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The John Rutledge Shipwreck: A Horrifying Ordeal and One Miraculous Survival

Just after midnight on Feb. 20, 1856, the first mate of the packet ship John Rutledge began scratching out quick log entries.

“Midnight, light winds and the ship making very little headway through ice.”

It had been a punishing crossing from Liverpool. Storm after storm pounded the Rutledge since it left the protection of the Irish coast for the open Atlantic. For days at the time, the hatches to the steerage compartments were shut. More than 120 emigrants – mostly Irish — existed in a hellish twilight of swaying whale oil candles, the sour stench of vomit and the taut grip of fear.

“4, morning, the same,” wrote the first mate.

The John Rutledge, bound for New York, was now caught in the vise of the North Atlantic’s Iceberg Alley, the dangerous corridor off Newfoundland for bergs and other floes carried south from Greenland’s glaciers. Many veteran mariners said early 1856 had the worst ice they had seen in generations, with towering bergs and smaller, but still fearsome, fragments known curiously as growlers.

“8, steady breeze, and the ship making more headway. Passed some very large ice-bergs. At 9, the I ….”

The log ends there. The first mate never wrote another word.

Tragedy at Sea

Gravestone of Alexander Kelley, who perished in the John Rutledge disaster.

Stories of sea tragedies and sea rescues were a staple of mid-19th century New England. Rarely, however, did both intertwine with such drama during that of the horrible winter of 1856 in the North Atlantic.

In the span of eight weeks in early 1856, four major vessels went down – the John Rutledge, the steamship Pacific and two clipper ships, the Driver and the Ocean Queen. All told, more than 830 were lost in the North Atlantic in 1856 before March was out.

Among the dead were two Cape Cod captains. Alexander Kelley (sometimes wrongly spelled Kelly) of the John Rutledge was on his first run in command of the ship on a return trip from Europe. On the steamer Pacific was the famed Capt. Asa Eldridge of Yarmouth Port, who achieved celebrity status at the helm of the yacht of uber-tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt and guests on a European cruise in 1853.

Only a young deckhand, Thomas W. Nye, of Fairhaven, Mass., survived.

Artist drawing in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in April 1856 depicting the John Rutledge and the lifeboat with Thomas W. Nye and the other castaways. (Courtesy Library of Congress)

The Nye Family

I first came across the story of Nye and the John Rutledge at a shipwreck exhibit in Centerville on Cape Cod, the hometown of the ship’s captain, Kelley. I soon learned, as the research into my book on the John Rutledge disaster took shape, that there was a much larger story to tell about those tragic months in 1856 and the questions about the 22-year-old Nye.

What was Nye doing as common seaman on a packet ship in the first place? He could have had the pick of any cushy shipboard job.

The Nye family whaling ships. Courtesy of Mystic Seaport Collections Research Center.

The Nye family was among the gentry in the seafaring pecking order of New Bedford and Fairhaven at the time. A fleet of whaling ships flew under the blue Nye flag. Nyes were merchant captains, diplomatic envoys in China, abolitionists and industrial innovators. They even owned a lubricant factory that still operates in Fairhaven.

The family traces its roots to 17^th-century Sandwich on Cape Cod with its own glorious lore. That includes the renowned Capt. Ezra Nye, who was presented with the gold chronometer by Queen Victoria for helping save the crew of a foundering British bark, the Jessie Stephens, in 1852. The Cape Cod Nyes also would remember for generations the lucky whaler Peleg Nye, who was snatched in the mouth of harpooned sperm whale and lived to tell the tale, earning him the nickname “the Jonah of Cape Cod.”

The John Rutledge

For reasons he kept to himself, Thomas W. Nye signed on with the John Rutledge out of New York for one of its regular roundtrip runs to Liverpool. The sail to England was fast – a 21-day run with a favorable wind. By mid-January, however, word began to reach Liverpool from arriving ships of intense ice in the shipping lanes about 350 miles southeast of Newfoundland.

Capt. Kelley kept to his schedule. On Jan. 16, the Rutledge headed down the Mersey toward open sea with 26 crew, 123 passengers in steerage and one cabin passenger, a Philadelphia merchant.

The only apparent concession to the risks at hand was Kelley’s appeal to his wife, the former Irene Snow of Falmouth. Mass., to remain behind in Liverpool. The plan was for the Rutledge to return in May, and they could sail back to New York together in more pleasant weather.

More than a month later, on Feb. 19, the John Rutledge entered heavy fog in the treacherous area where the Gulf Stream bushes against the colder Labrador currents. The ice was thick and menacing – just as described in the early report that reached Liverpool before the John Rutledge set sail.

The next day, sometime around 9 a.m., an iceberg – as sharp and gleaming as enamel – gouged a huge hole in the bow just under the waterline. Within hours, it was clear the ship was doomed.

Lunatics

Kelley ordered the John Rutledge abandoned. All five lifeboats made it off. Kelley was in No. 4. The next and last lifeboat held Nye and 12 others – two shipmates, the wife of the first mate and nine steerage passengers, including three children. About 30 others, including the first mate Samuel Atkinson, were left on the deck to perish.

Thomas Nye’s home in his later years. Fairhaven, Mass.

The lifeboats were soon separated in the fog. Nye’s boat had a gallon of water and about six pounds of flour-and-water biscuits, known to soldiers on land as hardtack, and a bottle of brandy that Kelley gave Nye at the last moment.

The provisions were soon gone. Waves washed into the open boat. Sleet beat down.

Then it grew even more ugly. Nye later it later as being on a lifeboat with “lunatics.”

Thirst had driven them to drink seawater. It was now taking its awful toll: delusions, anger, violent mood swings. One man turned on his wife, ripping out her hair in clumps. A crew member bit into the arm of the wife of the first mate.

Some already were dead. The rest would soon follow.

Rescue

After nine days adrift, only Nye was left on Lifeboat No. 5. Four frozen bodies were cast around him. Nye knew enough not to drink the water even as unbearable thirst took hold. The decision likely saved his life. But he was now too weak to toss over the bodies.

Then, Nye saw a smudge on the horizon. It grew larger and began to take shape. Could it be a ship?

Nye signaled as best he could and praying the makeshift flags – shirts taken from the dead – would be seen.

Someone on the Germania, an American packet sailing from France, cried out. Lifeboat spotted, possible survivor.

At first, the Germania’s first mate, Charles Hervey Townsend from the Connecticut shore, thought it must be a corpse jostled with the waves. Who could survive out there in winter? he thought. Townsend adjusted his spyglass. Wait, he said. That looks like someone is alive.

Nye waved weakly. Townsend waved back.

It was even more astonishing that the Germania was there at all. It may have been the last vessel at those latitudes at the time. Most shipping lines, fearing the ice of 1856, had shifted to a more southerly crossing.

“Saw a boat with a man in to windward,” wrote Townsend in his log. “Hove ship to. Myself and four men went to his relief. Found him to be one of the boys of the ship John Rutledge bound from Liverpool to New York, which was lost in an immense field of ice … He being the only survivor of 13 souls having buried with his own hands 8, there being four others having died in the boat. 2 men + 2 women (consigned the dead to the deep).

Lat. 44.11

Long. 47.34”

Deliverance

Rescue log of the lone survivor of the John Rutledge shipwreck. The first line reads, “The young man’s name is Thomas Nye of New Bedford.” (Courtesy of Mystic Seaport Collections Research Center)

“Appalling Catastrophe at Sea,” said the headline in the New York Herald after the Germania reached port on March 24 and Nye’s story was told. Only careful medical attention by Sarah Wood of New Bedford, wife of the Germania’s captain, saved Nye’s feet from gangrene and possible amputation. In the end, Nye lost only two toes.

In 1903, then just a few weeks short of 70, Nye recalled to a reporter how he felt a sense of preternatural calm that leap year morning on Feb. 29, 1856, just before he saw the Germania. The calm, he believed, was his acceptance of death.

Gravestone of Thomas Nye at Riverside Cemetery in Fairhaven.

“I felt as though the voyage was done,” he said. “Just before noon I sighted a ship advancing from the leeward. I saw her mainsails hove up and the jibs lowered, and then I knew that I was seen and that my deliverance was at hand.”

Once the Germania brought him to shore, he never went back to sea.

******

Brian Murphy, with his wife Toula Vlahou, co-wrote Adrift: A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived, about the John Rutledge disaster. Murphy has three other books. A journalist at the Washington Post, he worked for more than two decades as a correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Stunning Gothic Revival Buildings By Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan didn’t leave much in the way of paper records, but he did change the face of Puritan New England with dozens of striking and much-admired Gothic Revival churches, schools and mansions.

He worked on two of the most important cathedrals in the United States, Washington National and St. John the Divine. His chapels at the Groton and St. Paul’s schools are considered two of the most beautiful Gothic churches in America.

Henry Vaughan around 1907

Henry Vaughan

Born in Cheshire, England, in 1845, he likely trained with British architect George Frederick Bodley, the leading architect working in the Gothic Revival style. Vaughan also worked as Bodley’s head draftsman.

In 1881, 36-year-old Henry Vaughan came to Boston representing Bodley. He would then design the chapel for the Sisters of St. Margaret, associated with the Anglican monastic order, Society of St. John the Evangelist.

Very few Gothic Revival architects had his training and sophistication. Whether he intended to stay in America isn’t clear, but he quickly launched a successful architectural career — though he never sought commissions.

The Episcopal church gave him plenty of work. So did eccentric millionaire Edward Searles.

Henry Vaughan, Throwback

Henry Vaughan’s style of work was as much a throwback as the buildings themselves. When Vaughan was working on the Washington National Cathedral, recalls an employee, everything was done in a very ‘old time way.’ He viewed the telephone as an intrusion, and the head draftsman occasionally typed out a letter with one finger.

Described as shy and withdrawn, Henry Vaughan attended daily Mass. He lived in a boardinghouse on Beacon Hill, had few friends and rarely appeared in public. After dinner, he always returned to the office to feed the mice with leftover rolls. His employees were forbidden from coming in then because they might disturb the creatures.

Though Henry Vaughan’s architectural designs dated to the Middle Ages, they were actually quite new for the region. New England had its roots in Puritanism, but the old hatred of Catholicism and High Anglicanism was fading.

When Henry Vaughan died in 1917, Episcopal Bishop William Lawrence suggested a change had come over the people. “Many of them are turning back to the prayer book, the dignified forms and rich associations of the church of our English ancestors,” he wrote in Vaughan’s obituary.

Here, then, are six Henry Vaughan buildings, one in each state (plus a few bonus mentions). If you know of other Henry Vaughan buildings worth mention, please share them in the comments section.

Christ Church

Christ Church, New Haven

The Gothic Christ Church is a landmark in downtown New Haven. It combines a ‘bells-and-smells’ high Anglo-Catholic tradition with a soup kitchen and a residence for homeless young people.

Henry Vaughan designed Christ Church with a stone tower modeled after Magdalen College in Oxford. He chose the artists to decorate the interior, including Johannes Kirchmayer for the wooden carving and C.E. Kempe to create the stained glass windows. The high altar was inspired by Winchester Cathedral and St. Alban’s in England.

Vaughan’s follower Ralph Adams Cram wrote that Christ Church was ‘worked out on lines that are absolutely right’

“It could not be taken for a country church; yet is pure and scholarly Gothic, both modern in feeling and medieval—the enduring style adapted to new conditions,” wrote Cram.

Christ Church holds Solemn High Mass at 11 a.m. every Sunday. A large crowd comes to Compline, or night prayer, at 9 pm September through May. Christ Church is the headquarters for the North American branch of the Society of Catholic Priests, Episcopal clergy who practice the Anglo-Catholic tradition.

70 Broadway, New Haven, Conn.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

St. Andrew’s Church in Newcastle

Henry Vaughan’s first parish church, St. Andrew’s, is one of at least two notable churches in tiny Newcastle, Maine. The other is New England’s oldest Catholic Church in continuous use, St. Patrick’s, proud owner of a Revere bell.

He sailed to the United States in 1881 on the packet ship American Clipper, owned by Capt. and Mrs. William Glidden of Newcastle. Vaughan probably met them on the voyage.

Glidden and his partner owned clipper ships that sailed between Boston and San Francisco starting in the Gold Rush of 1849. The Gliddens commissioned Vaughan to design St. Andrew’s, and he lived with them while he worked on the church in 1883.

The charming half-timbered stucco church lies on the banks of the Damariscotta River. Its simple exterior is a rare example of rural late English Gothic, the first cottage Gothic Revival church in the United States, according to Vaughan’s biographer William Morgan.

Rich, colored stenciling and carved woodwork decorate the interior. Henry Vaughan had insisted the nave and chancel ceiling be stenciled according to his design. The vestry wouldn’t pay for the work, so Vaughan painted it himself over an entire summer on his back.

In 1908, a fire devastated downtown and the Newcastle National Bank found a temporary home in the St. Andrew’s parish house.

The church has a Henry Vaughan Fund to maintain and preserve the church; you can actually buy a Henry Vaughan gift card.

11 Glidden Street, Newcastle, Maine

Searles High School

Methuen High School, now City Hall

Edward Searles, an interior decorator born in Methuen, Mass., hired Searles for almost as many projects as the Episcopal Church did.

Searles married the fabulously wealthy widow (and much older) Mrs. Mark Hopkins one year before she died. She left him a quarter of the Southern Pacific Railroad and $21 million in property. Searles then indulged his whim for building on a grand, even excessive scale, almost always with the help of Henry Vaughan.

Searles sponsored dozens of projects—schools, churches, castles, organ cases, tombs and remodeling.

Pine Lodge in Methuen

Henry Vaughan expanded Searles’ home in Methuen into a huge estate, including a 74-room house and chapel surrounded by castle walls. Today the estate, Pine Lodge, houses Presentation of Mary Academy, a private Catholic high school.

Though rarely seen in town, and then only in his gold-trimmed Pierce-Arrow, Searles made many gifts to his birthplace. He paid Methuen’s $65,000 debt and gave it thousands of trees, a monumental statue of George Washington, three churches, the railroad station, a battlemented bridge across the Spiket River, the Red Tavern, a boardinghouse called the Hayloft, the John Hancock Masonic Lodge, the Central Grammar School, Searles High School, two family tombs, an organ factory and the Serlo Organ Hall.

Vaughan designed much of it, including the high school. From the outside it looks like a Jacobean prodigy house, a large, showy mansion built by English nobles. It cost $1 million and required imported Italian workmen. It now serves as Methuen Town Hall.

He also built one of his masterpieces in Massachusetts, but not for Edward Searles.

St. John’s Chapel at the Groton School.

Groton School Rector Endicott Peabody wanted a chapel that would be ‘one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical structures in America.’ Vaughan’s biographer William Morgan called St. John’s Chapel, built in 1900, a ‘milestone in Vaughan’s career as well as being one of America’s major neo-Gothic monuments.’

Methuen City Hall, 41 Pleasant St., Methuen, Mass.

Searles Castle

Searles Castle in Windham, N.H.

By 1905, Searles fixated on one final obsession. He wanted a proper castle. Searles then bought 1400 acres of land in Windham, N.H., to put it on.

Searles had discovered family ties to the Harcourts in Oxfordshire, England. They had a 15th-century manor house, Stanton-Harcourt, mostly destroyed. He supposedly sent Vaughan to England to draw plans of the ruined section of the original house. Vaughan then designed Searles Castle in Windham as a one-quarter-size replica of the English castle, complete with battlements and portcullis.

The Tudor Gothic castle was built of granite, fieldstone and dark red sandstone, most of which came from Searles’ quarries in nearby Pelham, N.H. It took nearly a decade to finish the castle and $1.25 million to furnish it. Eight-foot walls protected the castle from intruders.

Despite the castle’s high walls, Searles thought the village school was too close. So he offered to build Windham a new school if the town gave him the old one. The town then agreed, and Henry Vaughan designed ‘the handsomest and finest small school building in the state.’

Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H.

Though Searles Castle is one of the most imposing buildings he designed, the Chapel of St. Peter and Paul at St. Paul’s School is his most important. The chapel influenced a long line of school and college chapels and inspired many young architects.

“Had Vaughan died at, say, age fifty and had not lived to design many of his churches or Washington Cathedral, his place in the Gothic Revival in America would still be secure,” wrote Morgan.

For early photographs of the chapel at St. Paul’s, click here.

Searles Castle, 21 Searles Rd., Windham, N.H.

Mansion House, the Lost Henry Vaughan Residence

White Hall, or Mansion House, on Block Island

Searles commissioned Vaughan to build a dream house on Block Island for him and his new bride. Construction began on White Hall in the summer of 1888 and finished in 1890.

Searles spent over $1 million on the project, or about $24 million today. Vaughan designed the mansion as a ‘twin house,’ with each of the Searles having a separate identical side of the mansion. Rumors flew that the marriage was in trouble.

An octagonal dome topped the mammoth white pine house inspired by early 18^th century Palladian designs. The house, dubbed “Searles’ Folly’ and ‘Mansion House’ by the locals, overlooked a pristine beach. A hurricane blew off the dome during the finished house’s first winter.

Mrs. Searles died in 1891, the year after the mansion was finished. Searles rarely visited White Hall after her death. After he died in 1920, White Hall remained empty. Over the years it changed hands until a fire burned it to the ground in 1963.

Today, Rhode Island can only claim as Vaughan’s work the chancel furniture for St. Stephen’s Church in Providence. It was only Vaughan’s second commission in the United States, and it cost $4,000, as much as the entire St. Andrew’s church in Maine.

White Hall, Mansion Beach, New Shoreham, R.I.

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church

St. Peter’s Episcopal Mission in Lyndonville, Vt.

Henry Vaughan designed another small rural church in the northern Vermont town of Lyndonville, St. Peter’s Episcopal Mission. The cornerstone for the simple neo-Gothic building was laid in 1898 on donated land. Today it stands in the midst of a modest residential neighborhood.

51 Elm St., Lyndonville, Vt.

Images: Christ Church (tower) By Delcio GP Filho from Goiânia, Brasil – The First Christ Church of New HavenUploaded by LongLiveRock, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7247526; Christ Church (full view) By Farragutful – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79676982St. Andrew’s By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35548737; St. Paul’s School By FCHarwood – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47027870; St. John’s Chapel By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17866430; Searles Castle By David Kolifrath – Author, CC BY-SA 3.0, By The original uploader was EraserGirl at English Wikipedia(Original text: EraserGirl (talk)) – Own work (Original text: self-made), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3657734https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13339085; Searles High School (Methuen Town Hall)

With thanks to The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan by William Morgan. This story last updated in 2022.

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The Nightingale of Boston and the Last Gasps of the American Slave Trade

In early spring of 1861, the Nightingale of Boston set sail for Liverpool. She carried grain, bread and barrels, broken down for easy shipping and ready for reconstruction in England to transport goods. But Liverpool served as just a waypoint for the 1100-ton vessel.

Nightingale (Currier & Ives)

The Nightingale

Most of its American crew found passage on other ships after their dismissal. The French, Spanish and Portuguese sailors who worked the port made up the new crew. Meanwhile, the ship was loaded with copper goods and cloth.

At first the sailors presumed the Nightingale headed to China, because no one really told them their destination. But as the departure neared, some of the men grew suspicious. The cargo didn’t seem right for China, and the ship had altogether too much ballast loaded for a profitable voyage.

Many of the small crew wanted off, sensing something amiss. But they were kept on board until well out at sea. Their suspicions were soon confirmed. As the ship made its way south around Africa it changed course and headed into port in the Congo. By then the crew had figured out the ship would likely take on slaves.

The Slave Trade

In 1807 and 1808, the U.S. and Britain had outlawed the international slave trade. The U.S. made it illegal to build and fit out ships for slaving. But transporting slaves was a lucrative business. South America and Cuba offered ready markets for slaves. Some smugglers even brought them into the United States. But smuggling slaves carried far more risk because the United States also made importing slaves illegal.

The trade in slaves had proven a flashpoint in U.S.–British relations. The slave trade flourished in America between the states. Yet British law allowed any slaves arriving on British soil to be granted their freedom and no compensation paid to their owners.

In 1835 the U.S. merchant vessel Enterprise blew off course and had to land in Bermuda, a British territory. The 78 slaves aboard gained their freedom. It was one of several such incidents – among them the famous La Amistad case – that played out as abolitionists fought to end the practice of slavery.

Overmatched

The British tried to stop the slave trade. The Royal Navy had a special contingent of vessels known as the “Preventative Squadron.” It had a mission to stop ships taking slaves out of the ports of Africa for sale in South America. Over 30-plus years, it seized roughly 1,600 ships and freed 150,000 kidnapped Africans headed toward slavery. But the slavers often proved too much for the squadron.

As America grew more interested in stopping the slave trade, it added ships to the effort. But the enormous potential profits from slavery made their task difficult.

By the time the Nightingale slipped into Cabenda Bay and up the Congo River in April of 1861, the slavers and the government ships had a well-established a cat-and-mouse game going.

The Nightingale’s Beginnings

The Nightingale hadn’t started out life as a slave ship. Built in 1851 at the Portsmouth, N.H., shipyard of Samuel Hansom, Jr., she launched under the name Sarah Cowles. She was the finest, fastest clipper ship of her day.

Hansom planned for the ship to put in to Boston Harbor. From there, it would be sumptuously outfitted for a wealthy contingent of tourists to travel to the London World Fair. After that she would join the China Trade.

But the vessel never made that voyage. The shipping firm Sampson & Tappan spotted the Sarah Cowles in Boston Harbor and bought it immediately. The firm actively traded in China, San Francisco and Australia for years. The Nightingale earned a reputation as one of the fastest clipper ships in existence.

By 1860, however, the vessel had changed hands in Salem, Mass., and went to Rio de Janeiro. Along the way she was outfitted as a slaver. Her name changed to the Nightingale to honor Jenny Lind, a Swedish singer who traveled the world performing as the Swedish Nightingale. Her likeness had been fitted to the bow of the ship as a figurehead.

Barbarism

As the pressure grew on slavers, their means of operation grew more barbaric as they pressed to get every dollar for their cargo. Many slave ships had a middle deck added to maximize the numbers of slaves. These middle decks wouldn’t allow people to stand or, in some cases, even sit upright.

As the conditions worsened, slave revolts grew more common and captains resorted to harsher means for putting them down. A slave who fought for his freedom might have a limb cleaved off or get thrown overboard as a warning to others who might try an uprising.

In April of 1861, the Nightingale knew the prevention squadrons well. She brazenly flew the U.S. flag and bore the name Nightingale, of Boston on her transom. The USS Saratoga patrolled the waters off Africa at the time and she twice stopped and boarded the Nightingale looking for evidence of slaves. But found none. British ships, too, stopped the vessel but released it when they found no slaves aboard.

USS Saratoga

But someone gave the captain of the Saratoga a useful piece of information – perhaps one of the angry crew who felt duped into serving on the ship. The Nightingale put out to sea on April 20 and returned under cover of darkness to port, loaded with slaves. The speedy ship’s captain intended to leave before either the British or American vessels could react.

Seized

The captain of the Saratoga waited and watched as Francis Bowen, captain of the Nightingale, brought the ship into port. Before the Nightingale could leave, the Saratoga’s crew seized and boarded her. The Navy officers found 961 slaves locked aboard the ship. With his orders clear, the captain of the Saratoga put the ship into port in Liberia – a state created by freed slaves – and released the captives.

The Nightingale returned to America where the government seized it. The government then put it into service supplying Union army troops fighting the Civil War. The vessel’s captain, Bowen, had slipped away in Africa – possibly aided by someone on the Saratoga’s crew.

The Nightingale, meanwhile, went on to a 30-plus year career following her decommissioning at the end of the Civil War. She transported oil to San Francisco, laid underwater cable and sailed as a general cargo ship.

This story was updated in 2022.

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George Francis Train, One of the Few Sane Men in a Mad, Mad World

George Francis Train, a nutty, attention-seeking businessman, in 1871 traveled around the world in 80 days. The feat caused a sensation, but only after a writer named Jules Verne fictionalized it.

George Francis Train

Train actually went around the world three times. It was a report of his first journey in a French periodical that caught Jules Verne’s attention. Verne wrote a serialized novel about a Londoner named Phileas Fogg. The book was a sensation.

Train was already one of the most famous men in America. He wasn’t happy that Verne co-opted his story. “Remember Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days?” he told English reporters. “He stole my thunder. I’m Phileas Fogg.”

George Francis Train, Man of Business

George Francis Train was born in Boston on March 24, 1829, to Oliver Train and Maria Pickering Train. The family moved to New Orleans, where his mother and three sisters died of yellow fever when George was four. He was sent to live with his maternal grandparents to escape the plague, which later killed his father.

His grandparents were strict Methodists who lived on a farm in Waltham, Mass. They wanted him to become a minister or a blacksmith. Train would have none of it.

Train was emotional and impulsive, an attention-seeking scatterbrain who ran a quixotic campaign for president of the United States. He went to jail 15 times either for siding with revolutionaries or assuming the bad debts of others. He was also a brilliant businessman.

At 16 he met Enoch Train, his father’s wealthy cousin who ran a shipping business. He quit his job in a grocery store and went to work for his cousin. While working for Train and Company he organized the clipper ship routes that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco.

The Great Republic by James Butterworth

His business ventures took him around the globe: to Australia, where he established shipping routes between Liverpool and Australia; to England, where he introduced trams to Birkenhead and London; from Hong Kong to Canton with the man who would marry Hetty Green, the Witch of Wall Street.

Along the way he met and married Wilhelmina Wilkinson Davis. They had three children who survived infancy. While living in Australia, Wilhelmina became pregnant and he insisted she return to the United States so his son could be born there and become president. Wilhelmina delivered a girl in Liverpool.

Train of Ideas

In Europe he met Queen Maria Cristina of Spain, who owned land in Pennsylvania. Train arranged the financing for the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad across Queen Maria Cristina’s land. The railroad failed, but he pocketed $100,000 in commission.

During the Civil War he lived in England, where he promoted the Union cause with colorful speeches and a newspaper. He returned to the United States convinced he could end the war because his wife was related to Jefferson Davis.

By 1869 he decided to build a transcontinental railroad across the Rocky Mountains. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt told him he’d be called a lunatic if he tried.

Directors of the Union Pacific Railroad in Nebraska, 1866. Photo courtesy National Archives.

Train financed the Union Pacific Railroad by starting Credit Mobilier with Thomas Durant and financing from 16 friends. He invested in real estate along the proposed route, including 5,000 house lots in Omaha worth $30 million at his death.

He left Credit Mobilier before it erupted into one of the biggest scandals of the century. Congressmen were bribed to cover up fraud and profiteering in the railroad’s construction construction.

But Train, at 34, was losing interest in business ventures and becoming increasingly eccentric. One newspaper reporter wrote, “The Train of ideas sometimes lacks the coupling chain.”

By then he owned a 2-1/2-acre estate in Newport, R.I., called the Train Villa (demolished in the 1970s). He tried to win the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 1872, but was easily beaten out by New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. Train gave a thousand speeches and told a reporter he was the greatest man in the world. He called himself, ‘the Great American Crank.’ No one voted for him.

Around the World in 80 Days (Sort Of)

In the middle of his campaign for president, George Francis Train suddenly decided to take his trip around the world. He did make it in 80 days, if you don’t count the two months he spent in Paris working for the revolutionary cause.

In 1871, Train left New York on a Union Pacific train and arrived in San Francisco seven days later. He took the Great Republic clipper ship to Yokohama, then moved on to Singapore where he learned of the revolution in France. He headed for Marseille, where the revolutionary Communards greeted him and asked him to speak. Always loving attention, Train plunged into the cause, giving speeches and summoning an exiled general to aid the Communards. He was imprisoned in Lyons for his revolutionary activity, but released after 13 days when the U.S. government and Alexandre Dumas intervened.

He chartered a train to the English Channel and sailed from Liverpool to New York. When he arrived, he claimed to have gone round the world in 80 days. No one checked.

The Communards at the barricades in 1871

Verne added a few details to George Francis Train’s story: He put Fogg on an elephant in India. He had him rescue a Farsi girl Aouda, outwit a detective in China and burn the superstructure of his steamer for fuel to cross the Atlantic. He invented a sledge with a sail to carry Fogg to Omaha. Verne called his novel Around the World in Eighty Days.

Nearly 20 years later, Around the World in Eighty Days was far from forgotten. So New York World reporter Nelly Bly, also an attention seeker, decided to beat Phileas Fogg’s record. She made the trip in 72 days, six hours and 11 minutes.

Around the World in 67 Days

Train was furious. He convinced the Tacoma Evening Ledger to publicize his second trip. Then he made the 16-day voyage from Tacoma to Yokohama, where officials detained him for not having a passport. So he got one and made his way to Singapore.

Then Train chartered a vessel in Calais to take him to New York, where he stalled for 36 hours because he couldn’t get a seat on a train. He chartered a special train and sped toward Tacoma, arriving after 67 days, 12 hours and two minutes. He was 61.

Two years later, a town named Whatcom, Wash., offered to finance another trip around the world to publicize itself. Train accepted and completed the journey in 60 days.

George Francis Train spent his last days sunning himself on a park bench in New York City, feeding pigeons and giving dimes to children. He died Jan. 19, 1904 of Bright’s disease. His brain was removed before he was buried. It ranked 26^th among the brains of 107 famous people – ahead of Daniel Webster.

After his death in 1904, the Thirteen Club, a secret society he had belonged to, passed a resolution. It called George Francis Train one of the few sane men in a mad, mad world.’

In 1956, David Niven and Cantinflas starred in the Academy Award winning film, Around the World in 80 Days. Remade in 2004, it only won two Stinker awards.

With thanks to The Square Pegs by Irving Wallace. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Astonishing Voyage of the Northern Light

One spring night in 1853, Capt. Freeman Hatch sailed the Northern Light into Boston Harbor, having accomplished an astonishing feat of seamanship.

Northern Light

He had set a record for sailing between San Francisco and Boston, a record that still hasn’t been broken by a single-hull vessel. And he did it without a hand raised against a member of his crew — unusual at the time for Yankee captains, who meted out discipline with heavy hands.

Northern Light was a clipper ship, of course.

She was designed by Samuel Hartt Pook, New England’s first independent naval architect. He was known for building speedy ships. The Briggs Brothers built her in their South Boston shipyard and launched her on Sept. 25, 1851. She had an angel dressed in white and holding a flaming torch as her figurehead.

National Sport

By then, racing around Cape Horn had become the national maritime sport. Sportsmen placed bets on which ship would make the fastest run between San Francisco and the East Coast, and nearly all the clipper captains raced against another ship.

In 1852, Hatch set sail from Boston in the Northern Light. He had bad luck and took 118 days — a respectable time — to reach San Francisco. He was angry, though, at being beaten by two New York clipper ships, the Trade Wind and the Contest.

A Boston merchant offered Hatch a new suit of clothes if he beat the Trade Wind on the return voyage. He didn’t think the Contest was beatable.

Northern Light

The Trade Wind left on March 10, the Contest two days later, and Northern Light the following day. Early in the race, Hatch easily passed the Trade Wind, earning his suit of clothes, and took off after the Contest.

Cape Horn

He caught up with his rival at Cape Horn, dangerous because of its high winds, strong currents, tall waves and icebergs. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that only the most experienced seamen could “be trusted to drive these saucy, wild clippers against Cape Horn howlers.”

Northern Light and Contest sailed in company for a day or two. The Contest then sailed ahead, but Hatch drove the Northern Light until he was 40 miles ahead at the equator. Hatch, a thorough clipper ship captain, wrote one maritime historian, ‘never allowed his ship to suffer for want of canvas.’ On the clipper ship’s fastest day she sailed 354 miles.

When Northern Light sailed into Boston, Contest was picking up her pilot off the New Jersey Highlands. Morrison, described her entrance into Boston Harbor:

…with skysails, ringtail and studdingsails set on both sides, alow and aloft, she slipped into the Narrows of Boston Harbor on the evening of May 27, 1853, just seventy-six days, five hours, from San Francisco.

Early the next day, Hatch went ashore, hired a hack and drove to the home of Northern Light’s owner, James Huckins. He woke Huckins from a sound sleep and said, “Here I am with the Northern Light, but I’ve strained her dreadfully getting here!”

All Huckins cared about was that he’d beaten the Contest. “I don’t care a damn how much you’ve strained her,” he said.

Aftermath

In the early 1860s, Freeman Hatch retired from the sea. He moved to Needham, Mass., with his wife, Lydia, and took up the practice of alternative medicine.

Northern Light met her end on Jan. 2, 1862, when she sailed out of Havre and collided with the French brig Nouveau St. Jacques. The French vessel sank, and Northern Light sustained so much damager her crew soon abandoned her. Two vessels picked up the captains and crews and took them to the British ports of Falmouth and Cowes.

Hatch died in 1889 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in his hometown of Eastham, Mass. His gravestone reads:

Freeman Hatch, 1820-1889

He became famous making the astonishing passage in the clipper ship Northern Light from San Francisco in 76 days 6 hours — an achievement won by no mortal before or since.

With thanks to Shipmasters of Cape Cod by Henry Kittredge. This story was updated in 2021. Image: Cape Horn CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57801..

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Eleanor Creesy Navigates the World’s Fastest Clipper

Eleanor Creesy became an instant celebrity on Aug. 31, 1851, when the clipper ship she navigated sailed into San Francisco harbor. The Flying Cloud had sailed from New York in less than half the time the voyage usually took.

Her husband, Josiah Creesy, was captain of the great clipper, but he knew his wife was a better navigator than he was.

She was one of the greatest.

Flying Cloud by James Buttersworth

Eleanor Creesy

Eleanor Creesy was born in Marblehead, Mass., in September 1814, the daughter of John and Eleanor Prentiss. John Prentiss was a master mariner, and he taught his smart daughter ocean navigation. As a girl she studied weather, ocean currents and astronomy and math. She learned how to use a sextant and a chronometer.

A historian wrote that, “she found the art of fixing one’s position every day exceedingly engaging and immensely satisfying, and she often missed it after too long a stay ashore.”

In 1841, she married Josiah Creesy, a ship captain also from Marblehead. He worked for Grinnell, Minturn, the leading trans-Atlantic shipping company of the age. He was captain of the Oneida then and wishing for a faster vessel.

Eleanor accompanied him on his voyages, which wasn’t unusual. Ship captains’ wives often came along and tended to the injured men on the vessel. She also helped provision her husband’s ships, making sure they had the latest navigation charts.

Flying Cloud’s lines

Josiah Creesy got his wish when he was chosen to skipper the Flying Cloud, built by Donald McKay in his East Boston shipyard. Her figurehead was an angel blowing a trumpet. Clipper ships were built for speed, with long, sharp bows, V-shaped hulls, rounded sterns and large sail areas.

Studying Up

Before the Flying Cloud made its historic voyage, Eleanor Creesy studied a book by Matthew Fontaine Maury, considered the father of oceanography. Explanations and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts was viewed with some skepticism by old ship captains. It was based on exhaustive studies of the logs kept by naval and merchant ships. Maury recommended a new route around Patagonia that Eleanor Creesy decided to follow.

On her maiden voyage, the Flying Cloud carried passengers and $50,000 worth of cargo, including 500 kegs of white lead, 100 cases of imperial black paint, lamp black, 100 cans of turpentine, 190 dozen brandy peaches, 100 dozen tomato and pepper sauces and 68 boxes of candles. On June 2, 1851, she sailed out of New York Harbor.

The first time Eleanor Creesy calculated how far the Flying Cloud had traveled in a day, she thought she’d made a mistake. She couldn’t believe the ship was that fast. She checked for mistakes. The Flying Cloud was that fast.

In one day, Flying Cloud covered 389 miles, a greater distance than had ever been covered in a day, even by steamships.

Around Cape Horn

The ship ran into a storm while sailing around the dangerous Cape Horn. All fires on board were extinguished; the temperature dropped to near freezing. Josiah Creesy stood on deck in the cold wind and rain and shout below to his wife, asking for new sailing directions.

Launch of the Flying Cloud in East Boston

With the skies obscured, she had to use dead reckoning to figure out the ship’s position. She made an educated guess based on the last known position of the ship, add its speed and take into account the wind, waves and currents.

Hour after hour she worked through the storm to find new dead reckoning positions.

On Aug. 31, Flying Cloud sailed into San Francisco, 89 days and 21 hours after she left New York. During those early days of the Gold Rush, it could take 200 days to travel the more than 60,000 miles around the tip of South America.

Fame

Her arrival generated headlines around the world, and Eleanor and Josiah Creesy were famous. In California, the Daily Alta reported,

The Flying Cloud was built in Boston, and will stand, as long as she lasts, a monument of Yankee talent in the way of ship building. Her arrival in port yesterday morning created a considerable degree of excitement, and crowds rushed over to the North Beach to obtain a view of her.

Two sisters got married aboard the Flying Cloud a few weeks after she made her historic voyage: Ellen Lyon was already engaged to be married in California, but her sister Sarah and fellow passenger Laban Coffin fell in love during the trip. Eleanor Creesy baked Sarah’s wedding cake.

Two years later after their historic voyage, Josiah and Eleanor Creesy broke their own record by 13 hours. They continued to sail together until the Civil war, when Josiah volunteered as a lieutenant, commanding a small clipper ship. After the war, the Creesys retired from the sea and lived on a farm in Salem, Mass. He died in 1871; Eleanor lived to be 85, dying in August 1900.

With thanks to The American Clipper Ship, 1845-1920: A Comprehensive History, with a Listing of Builders and Their Ships by Glenn A. Kinnock. This story was updated in 2022.

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