by Chad Fraser
Beall spent the morning of his execution enjoying a last meal and dressing himself with “his usual care and neatness,” according to Bedinger Lucas, before being led to the scaffold at one o’clock, escorted by a cortege of regulars, with whom Beall, perhaps recalling his days as a soldier, kept step.
After a short delay, Beall mounted the platform and took his seat below the rope, his coffin, a rough pine box, waiting for him at the foot of the gallows. After the adjutant had finished reading the charges against him, Beall quietly rose and announced his readiness before turning to dutifully face his beloved South. His last words before the hangman did his work were simple: “I protest against the execution of this sentence. It is a murder! I die in the service and defence of my country! I have nothing more to say.”
The end finally came for Johnson’s Island on September 5, 1865, five months after the end of the war, when the last of its prisoners were transferred to other facilities. By November 5, prison fixtures were being auctioned off and the walls were torn down.
The island returned largely to its natural state, with little activity other than farming occurring there until 1894, when a small resort, was constructed, only to fail three short years later. Another attempt was made in 1904, but it, too, quickly succumbed, this time to Cedar Point, just across Sandusky Bay. Cedar Point’s owners bought Johnson’s Island and relocated the buildings to their resort. Cedar Point is now one of the premier amusement parks in the United States.
Today, little remains of the Johnson’s Island prison, and the island itself is mainly home to a few small, private cottages and, of course, the graves of those who died there. The quiet cemetery’s crude wooden headstones were long neglected after the dismantling of the prison, but in 1890 a group of Sandusky citizens replaced them with marble markers displaying each prisoner’s name, rank, regiment, and company (where known). According to a plaque at the site, there are 206 individual markers, though 267 sets of human remains have been located using ground-penetrating radar. All of the men interred here, both the known and unknown, are watched over by “The Lookout,” a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier created by Confederate veteran Sir Moses Ezekiel and dedicated in 1910.
Though the Johnson’s Island prisoners have been finally, and properly, given an official memorial, it is the hundreds of unofficial remembrances, perhaps, that best mark the grim and fading memories of a place like the Johnson’s Island prison. The following poem, likely written by a young, war-weary captive yearning for home, was found etched on one of the prison walls after the prisoners had been shipped back to their homes in the South. Lydia Ryall made sure it wasn’t lost to history by recording it in Sketches and Stories of the Lake Erie Islands:
Photo by author
A Confederate grave at the Johnson’s Island cemetery. The original wooden markers were replaced with marble ones in 1890.
Farewell to Johnson’s Island
Hoarse-sounding billows of the white-capped lake
That ’gainst the barriers of our hated prison break,
Farewell! Farewell; thou giant inland sea;
Thou too, subservest the modest of tyranny —
Girding this isle, washing its lonely shore.
With moaning echoes of thy melancholy roar.
Farewell, thou lake! Farewell, thou inhospitable land!
All, save the spot, the holy sacred bed,
Where rest in peace our Southern warriors dead.
Chapter 5
Captives of Time: Lake Erie Shipwrecks
Harlan Hatcher, in his seminal 1945 book on Lake Erie, titled simply Lake Erie, had this to say about the men who crewed the lake freighters of the time:
There is a quality of loyalty and devotion about them which borders on the sentimental. They live in a tight little world of their own into which outsiders gain only an occasional glimpse. It is practically self-contained. As soon as the shipping season starts in April the men go aboard the ships to which they have been assigned, and they seldom leave them again, except for an hour or two in port or for a few minutes while they take on bunker coal or lock through the Sault, until the ice closes over and they tie up for the winter in late November or early December.
This could easily describe Great Lakes crews a hundred years before Hatcher wrote his book, and much of it is just as applicable to those who staff today’s advanced vessels. For even though modern conveniences have made lake freighters far more comfortable than they have ever been, life aboard ship remains inherently lonely. And although a spirit of closeness and brotherhood often pervades freighter crews, these men and women never stop thinking of friends, family, and the comforts of home. It is a sentiment that is often most visible in times of great danger. Stories of ships fighting storms or fires at sea are often riddled with crewmen worried, in their most desperate moments, about how their loved ones will get by without them, or others who simply drop to their knees and pray that they will get the chance to see those loved ones again.
And there is never a shortage of such dangers on Lake Erie. The shallowest of the Great Lakes, it has long been known as a graveyard for ships, with a reputation for weather so fearsome that it has proven itself capable of grabbing one of the giant vessels that roam across it and driving it to the bottom without a trace, sometimes keeping the gloomy secret of its victim’s fate for a century or more.
The four stories that follow exemplify the heroism and camaraderie that is often revealed when people decide to take on the challenge that is Lake Erie. At Long Point, Ontario, Abigail Becker, a young mother, risked everything to save the crew of the grounded schooner Conductor, while the men aboard the cargo steamer Clarion found themselves pushed to the limit while battling both a roaring fire and treacherous shoals off Point Pelee. The crew of the whaleback James B. Colgate put their uniquely designed vessel up against the worst storm in Lake Erie’s modern history, the so-called “Black Friday” maelstrom of 1916, and, on a foggy night in 1852, Amund Eidsmoe, a Norwegian immigrant hoping to give his family a better life in the American Midwest, got far more than he bargained for aboard the passenger steamer Atlantic.
While these stories only scratch the surface of the human drama that has played itself out time and again as crews have fought against Erie’s rage, they do show how the human spirit can persevere against even these long odds. And the countless wrecks that remain pay silent tribute to those who never returned to the families they left behind.
A Bump in the Night: The Loss of the Atlantic
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.
Eidsmoe was born in 1814 among the rolling hills and valleys of the Valdres region of Norway. His upbringing had been a humble one: with his parents struggling to raise six children, there was little time for the young boy to engage in the usual childhood pursuits — he had to go to work as soon as he was able. But he was more than up to the challenge, quickly mastering the lathe and, with the help of his brothers, turning 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, Eidsmoe’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, Eidsmoe 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 mainly because his church had financed his studies and expected a return on its investment. Eidsmoe’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, which he penned in 1901, very late in his long life:
When I had served the seven years I was compelled to, I received an increase in s
alary 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 Eidsmoe. 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 already been plagued by obstacles; after Eidsmoe 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 must have known would be the last time, they arrived at the port city of Drammen only to learn that the ship on which they had booked passage had already departed. 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 for the journey.
To their great relief, the day of departure 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. Eidsmoe 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 ship and the dock. Finally, he disappeared beneath the surface and did not reappear. On the train, Eidsmoe and his family found themselves sharing a seat with the man’s newly widowed wife and child. “She was overcome with grief,” wrote a still-saddened Eidsmoe almost 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. Eidsmoe, 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 Eidsmoe 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, clocking in at eighty-one metres in length. 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 clear across the lake, from Buffalo to Detroit, in 16.5 hours.
Illustration from the collection of Walter Lewis
The Atlantic, one of Lake Erie’s most luxurious steamers, was only three years old when it was lost in 1852.
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, or about 300 more than there should have been. One hundred fifty squeezed into the cabins and 350–450 more scattered about the deck. By this period, Great Lakes skippers knew well not to tempt Lake Erie’s unpredictable 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 Eidsmoe 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 are unclear on the level of visibility, recording conditions as different as a light mist and a 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 August 23, 1852, 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 in 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 cracking 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 Atl
antic, 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 boat stopped so the crew could check her over 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 human 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 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. Eidsmoe 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.