SS Central America
12 SEPTEMBER 1857
SS CENTRAL AMERICA
The US Mail Steamship Line was a government underwritten packet steamer company running the US Mail as well as passengers and cargo between New York and New Orleans in the mid-1800s. After the Mexican War a similar Pacific Mail Steamship Line was subsidized to run mail, gold, and other commodities between California and New York via Panama. US Navy officers were detailed to command these civilian-crewed, unarmed packets. It was thus that CDR William L. Herndon acquired command of the US Mail Line packet SS Central America in 1855. Herndon was a 29-year veteran of Navy service. He had commanded USS IRIS in the Mexican War, and in 1851-52 he led a six-man team from Lima, Peru, to the Brazilian coast in a detailed exploration of the Amazon.
Central America was a sleek 282-foot three-masted schooner whose real muscle was two 375-ton steam engines, each turning a side-mounted paddle wheel. She left New York on the 20th of each month bound for Aspinwall, Panama, with 500 California-bound passengers. In Panama she usually embarked 500 returning passengers, consignments of gold or silver from California’s mines, and of course, mail. On September 4th this year, Central America headed north from Panama carrying her usual 484 passengers and $1.5 million in gold bullion and coin. But as she weathered the Florida Straits on the 9th, a storm began to brew. By the time she skirted South Carolina the blow broke with the full fury of a hurricane.
Though Central America had outlasted many storms in her day, she had never seen a gale like this one. For two days she fought mountainous seas, tempestuous winds, and horizontal rain, using her powerful engines to keep her head-up to the seas. But the violent pounding was slowly loosening her seams, or perhaps a small patch of her hull stove in, but by the 11th, she had shipped enough water that it sloshed to and fro in her hold. Chief Engineer George Ashby could not find the source.
The pumps were started and for a time kept up with the leak. But like most steamers of this day, Central America lacked water-tight bulkheads. Water shifted from stem to stern with the pitching of the seas and pushed the vessel onto her starboard side. More water shipped, and the cant of the decks increased, leaving the coal passers struggling to haul their wheelbarrows from the aft bunkers to the boilers. A bucket brigade was formed for coal, but the intense boiler fires demanded more than this could supply. The cooling fires dropped the steam pressure, the paddlewheels slowed, and the pumps lugged. The deepening water soon splashed against the hot boilers sending bursts of steam hissing into the air. Then late in the afternoon of the 11th, the rising water doused the fires–first the starboard boiler, then the port. The paddlewheels ground to a halt. Herndon realized Central America was now in extremis, at the mercy of over-crashing waves.
Continued tomorrow…
Baldwin, Hanson W. Sea Fights and Shipwrecks: True Tales of the Seven Seas. Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1955, pp. 13-18.
Cutler, Carl C. Queens of the Western Ocean: The Story of America’s Mail and Passenger Sailing Lines. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1961, pp. 278-80, 298, 351.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 315-16.
Kinder, Gary. Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: USS IRIS above was a 400-foot sidewheel steamer purchased by our Navy in 1847 for the blockade of Mexico during our 1840s war. She mounted a single 32-pounder.
