Explore the Ship

 

The Lady Elgin

The side paddlewheel steamer Lady Elgin was built in 1851 in Buffalo, New York by the Bidwell & Banta Company. She was 252 feet long, 32 feet wide and had a gross tonnage of 1,037 tons. Her massive paddle wheels were 32 feet in diameter and could propel 200 cabin passengers, 100 deck passengers, a crew of 43 plus 800 tons of cargo along at 7-10 miles per hour. Her first owner was Patchin & Appleby Company who named the ship for Lady Elgin, Mary Louise, Countess of Elgin, the wife of Canadian Governor General James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin (Governor 1847-1863).

The Lady Elgin was built for the steamship trade between Buffalo and Chicago. She suffered several grounding accidents in the 1850s, after one of which she sank at the dock at Manitowoc, Wisconsin. By 1860, now owned by the company of Patchin, Hubbard & Spencer of Chicago, she was serving the Chicago to Superior route, delivering passengers and freight along the way. Occasionally the Lady Elgin was chartered for excursions, as was the case on her last fateful trip in September 1860.

The Sidewheel Steamer

In the early 19th century sidewheel paddle-driven steamships were one of the best ways to get people and freight into the heartland of the Great Lakes states. With long, broad, shallow displacement wooden hulls that allowed navigation through the shallow rivers draining into the lakes, they could enter the silted, shallow water harbors in the new towns of Milwaukee, Chicago, Toledo and others. The hull supported wide decks that could carry bulky and heavy cargoes. Power was provided by low-pressure boilers that drove a steam engine connected to the paddlewheels. The superstructure was often two decks high, the uppermost usually appointed with staterooms and berths around a central salon and dining hall. The Lady Elgin was one such “palace steamer.”

Well suited to calm water travel, sidewheel steamers sped along at an average speed of 7-10 miles per hour, though heavy weather made them dangerous and inefficient. Early steam ships were susceptible to fire and the occasional boiler explosion. Their all-wood construction limited size and capacity and they quickly lost business to long, deep hulled propeller driven ships and the railroads that pushed into the American interior during the 1850s. By the Civil War few paddlewheel steamers were left on the Great Lakes and those that remained were soon obsolete.

A State on the Verge

Wisconsin, like many states in the 1850s, struggled with the issues of slavery, abolition and the rights of the state versus the laws of the Federal government. Wisconsin Republicans were in favor of abolishing slavery and maintaining states’ rights, the state Democrats less so.

Alexander W. Randall (Governor 1858-61), a contentious abolitionist worried about the loyalty of Wisconsin’s militia units in a confrontation with the federal government, commissioned a survey of militia units, finding most loyal to Wisconsin. But the Irish Union Guard of Milwaukee, an organization of immigrants with a Democratic political background, troubled Governor Randall. Their commander, Captain Garrett Barry, a Milwaukee merchant and politician and a former officer in the regular army, declared the Union Guard would follow lawful orders and be loyal to the laws of the United States. Testing Randall, Barry mockingly remarked that the governor would never give an illegal order forcing the Union Guard to commit treason. This reply infuriated Randall who stripped Barry of his commission and ordered the Union Guard to turn in their state-owned arms and equipment.

An Independent Militia

Good soldiers follow orders and Captain Barry, after protracted discussions and a campaign of letters to the state militia adjutant general, and a partisan battle in the Milwaukee and Madison newspapers, surrendered the arms of the Union Guard to Madison. But the proud Milwaukee Irish refused to disband. They appealed to Wisconsin’s lone Democratic Congressman Charles Larabee to obtain arms directly from the federal government. This approach failed and the Union Guard, declaring itself an independent militia, began a fund raising venture which culminated in an excursion to Chicago in which they would join the military parade, hear Democratic Presidential candidate Stephen Douglas speak and feast and dance to fund the re-armament of the company. On the afternoon of September 6, 1860 the militia company and many supporters thronged the decks of the Chicago-bound Lady Elgin.

A Fatal Return

The night of September 7, 1860, the Lady Elgin cleared Chicago harbor about 11:30pm heading back to Milwaukee. Nearly 450 passengers and crew were aboard, some trying to rest, others dancing the night away in the salon. Passengers included members of the Union Guard, members of Milwaukee’s Black Yaeger and Green Yaeger militias, some Milwaukee city and county politicians and members of the city band as well as numerous young people of Milwaukee’s Irish 3rd Ward. Also along for the trip were passengers traveling to other cities along the shores of Lake Michigan to the end of the line at Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Nearly three hours of travel put the Lady Elgin a few miles east of Winnetka, Illinois. The ship encountered rain, wind and a heavy sea on her northward trek. Without warning the Lady Elgin was struck in her port (left) side just forward of the paddlewheel by the Augusta, a southbound schooner carrying lumber. In the rolling seas the schooner broke away and continued to Chicago without rendering aid to the mortally wounded Lady Elgin. Her hull breached and taking on water, heroic efforts to save the steamer went for nothing. Finally her boilers fell through the hull and took the stern down. The bow, with its anchor stuck on a rock, bobbed like a cork in the lake. That night passengers and crew clung to bits of wreckage, floating cargo, each other, or to the few wood life preservers the Lady Elgin had for emergencies. Sections of the deck came to the surface and survivors used them as rafts.

A Watery Grave

The dark, stormy night of September 8, 1860 was one of torment for those floating in the cold, storm-tossed water. Those who survived the sinking and a night in the water faced the new threat of a beach landing in heavy surf. Cold and numb, tired and hurt, wearing heavy, soaked clothing, many people made it to shore only to be dragged down by the undertow or dashed to their deaths against the rocks. The people of the Illinois shore rendered aid and the warmth of their homes to the survivors. One brave man, Edward Spencer of Northwestern University, plunged into the surf time and again to save 18 people. By September 10, news of the disaster and heroics had spread around the world.

Of the estimated 450 people on board the Lady Elgin, only about 100 survived. The actual numbers may never be known; the passenger manifest went down with the ship and it is believed that many unregistered passengers came along for the ride. The Milwaukee community went into shock and mourning. The grim task of recovering the lost began immediately. For days after the disaster wagons and trains carried Milwaukeeans to the towns of the Illinois shore to reclaim their dead. Between September 10 and early October there were as many as ten funerals a day in Milwaukee. Several internationally known passengers and a number of through passengers were reclaimed by their families but many others were never identified and buried in the communities where they were found. Lake Michigan gave up the last victim of the Lady Elgin disaster in August, 1861, nearly a year after the wreck.

Aftermath of the Wreck

The Lady Elgin disaster and the coroner’s inquests following the wreck brought a number of changes to Great Lakes shipping. The inquests noted great deeds of heroism among the passengers and crew but found blame for both the owners of the Lady Elgin and moreso for the owners and captain of the Augusta. Insufficient marker lights and safety equipment were noted for both ships and questions of the seaworthiness of the Lady Elgin arose. Inspections of ships became more stringent. Requirements for safety equipment, though still insufficient, were reinforced. Recommendations for improvement in ships’ lights and directional signal display were instituted and a new lifesaving station was built on the approach to Chicago at Evanston.

For Milwaukee the Lady Elgin disaster changed the complexion of the city. While the Democratic Party still held sway, the Irish lost their grip on city and county government. In the years after the Civil War the generation lost on the Lady Elgin never took its anticipated place in the life of the city. Germans, Austrians, Swiss and some Slavs filled positions in business, politics and the governmental bureaucracy.

A Family Forever Changed

The Scots-Irish Cook family came to Wisconsin and settled in Chilton, Calumet County, in 1856. After purchasing land in the Stockbridge area, William and Jane Cook decided to sell their family holdings in Canada to pay off the Wisconsin farm mortgages. Jane and her daughter Elizabeth (24) and son Jacob (19) traveled to Canada and were returning to Wisconsin aboard the propeller ship Sun when bad weather diverted them to Chicago. Wanting to get back to Milwaukee and then home to Chilton, Jane booked a stateroom for the family aboard the steamer Lady Elgin, leaving Chicago before midnight.

The Cooks were awakened by a dreadful crash around 2am on September 8. They soon went on deck to see the ship breaking apart. In a letter written to family a few days later, Jacob described the tragedy. “Mother and Sister kissed me and said we would all be lost. I told them to have courage and we would all be saved.”

Within ten minutes of climbing on top of the boat it sank. Jane, Elizabeth and Jacob went into the water. Jacob’s letter continues: “It was so dark that we could not see – only when there came a flash of lightning. I hollered for them…but I got no answers. Only people around me struggling to death in the waves.”

Late in the afternoon Jacob came ashore 15 miles from the wreck. His father William and elder brother came to get him and by then Elizabeth’s body was recovered. William took her home while the brothers waited for their mother. Jane, her petticoat full of gold, was never recovered. The family lost the farms in Stockbridge and William, heartbroken, moved to Iowa. Jacob served in the Civil War with honor and never forgot the terrible night of September 8, 1860.

A City of Orphans

Martin Dooley was born in Ireland in 1825, immigrated to the eastern United States, and ultimately came to Milwaukee. He was the local harbormaster and a sergeant in the Irish Union Guard. He was one of approximately 30 Union Guard members who traveled to Chicago aboard the Lady Elgin. After the disaster Dooley’s body was found dressed in full uniform including his militia sword.

Dooley left behind a wife, Catherine O’Hara Dooley, and eight children, all of whom came to rely on public support. That public support consisted not of government money but dollars contributed by friends, neighbors and concerned Milwaukeeans who established a fund to support stricken families. It was later erroneously said the Lady Elgin disaster created 1,000 orphans in Milwaukee. One hundred and fifty-eight children were actually affected and most still had a parent or other family to rely upon. In fact, 32 children were actually orphaned because of the wreck of the Lady Elgin.

Finding the Lady Elgin

Harry Zych is a commercial marine salvager, hydrographer and marine contractor based on Chicago, Illinois. Harry begin diving in the 1960s and trained as a hard-hat diver in the US military. Upon leaving the military, he worked internationally as a commercial diver doing deep commercial work on saturation/dive bell projects in the US and abroad. Harry returned to Chicago in the early 1970s and founded American Diving and Salvage, the longest lived commercial marine salvage company on the Great Lakes. Over his 40-year career, Harry has maintained a keen interest in Great Lakes maritime history and has spent countless hours collecting information and research on historic shipwrecks across the Great Lakes. Harry located or helped locate many of Chicago's shipwrecks during the 1970s and has continued to actively search for historic Great Lakes wrecks using state of the art sidescan sonar, multi-beam sonar, sub-bottom profilers, magnetometers and commercial quality Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs).

In May of 1989, Harry located the wrecksite of the Lady Elgin after a deliberate, patterned search based on years of historical research. Harry located the ship's boilers using a sidescan sonar and quickly located several distal debris fields scattered with the vessel's structural remains as well as Civil War-era artifacts and articles belonging to the passengers and crew. Harry reported the find to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, and an impasse quickly developed over who would conduct and manage analysis and work on the wrecksite. After a protracted legal battle lasting ten years, ownership of the wrecksite was awarded to Harry on the basis that the original insurer had paid claims on the vessel and had never abandoned their salvage rights to it. In the ensuing years, the Lady Elgin Foundation was started to manage work on the site and an initial archaeological survey was conducted.

Harry Zych remains active in Great Lakes maritime history circles and continues to search for historic shipwrecks on the Great Lakes and he continues to be one of the leaders in the hydrographic survey, marine salvage and marine contracting business on the Great Lakes.

An Archaeological Perspective

Kevin Cullen
kcullen@discoveryworld.org
Archaeologist
Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin

Underwater Archaeology (also known as maritime or nautical archaeology) is the scientific study of submerged remains left behind as the result of human interaction with the marine (sea), riverine (rivers) and/or lacustrine (lake) environments. By studying submerged physical remains, such as artifacts, structures or shipwrecks, underwater archaeologists are able to answer questions about how people lived on or near bodies of water, as well as how they traveled across water for exploration, trade and communication with other groups locally or thousands of miles away.
Plate from debris field of the Lady Elgin shipwreck.
By Claire Gadbois of the 1992 Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago Reconnaissance Survey

As such, underwater archaeology is different from terrestrial (on land) archaeology because of the unique environment found underwater, particularly the fresh water of the Great Lakes. In fact, the anaerobic (oxygen deprived) environment of fresh water is an ideal environment to preserves organic materials such as wood, leather, textiles, grain, etc. What is also unique about underwater archaeology, especially shipwrecks, is that they are essentially time capsules. When a ship sinks, it becomes a slice in time of what material remains were onboard, as well providing information about how the ship was constructed. This gives us a unique opportunity to retell the story of what life was like aboard the ship at a particular time and in a particular place.

In order to best reconstruct the details of this snapshot, it is important to first make a detailed map of the shipwreck. This is because certain features on the shipwreck can offer important clues to how the ship sank, the direction it was going, the types of cargo that were onboard, etc. These maps can then be used to understand how and at what rate the shipwreck is deteriorating over time. This might be the result of divers removing artifacts, or by natural forces such as currents or the weight of gravity caused by water pressure and the heavy accumulation of invasive quagga and zebra mussels.

Fortunately, a detailed map was completed in 1992 of the entire Lady Elgin shipwreck site by the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago. One area they mapped was the debris field which we did not dive on. This area is where a lot of the artifacts from the passengers of the Lady Elgin settled to the bottom of the lake. Some of these included plates, muskets, rifles, tools, ship parts, etc. (see images). Unfortunately a lot of those artifacts are no longer there, because since 1992 many of these artifacts are believed to have been taken by unscrupulous divers. Now the whereabouts of many of these artifacts are unknown. This is why it is important to remember that careful documentation ensures that important information will not be lost. If the shipwreck is not completely recorded or if artifacts are removed without properly mapping their location, it is like tearing pages from a history book that will be lost forever. Hence, mapped artifacts = artifact provenience. Artifact provenience = context. Context = information and this information = knowledge. So, if someone takes an artifact like a plate off a shipwreck and years later forgets where it came from, then it becomes just a plate and the knowledge that it was connected to a very important and tragic history is lost forever.
Rifle from debris field of the Lady Elgin shipwreck.
By Chet Childes of the 1992 Reconnaissance Survey: Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago

For the purpose of this expedition, we chose to dive on the bow (front) section of the shipwreck, which was also previously mapped by the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago in 1992. This proved very useful in understanding the orientation of the wreck and where key features were located, such as the large anchor and the windlass. I was interested in obtaining the elevations measurements off the lake bottom of these wreck features, which were not included in the original map. So, before the dive I focused on the anchor, the windlass and part of the hull to measure and went over this plan with my dive buddy (Meg Jones). Before any dive it is important to be well prepared in order to get the most information out of your dive as possible, this is certainly the case when doing scientific diving like underwater archaeology.

I attached a large measuring tape reel and a waterproof map of the bow that I overlaid with vellum (waterproof paper) to write on my BCD (Buoyancy Control Device). Once we descended onto the wreck my buddy Meg and I began to collect elevation measurements of the maximum height of the selected features off the lake bottom (see attached map). The large anchor is resting upright on its wooden stock and raises 2.45 meters (about 8 feet) off the lake bottom. The original chain is located nearby and it is very thick, which means it must have been very strong because each chain-link measures 20x10cm (8x4 inches). In order to raise this anchor it must have taken a large windlass to raise this heavy chain and the anchor that was attached to it. Indeed this was the case, because examined the windlass, which is a device that the chain winds around to raise and lower the anchor. The Lady Elgin’s windless is quite large indeed. It measures 4 meters (13.12 feet) in length and 75 cm (about 2 and half feet) in diameter. Also, knowing where these two features of the shipwreck are helps us determine that this was portion of the wreck site represents the bow of the ship. We know this because this is where both the anchor and windlass are always located.
Outer hull section with frames from bow section of Lady Elgin shipwreck.
By Claire Gadbois of the 1992 Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago Reconnaissance Survey

Finally, we swam over several sections of the hull (side of the ship), which are lying flat and only about 30 centimeters (about a foot) above the lake bottom. On one of these sections, several of the framing timbers (often referred to as ribs) can be identified, which show the curvature of the original hull. On average, these frames raise about 1.5 meters (about 1.5 meters) off the bottom. After what was a very short but productive dive, about 35 minutes, we began our ascent back to the surface. We made a safety stop at 15 feet below the surface for 3 minutes to let the residual nitrogen that built up during the dive escape from our bodies. This allowed us to check our dive tables and contemplate what it must have been like be on that ship when it was sinking nearly 150 years ago.

The information gained from this expedition was very beneficial. For example by comparing these measurements with future measurements it will tell us how the wreck is deteriorating overtime. In fact comparing what the site looks like now with the photographs from 16 years ago, shows that a lot more sediment has covered the wreck. This is actually a good thing, because when it is buried under the sand it helps to preserve the wreck even longer. Also, compared to 16 years ago, now the wreck is completely covered by the invasive quagga and zebra mussels. At this stage we do not know to what extent these mussels are affecting the shipwreck, however, the one benefit is that they filter the water, which improves visibility for diving. Overall this expedition was very interesting and important in understanding what the shipwreck looks like today as we continue to learn about the great tragedy that affected countless people around the Great Lakes and beyond. I hope this makes you want to become a scientific diver someday and to realize that we can all play a role in helping to preserve the many shipwrecks like the Lady Elgin that are resting in silence and waiting for their mysteries to be told.

 

The Lady Elgin Rediscovery Expedition 2008 is supported by Chase

Chase