The Last Dance on the Lady Elgin Was Suddenly Interrupted

 

The Lady Elgin at dock.

When folks think of ship wrecks and maritime disasters, their thoughts turn to the Titanic and other famous sinkings on the briny deep. 

But in fact the disasters with the most loss of life have occurred on our inland water ways.  By far the heaviest loss of life was on the riverboat Sultana overloaded with former Yankee prisoners recently liberated from Rebel prisons.  The ship’s boilers exploded in April 1865 near Helena, Arkansas killing over 1,800.

Even ships at dock have not been safe.  In 1915 the Eastland, a passenger steamer out of Chicago, rolled over at her moorage when passengers, Western Electric employees on a day excursion, rushed to the dock side to wave goodbye to family and friends.  844 were killed, the largest loss of life in any single Great Lakes shipwreck.

 

The recovery of bodies from the S.S. Eastland which rolled over a dock in Chicago causing the largest loss of life in Great Lakes waters in 1915. 

The Eastland’s record does not stand for any want of competition.  In fact the Great Lakes, particularly the biggest ones—Superior, Michigan, and Huron—are among the most treacherous waters in the world.  According to David Swayze, the acknowledged expert in the field, there have been 4,900 documented ship wrecks on the Lakes in about nearly 500 years of non-native navigation.  Extreme weather conditions and very choppy water caused by the shallow bowl effect on the lake continue to make sailing on them hazardous for even the largest and most modern vessels—witness the famed wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald.

Few Lake Michigan disasters are more storied than the sinking of the Lady Elgin, which went down off the Illinois North Shore near Highland Park on September 8, 1860.  The wooden hulled side-wheel steamer was the pride of the lakes, one of the largest and most elegant passenger packets to ply its waters.

Built in a Buffalo, New York shipyard in 1851, she was named for the wife of the Governor General of Canada James Bruce, Earl of Elgin.

Despite her swanky appointments and favor with well-healed passengers the Lady Elgin in retrospect seems a jinxed ship.  In her 19 years of service she was involved in numerous accidents and mishaps.  In 1854 she sank after striking a rock near Manitowoc, Wisconsin.  After being refloated and repaired an accident with her machinery left her dead in the water the next year and she had to be towed to port in Chicago.  She was damaged in an 1857 fire, struck a reef at Cooper Harbor, Michigan in 1858 and later that same year ran aground on another reef on Lake Superior.  In 1859 she had to be towed to ports in Michigan twice.

But none of these mishaps had caused the loss of life and she was still regarded as a seaworthy, first class ship.

On September 6, 1860 the Lady Elgin was engaged to make a round trip, two day excursion run from Milwaukee to Chicago.  On board were members of the city’s Union Guard militia unit and their families bound for a day of politics including a scheduled speech by Democratic Presidential candidate Stephen Douglas.  After a pleasant day of oration and picnicking the passenger re-embarked as storm clouds gathered looking forward to an evening of gay dancing to the music of a German band on board.

 

The Augusta rams the Lady Elgin amidships.  

The ship made its way south in heavy rain and against a strong head wind.  Despite this, her powerful engines were making decent time.  About 2 a.m. on September 7 the sailing schooner Augusta of Oswego spotted the Lady Elgin by her bright running lights and the lights from the forward cabin where diehards were still dancing.  The captain of the Augusta lost sight of the other ship in the storm and misgauged the distance between them.  At 2:20 the Augusta rammed her amid ship.  Unlike the steamship, the schooner was not required to have running lights and was invisible to the crew of the Lady Elgin who could take no evasive action.

The ship initially stayed afloat but was taking water.  The Captain of the Augusta assumed the other vessel was alright.  Concerned with damage to his bow, he headed to port in Chicago without standing by to render assistance.

Captain Jack Wilson of the Lady Elgin ordered that 50 head of cattle in the hold, cargo, and baggage be jettisoned in an attempt to get the hole in her side above water level.  The chief steward and other crew tried unsuccessfully to plug the breach with mattresses.  A large life boat was lowered on the starboard side to assess the damage.  It never regained the ship, which broke in half after about half an hour, the aft portion sinking.  Life preservers, actually just large planks for survivors to cling to were never issued.  Only two small boats and one large raft got away from the ship.  Many clung to pieces of wreckage.

Prevailing winds drove the survivors, including Captain Wilson on the crowded raft jammed with as many as 300 people, toward the shore.  Two boats with 18 people in them, a smaller raft with 14, and individuals on wreckage did reach shore.  But at day break between 300 and 400, including Wilson and the large raft, were floundering just off shore.

 

Survivors of the sinking cling to wreckage in the storm-tossed lake. 

Students from nearby Northwestern University and the Garrett Biblical Institute worked frantically to pull survivors ashore.  Captain Wilson died heroically trying to save two women as storm-lashed winds beat against the rocks. 

Although the exact number will never be known because the ship manifest was lost, at least 300 people died in the tragedy.  It was the greatest loss of life ever in an open-water wreck on the Great Lakes.

Four years later rules were adopted that required running lights on sail, as well as steam powered ships.

 

Wreckage of the Lady Elgin in 60 feet of water off the North Shore. 

In 1989 the wreckage of the Lady Elgin was found off of Highwood by Harry Zych, who after an extended court fight was granted ownership by right of salvage.  Divers, who must get Zych’s permission, have retrieved many artifacts from the wreck which lies in four debris fields in about 60 feet of water.

 

                                                A Wisconsin state historical marker commemorating the disaster.                 

The wreckage was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

  

The Doom of the Kursk and Its Crew Was on Putin’s Hands

 

The Russian nuclear powered attack submarine Kurst designed during the last days of the USSR was one of the most modern and prestigious ships in the new Russian Navy.  She was better maintained than most of the fleet but even she was not in top condition as noted by visible rust on her hull and her crew lacked training. 

Note—This is a reminder of how long Vladimir Putin has held sway over Russia one way or the other.  The Kursk affair exposed how hollow the Russian armed forces really were after the collapse of the old Soviet Union.  Now the War on Ukraine has chewed up and spit out his Army exposing beyond a few elite units troops were ill trained, poorly armed and equipped, and often actually hungry.  Vaunted Russian heavy armor and artillery was shown to be poorly maintained and apt to breakdown.  They were vulnerable to small arms attacks and shoulder fired rockets.  Their massive weight confined them to roads where ambush was easy and one dead tank could clog the road leaving columns vulnerable. 

On August 12, 2000 the Russian submarine K-141 Kursk sank in shallow waters in the Barents Sea (north of Russia and northeast of the Scandinavian Peninsula) after being ripped apart by two powerful explosions.  All 118 officers and seamen aboard died, although as many as 23 may have lived for days in an aft compartment fruitlessly awaiting the rescue which at the shallow depth of 354 feet should have been possible. 

The Kursk was the largest nuclear powered attack submarine ever built.  It measured over 500 feet long and was four stories high at the conning tower.  Designated by NATO as an Oscar II Class sub, it was designed in the waning days of the Soviet Union but was the first ship completed under the Russian Republic in 1994. 

It was a very technologically advanced warship.  It’s thick, extra-hard high nickel chrome content stainless steel was corrosion resistant and left a weak magnetic signature deterring detection by NATO Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) systems. There was a nearly 7 inch air gap between the outer shell and a thick steel inner hull.  The ship could carry 24 anti-ship cruise missiles armed with either conventional high explosives or tactical nuclear war heads and several torpedoes. 

The Kursk was assigned to the Russian Northern Fleet and based at Vidyaevo in the Kolsky District of Murmansk Oblast.  In the turmoil following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting economic crisis and hyper-inflation, the condition of the Northern Fleet deteriorated rapidly.  Much of the fleet was allowed to rust at anchor.  Maintenance of even active ships was neglected, including care for the Russian Navy’s specialized submarine rescue ships.  Sailors went without out pay for as long as two years and were sometimes seen in villages in the area literally begging for food.  Many experienced officers and men left or abandoned the service.  Training was neglected.  The Kursk, considered a show piece and object of national pride, fared better than most of the fleet, but certainly was not up to top operational standards. 

When tough guy Vladimir Putin assumed control of Russia in 1999, he made rebuilding the military and Navy a high priority.  The Kusk was one of the ships that benefited from his attention.  Freshly outfitted, Putin dispatched it on a mission in the Mediterranean to monitor the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet during the Kosovo War. 

After that successful flexing of naval power, the Kusk was assigned that August to the Northern Fleet’s largest training exercise in nine years.  The exercise involved four advanced attack submarines, the fleet's flagship Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great) and a flotilla of smaller ships.  The Kusk was making attack runs at the Pyotr Velikiy using dummy torpedoes when an explosion wracked the bow of the ship at 11:28 AM local time followed by an even more powerful blast, which was recorded at the equivalent of 3 to 7 tons of TNT, a little more than two minutes later. 

The second explosion sent debris through most of the length of the submarine.  The ship sank quickly with the immediate loss of most hands.  However, the Captain, Lieutenant Dmitriy Kolesnikov, and twenty-two others made it to a sealed compartment in the aft where they survived for some time.  

 

 Kursk was salvaged by Dutch companies which cut away the bow where possible nuclear-tipped cruise missiles may have been located.

Russian authorities have always maintained that they must have died quickly, but evidence from salvage operations conducted in 2001by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International indicated that they may have awaited rescue for days before being killed in a flash fire in the half-submerged compartment. 

Soon after the accident British and Norwegian ships monitoring the exercise offered to come to the rescue of possible survivors.  But Putin, who was on vacation on the Black Sea, and Navy brass turned down the offer out of a combination of national pride and to protect secrets about the ship’s capacity and armaments.  Russian attempts at rescue and recovery were unsuccessful.  Putin did not return to Moscow or issue a public statement on the disaster for a week. 

The best reconstruction of the accident indicated that a hydrogen peroxide fueled supercavitating torpedo exploded when the highly concentrated propellant seeped through rust in the torpedo casing and exploded.  Heat from the first blast set off six or seven torpedo war heads and the secondary explosions were probably fatal to the ship.  

 

Vladimir Putin was interviewed in 2000 about the Kursk catastrophe on RTR, the international service of VGTRK, a state-owned Russian broadcaster.  He denied there were nuclear weapons aboard and tried to deflect blame.

These kind of hot torpedo accidents were a known hazard to submarines.  A similar accident sank the British sub HMS Sidon in 1956 and is the principle suspected cause in the loss of the U.S. Navy’s USS Scorpion in 1968. 

Russia always denied that the ship’s missiles were armed with nuclear weapons, but it was a concern for the salvage companies, who cut the ship’s bow away from the rest of the boat before raising her.  The bow, including much of her armament, was destroyed by explosive charges in 2002.  The reactor was defueled and taken to Sayda Bay on the northern Kola Peninsula where reactor compartments were floated on piers.  The rest of the hulk was cut up for scrap.

 

 The conning tower of Kursk today serves as a memorial in Murmansk.

The loss of the pride of the Northern Fleet, the botched attempts at rescue, and the fact that salvage had to be performed by Western companies despite a shallow depth close to Russian shores remains an embarrassment for Russia and for Vladimir Putin.