all of whom were returning from a week in Chicago where they tried to raise money for guns and equipment. This group was preparing to join southern forces in the Civil War.

The storm into which the Lady Elgin headed when departing Chicago turned into a full-blown, northwesterly gale by 2:00 a.m. The ship was captained by Jack Wilson, who was experienced and unconcerned about the storm. He headed directly into the wind and seemed to be handling the turbulence with relative ease.  

At 2:30 a.m., the two-masted, lumber schooner Augusta burst from the darkness and crashed into the Lady’s port side. Darius Malott captained the Augusta, and he was traveling downlake on Lake Michigan with a heavy load of lumber he had picked up in Port Huron. His crew may have been busy getting the sails reefed and the ship under control and simply failed to spot the lights of the Lady Elgin in time to avoid disaster. Captain Malott ordered the wheelsman to put the wheel over hard to starboard to bring the big schooner around to the wind. The Augusta turned, but too slowly to prevent her from slamming hard into the Lady Elgin and driving a large hole in the Lady’s hull at the midship gangway, just forward of the wheel.

The Augusta was badly damaged in the crash. Captain Malott, who should have been celebrating his birthday that day, instead headed his limping vessel to Chicago where he reported the accident. He claimed he had backed off the scene of the collision, and he could not return because his foresails were wrecked, and his bow was badly crushed and leaking. He denied knowing the collision had seriously injured, let alone sank, the Lady Elgin. 

In the meantime, Captain Wilson tried to salvage his wounded ship. He attempted to get her into shallow water. To gain time, he ordered the cargo and passengers moved to the starboard side. He might be able to repair the hole in the port side if he got the ship to list in the opposite direction. The crew stuffed mattresses into the hole in the hull. The damage, however, was so extensive that these gestures proved useless. Many passengers clung to wreckage from the deck and cabins which floated away from the hull as the ship sank under their feet.

As the Lady Elgin hobbled toward the beach, two of the ship’s four lifeboats were launched. The first was immediately swamped, and in spite of desperate attempts to keep her afloat, she went under. On the second, it was discovered too late there were no oars. The remaining two lifeboats were never used. Perhaps time ran out. Only 20 minutes passed between the initial strike and the time the Lady Elgin vanished in the murky water. Even if the additional lifeboats had been thrown into the thrashing lake, they could have offered only a long shot at survival to no more than 30 or so passengers of the nearly 400 aboard the Lady.

Wreck of the Lady Elgin Steamer, 1860. Illustrated London News. October 6, 1860. Photo Wikimedia Commons

Most of the passengers were still alive after the ship sank. They clung to pieces of flotsam. The Lake granted them only a brief reprieve. The gale flung high waves over their bodies bobbing in the icy water. Many of the short-term survivors were exhausted, and after hours of fighting for their lives, they simply gave up. They were among the many drowned. Many more were dashed to their deaths on rocks when they reached the shore. In the brutal game of life and death, the score stood at 98 survivors and more than 300 dead.

A three-month-old infant’s body was one of the first to wash ashore after the disaster. Its size and weight undoubtedly made it easy to toss about the waves. The tiny girl’s face was said to look content and showed none of the horror etched into the faces of many of the other bodies eventually recovered.

A woman living fifteen miles south of Milwaukee heard the news of the disaster. Believing it had claimed her son, a brother, and a sister, she set out walking seventy-five miles following the railroad track to the morgue set up in Chicago. The Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad offered free passage to anyone traveling to Chicago to identify bodies, but this poor woman was unaware of the offer. She carried her nine-month-old son and $5 to buy coffins for her family. She reached her destination, but her money was sufficient to purchase only one coffin. In it, she buried her sister. Her brother and son were interred in a pauper’s graveyard. Having done what she could, she headed home. She had not gone far when Good Samaritans stopped her and assisted her and the baby to board a train.

An unknown poet pleading for assistance for the families who lost loved ones in the Lady Elgin disaster described in a long poetic saga how the mood changed from gaiety to terror that awful night. It reads, in part:

How changed every feature, how wild the confusion!
Despair in the darkness and death on the wave!
Some wail for the missing, some plunge, in their madness,
Swift into eternity and their own grave.
“My child!” shrieks a mother; “My daughter,” “My father.”
And a hundred shrill voices in agony call;
While black grow the waves, with the frantic and struggling,
And faster the boat sinks, beneath her dark pall.

In a postscript to the story of the Lady Elgin, the Augusta changed her name to the Colonel Cook to avoid the stigma of being the ship that sank the Lady Elgin. Still, people remembered her part in the awful tragedy. Three years later in 1863, Captain Malott commanded another ship, the Major, when it sank in Lake Michigan. The captain did not survive. In a strange quirk of fate, his bones are believed to have come to rest within ten miles of the Lady Elgin.

Click through to read excerpts from Royce's three books exploring Michigan's coasts:

Julie Albrecht Royce, the Michigan Editor for Wandering Educators recently published a three-book travel series exploring Michigan’s coastlines. Nearly two decades ago, she published two traditional travel books, but found they were quickly outdated. This most recent project focuses on providing travelers with interesting background for the places they plan to visit. Royce has published two novels: Ardent Spirit, historical fiction inspired by the true story of Odawa-French Fur Trader, Magdelaine La Framboise, and PILZ, a legal thriller which drew on her experiences as a First Assistant Attorney General for the State of Michigan. She has written magazine and newspaper articles, and had several short stories included in anthologies. All books available on Amazon.

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