by Liz Mechem
Survivors of the General Grant later told of the slow, unfolding horror as the ship drifted into an ever-narrower cove. Overhanging rocks tore asunder first the foremast and then the mainmast. Soon it was clear: the General Grant had been sucked into a cave. What remained of the mainmast struck the roof of the cave, staying the ship.
Toward dawn the tide began to rise, and with it, the ship. The mast, stuck fast against the rock ceiling, was now forced down through the wooden hull, piercing a hole in the keel. As water rushed in, the panicked crew and passengers scrambled for lifeboats. Only 14 men and 1 woman survived, out of the 83 souls aboard the General Grant.
LOST
The 15 survivors of the General Grant were now left to fend for themselves on these uninhabited, barren islands. One of the men, Irish gold miner James Teer, found he had a single dry match. The survivors kept the fire that he lit burning for the entire 18 months of their sojourn. As winter set in, the castaways made coats, trousers, moccasins, vests, skirts, and hats of sealskin to fend off the cold. They subsisted on a diet of seal meat, fish, wild pigs, and goat.
In January, after eight months on the islands, a breakaway crew of four men decided to risk the rough waters in an effort to seek help. Carrying a small store of supplies, the men launched one of the two 22-foot (6.7 m) lifeboats; they were never heard from again. An elderly man among the group died a few months later, and the remaining 10 castaways kept a steady watch for passing ships.
Mary Ann and Joseph Jewell, two of the General Grant survivors, pose for a news photograph in the sealskin clothing that had warmed them during their ordeal.
Sea lions and seals shelter on the remote and unforgiving Auckland Islands. Not only did these animals feed and clothe the General Grant’s survivors, but they also attracted the sealing ship that eventually rescued the surviving 10 castaways.
Finally their wait was over—a sealing expedition arrived on November 21, 1867. Instead of accepting the offer of transport to New Zealand, though, the castaways chose to stay on the islands and help with the sealing, prolonging their stay by six additional weeks. The world was fascinated by the trials of these 10 survivors and by the lure of the General Grant’s sunken gold, which no one has yet recovered.
Two nineteenth-century attempts to settle on the Auckland Islands failed. None of the six islands have arable soil, and the shrubby growth supports little animal life.
RMS Rhone
HAUNTED WRECK OF THE CARIBBEAN
The wreck of the RMS Rhone. Although most of the wooden decks have long since rotted, much of her bow remains. The hull, encrusted with coral, is home to scores of sea creatures, including groupers, barracudas, eels, lobster, and octopi.
The RMS Rhone has led at least two lives. First she plied the seas as one of a storied duo of iron-hulled ships considered “unsinkable”—the British navy bestowed this honorific on both the Rhone and the Titanic. As a cargo ship and passenger liner, the RMS Rhone sailed between Great Britain, the Caribbean, and South America, and later into the seas of the West Indies. For a second act, she has lain in state at the bottom of the sea, her curious underwater visitors numbering in the thousands.
Strong, fast, and luxurious, the Rhone was a thoroughly modern craft when she was christened in 1865. Measuring 310 feet (94 m) bow-to-stern, with a beam of 40 feet (12 m) and two masts, the Rhone also boasted a steam-powered bronze propeller, accounting for her great speed of 14 knots. Sadly, her tenure as the jewel of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was brief. Only two years later, the Rhone entered her second life. Wrecked in a fierce hurricane in 1867, the Rhone sank in the shallow waters off Salt Island in the British Virgin Islands. Her remains have become one of the top wreck-diving sites in the world. Now, eerie stories are adding new life to the legend of the Rhone, with some divers reporting strange sensations and unearthly sounds.
THE UNSINKABLE RHONE
Captain Robert F. Wooley commanded the Rhone on her 10th sailing. On October 19, 1867, Wooley learned from another ship, the RMS Conway, that his usual coaling station on the then-Danish island of St. Thomas was closed—a precaution against a yellow fever outbreak. Wooley and the captain of the Conway dropped anchor in Great Harbour on St. Peter to commiserate, both men keeping a steady eye on the falling barometer. Experts have surmised that the veteran sailors decided that it was too late in the season for a hurricane and wrote off the approaching storm as a nor’easter. Just in case, though, the Conway off-loaded her passengers onto the Rhone. After all, she was unsinkable.
The hurricane struck with ferocity on October 29. Meteorologists now label this as a Category 5 storm, the worst to ever strike the Virgin Islands. As the Rhone set sail and steam to the maximum, her massive anchor stuck, separating from the ship with a great, shuddering jolt. Wooley and his crew tried to make for the open sea, navigating between Salt Island and Dead Chest Island. The Rhone had almost cleared Black Rock Point on Salt Island, when the wind suddenly changed direction. Strong gusts violently dashed the grand, unsinkable Rhone against the jagged rocks. Cold seawater met the hot boilers, setting off an explosion that tore the ship apart, separating bow from stern. A towering wave, it is said, swept Robert F. Wooley from the bridge.
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
The phrase “Good night, sleep tight” comes from the formerly common practice of strapping passengers and crew into their bunks, to prevent injury as the ship tossed through the night.
The captain went down with his ship; nonetheless, Wooley had taken precautions for his passengers’ safety. As the storm intensified, he had ordered all passengers to be tied to their beds, for their own protection. Twenty-three survivors emerged from the wreck out of the original 146 people on board; of these, only one was a passenger. The Conway, meanwhile, was cast ashore at Baughers Bay, Tortola. All on board were saved.
Salt Island, shown above. The wreck of the Rhone lies off Black Rock Point on the west coast of this small island in the British Virgin Islands.
Curious divers explore the ship’s remains. Despite rumors of ghostly groaning sounds, the wreck of the Rhone is a popular dive site, and the area around it was turned into a national park in 1967.
STRANGE NOISES ON THE RHONE
SWIMMING THROUGH the peaceful undersea landscape of the Rhone, divers have felt mysterious taps on the shoulder and have heard eerie moaning sounds. National Geographic investigated, filming a segment at the wreck of the Rhone for their Is It Real? series. Debunkers point out that, underwater, sound travels in unexpected ways. Distant whale calls, for example, could easily be mistaken for ghostly moans. The sounds could have even have come from the 500-pound (225 kg) goliath grouper that once made the wreck its home. Still, legends of the haunting continue to mount. Grouper or ghost? The Rhone holds her secrets close.
USS Wateree
SHIPWRECK ON LAND
Shipwreck hunters usually have to dive for their quarry. To find the wreck of the side-paddle warship USS Wateree, though, an explorer would have to trek inland. The Wateree holds the distinction of having wrecked on terra firma—more than 400 yards (366 m) above the high-water line. While in port in Peru in 1868, an 8.5 magnitude earthquake triggered tidal waves that swept the Wateree off her anchor chains and left her high and dry. Salvage costs proved so high that the U.S. Navy deemed the Wateree a total loss.
Built in Chester, Pennsylvania, the USS Wateree was a side-paddle-wheeled steamer, 205 feet (62 m) long, with a hull of iron. Though commissioned in Philadelphia in 1864, her maiden voyage around Cape Horn to the West Coast was so lengthy and difficult that she required dry dock and repairs in San Francisco. The Wateree then spent two years patrolling the west coasts of Central and South America, defending U.S. interests as part of the navy’s South Pacific squadron.
EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI
At 5:05 PM on August 13, 1868, the USS Wateree was anchored in the harbor of the sleepy Peruvian town of Arica (now in Chile). A low rumbling noise caused her commander, James H. Gillis, to look ashore. To his horror, the bu
ildings in the little town began to crumble before his eyes. He raced to the bridge and calmly began issuing orders. Hatches were battened down, anchor chains made ready to veer away, arms tied down securely. Commander Gillis led a party ashore to help with any rescue efforts, including the recovery of bodies. Lieutenant Commander M. S. Stuyvesant braced himself and the ship for the inevitable, as aftershocks continued to rumble through harbor and ship alike.
Twenty-seven minutes after the original quake, the sea in the harbor began to rise. As the onshore current grew ever more violent, the ship began dragging her anchors. Four men wrestled the ship’s wheel, while the rest of the crew frantically veered out anchor chains, straining to keep ahead of the rushing torrent. Suddenly, and with barely a pause, the great inrushing reversed, and the ship swung around 180 degrees as the water flowed out as violently as it had entered. The anchors held. Ships around the Wateree began to succumb, yet still she held fast.
Several more cycles of violent tidal shifts battered the warship. Just before 7:00 PM, the biggest tidal wave yet lifted and turned the iron hulk, driving the Wateree nearly onto her beam ends and snapping both her anchor chains. All of the other boats in the harbor were lost. But a colossal tsunami lifted the Wateree and drove her onward past the beach, over the now-engulfed town, until finally she bottomed out, 430 yards (393 m) inland from the last high-water mark. The Wateree had only one casualty, but the tsunami devastated Arica, with estimates of up to 25,000 dead.
The Wateree sees her last minutes afloat as an enormous tidal wave prepares to lift her onto dry land.
The USS Wateree rests high and dry after her remarkable ordeal.
ROOM FOR RENT
SEVERAL MONTHS after the navy determined that the Wateree was a loss, it sold her to a developer, who converted her to an inn. For years after, she was used as living space, as a makeshift hospital, and as a barn for livestock, until finally she decayed into total disrepair. The only remains of the Wateree still extant are her rusting boilers, which are displayed outside Arica as a memorial to the ship that sank on land.
Time and weather managed what the sea could not, and the Wateree’s boilers are all that remain of the ship wrecked on land.
HMS Erebus and HMS Terror
VANISHED
Crewmen from the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, in happier days, complete the first modern sounding in deep water.
In spring 1845, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, under the command of Sir John Franklin, set off from London to explore the arctic wastes in search of the Northwest Passage. Two months later, the two ships’ expedition mark—a distinctive yellow stripe—was sighted as they sailed past Lancaster Sound in Baffin Bay. Neither ship was ever seen again. Later investigations proved that arctic ice crushed the Erebus and the Terror, though their fate wasn’t known for years after they seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.
The Erebus and the Terror were originally built as bomb ships. Not only did the mortars that passed for naval armament in the early nineteenth century weigh 6,000 pounds (2,722 kg) each, they also kicked like mules when fired. Ships designed to carry and brace those gigantic cannons therefore passed the prerequisite for polar exploration—bulldog strength. In preparation for the rigors of the Arctic, the British government fitted out the Erebus and the Terror with the best state-of-the-art technology it could command. Admiralty shipyards refitted both ships fore and aft with additional oak beams, double planking on the hulls, and waterproof fabric between reinforced decking layers. Additional measures made these ships even stronger and faster—extra-thick copper plate on the bottom, triple-thick sails on the top, and steam-driven propellers completed the polar outfitting.
DARKNESS AND TERROR
Sir John Franklin turned the Erebus and the Terror north out of the Thames in spring 1845. Within two years, Franklin himself was dead, his men marooned, and his ships entrapped in the ice of Victoria Strait. By spring 1848, scurvy or starvation had killed 23 more crewmen. Those remaining had a terrible choice. The ships were holding off the ice better than expected, but supplies were running out and sickness ran rampant. All the remaining crewmen of the Erebus and the Terror set out to walk across the ice to Fort Resolution, 600 miles (966 km) to the southwest. Every single one of them died of exposure, starvation, or disease. The two ships were lost to the ice and never found.
By 1849, four years after his departure, shipping circles in London began to ponder Franklin’s fate. During the next decade more than 30 search parties set out, over sea and land. Through the years, searchers found tantalizing clues to the outcome, including the site where the expedition had wintered its first year out. Three graves and a massive pile of lead-tainted food tins indicated that the expedition had landed in trouble even before the ice entrapped the ships.
Dozens of twentieth-century searches for the remains of Franklin’s crew yielded additional clues, as scientists exhumed numerous corpses, well-preserved by the frigid conditions. Autopsies confirmed earlier theories of lead poisoning as a contributing factor in the deaths of the crewmen. Likely resorting to cannibalism, the crew would have been driven mad by lead poisoning, frozen with cold, and tortured by hunger, as they wandered to their anonymous doom on the vast, empty ice.
THE WIDOW FRANKLIN
Native Inuit peoples provided searchers with important clues to the fate of the Franklin party, including the information that ice had claimed the ships.
JANE FRANKLIN, Sir John’s disconsolate wife, spent the better energies of her widowhood on organizing and financing expeditions to determine her husband’s fate. Even when the government gave up hope and called off the search for Sir John, Lady Franklin persevered. In 1854, a search party found the first relics from the expedition and gathered stories of the disaster from the native Inuit. Five years later, another search party found a rock cairn on King William Island that contained a note recounting the tragic end of the Erebus and the Terror. These contemporary searches yielded another unlooked-for result—a detailed mapping of thousands of miles of Arctic coastline.
The Endurance
THE GREATEST ANTARCTIC RESCUE OF ALL TIME
The Endurance was built to challenge an implacable foe—ice. The Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) purchased and outfitted her for polar operations, and promptly headed south, intending to become the first to cross the continent of Antarctica on foot. Sadly, the Endurance’s first voyage was also her last. She encountered ice floes that solidified as the wind forced them into a dense mass. Marooned in pack ice in January 1915, she was crushed beneath the ice of the Weddell Sea by November.
The Endurance’s 144-foot (43.9 m) length and 25-foot (7.6 m) beam sat atop a keel constructed of four interlocking pieces of solid oak, built up to a thickness of more than 7 feet (2.1 m). Interconnected joints and fittings reinforced one another and supported sides up to 30 inches (76.2 cm) thick. The bows, designed to meet the ice head on, were 4.5 feet (1.4 m) of solid oak, hewn from trees selected to match the curve of the prow. Twice the normal number of frames supported the Norwegian fir, oak, and greenheart sheathing. The Endurance carried three masts of sail and a coal-fired steam-propulsion engine. All of these features added up to one of the strongest ships ever constructed. Yet all that strength counted for naught when tested against the inexorable force of wind-packed ice.
THE CREW OF THE ENDURANCE ENDURES
Perhaps no other shipwreck meets a fate as gentle, and as cruel, as a vessel entombed in ice. Gentle because the wreck takes place over a span of months, and cruel because there is little doubt of the final result as, ever so slowly, glittering ice inexorably crushes the trapped vessel. The crew of the Endurance could only wait with horror as each passing day brought another snap of timber or another tearing creak, as their ship lost her 10-month struggle with the ice.
Shackleton’s crew of 28 men could not know that the sinking of the Endurance was only the beginning of their adventure. They abandoned ship and spent the next five months camping and trekking ove
r the ice. Upon reaching open water, the company took to small, open boats and managed to gain Elephant Island—a mere spit of rock boldly piercing the Southern Ocean. From there, Shackleton and five crewmen undertook and completed what many consider the greatest feat of small-boat navigation in history: they sailed an open boat more than 800 miles (1,287.5 km), from Elephant Island to safety. Seventeen days at sea saw them at the whaling station of South Georgia Island. Shackleton immediately organized a rescue mission to return to Elephant Island for the rest of his crew, but he was thwarted by weather conditions. It would take him four attempts before he at last succeeded in returning and rescuing the bulk of his crew. Amazingly, every single crewman of the Endurance survived the wreck—and the epic privation and hardship that followed.
In 1921, Shackleton returned to the Antarctic for what proved to be his final journey. He died on South Georgia island, where his previous journey had ended.
ETCHED IN SILVER
THE WRECK of the Endurance became one of the most chronicled of all time. The fact that all aboard survived the horrendous conditions certainly contributed, but the presence of Frank Hurley, ship photographer, rendered the wreck of the Endurance unique. Hurley documented everything from everyday morale-building football games to the terrifying sight of Endurance finally slipping beneath the ice. Hurley’s gripping photographs, made on large-format glass negatives, illustrate both the humanity and the awesome forces of nature encountered on that ill-fated expedition.
One of Hurley’s photographs, showing the Endurance lying helpless in the Antarctic ice
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