Maritime disaster averted off Owls Head in 1904

What could have become Maine’s worst maritime tragedy was narrowly averted a century ago today off Owls Head, when the luxury steamer City of Rockland struck a ledge in pea-soup fog and nearly sank with hundreds aboard.

Some of the 400 frightened passengers were still in their nightclothes as they trooped out onto the deck of the 275-foot steamboat around 5:30 a.m. July 26, 1904, after the vessel hit a ledge near Ash Island in the Muscle Ridge Channel. Many were doubtlessly thinking of the recent General Slocum tragedy in which more than 1,000 people died in the East River of New York City after the big steamer caught fire.

Yet they kept calm for the most part. The skill and discipline of the captain and crew plus a healthy dose of “providence” did the rest. Only one person, a crew member, was injured by steam when the main pipe burst, disabling the engine and the boat’s whistle. Six horses were drowned in the hold, but it was noted in the papers that a Newfoundland dog was untied so he could escape.

The boat slipped off the ledge after a few minutes and began to drift in the relatively calm seas. About 150 people, mostly women and children, were lowered in lifeboats and taken to Ash Island. Meanwhile some crewmen headed for shore to alert officials in Rockland of the disaster.

Initially, it was reported that the steamer J.T. Morse, another boat owned by the Eastern Steamship Co., had left Rockland immediately to pick up the passengers. This proved to be false, touching off an angry controversy days later about whether the company had done all it could to rescue the passen-

gers from possible death.

The City of Rockland had a huge gash in its hull. It continued to drift until it hit a second ledge, where it hung up, probably preventing it from foundering. Thanks to its sturdy construction, it didn’t break apart.

Ironically, divers later found it had settled on top of part of another wreck, that of the City of Portland (not to be confused with the Portland, the state’s most famous maritime wreck), which had crashed and broken in two on a ledge in 1884, also without loss of life.

The male contingent still on the boat was rescued several hours later by the steamer Catherine, which arrived from Rockland with a couple of tugboats. That was the beginning of “a never-to-be-forgotten epic of Penobscot sea lore” to refloat and repair the vessel, according to John M. Richardson, author of “Steamboat Lore of the Penobscot.” He was a mess boy on one of the first tugs to arrive.

The City of Rockland was queen of the Boston-to-Bangor fleet of “White Flyers.” The wreck occurred at the height of the summer season, so many of the passengers were wealthy rusticators headed for Bar Harbor and similar places. As luggage, liquor, fresh fruit and other luxuries came cascading out of the partially submerged vessel, hundreds of small boats arrived with local people looking for loot. Many actually boarded the craft, stripping it of everything they could carry, including a piano that was heard later being played on a nearby island.

Some of these “wreckers” became drunk on the massive quantities of liquor that were aboard. Days later, liquor was still being dumped over the side by salvagers under orders as the wreck limped into Rockland Harbor.

“Fishermen and their wives can tog out in style,” quipped a Bangor Daily News headline, referring to all the expensive summer clothing that was grabbed.

Tales of heroism, anguish, thievery and humor emerged from the disaster.

Rufus Emery, an assistant in the electrical department and “a Bangor boy,” was credited with continuing his watch in the dynamo room while grown men ran in “a general stampede” from the hissing steam and rising water.

Three priests, fathers Murphy, Kent and Dennehy, took confessions from Catholics and walked the decks buoying up peoples’ spirits, Catholic or otherwise.

As the lifeboats headed through the pea-soup fog in search of Ash Island, a “modest fisherman” had emerged from the murk in a dory and guided them. Upon reaching the island, he refused money, running for his dory “until willing hands detained him and bills were thrust into his pockets.”

Another fisherman, who emerged from the mist when the men were awaiting rescue, saw more profit in picking up the floating trunks and other loot surrounding the vessel than in helping the passengers. “He didn’t seem to think we were in any danger, and he refused to take one passenger ashore for $10. He gave us the merry gee-hee, in fact,” said a passenger.

There was no general panic, but there was plenty of unspoken fear. G. R. Ainsworth, a young architect from Brookline, Mass., on his way to camp at Green Lake, went to his stateroom and wrote a long letter to his family “to set their minds at rest,” handing it to someone in one of the lifeboats to mail for him.

Some people lost thousands of dollars in clothing, jewelry and other luxuries.

Dr. Hayward Stetson of Bangor unsuccessfully tried to get people to help him get his $3,000 Franklin automobile out of the hold. “A cynical passenger told him to get up steam and ride ashore,” reported the Bangor Daily News. The car was later returned to him, rusted and heavily damaged.

Meanwhile, detectives searched the immediate coast for purloined goods, buying them back for small amounts of money or seizing them by force.

Just as the scandalous General Slocum tragedy had led to major national steamboat safety reforms, the wreck of the City of Rockland instigated some new safety precautions in the area of the wreck – the Mussel Ridge Channel. “There is no more dangerous place on the Atlantic Seaboard in thick weather,” declared the Bangor Daily News on July 28. “Crooked, narrow and tortuous, bristling with ledges and sunken rocks and traversed by rapid, changeable currents.”

The Eastern Steamship Co. decided to erect a fog bell on Otter Island to the south of Gangway Ledge and hire a man to tend it day and night in foggy weather. And the federal government sent a lighthouse tender to reposition a buoy that reportedly had been moved off course by the ice that winter.

The City of Rockland may have been “queen” of the Eastern Steamship Company’s Boston to Bangor boats, but its bad luck would continue. After being repaired in Boston, the vessel was involved in numerous other accidents, including a collision with the steamer City of Bangor off Portland. The bad luck culminated in 1923 when the vessel crashed on a ledge at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Deemed beyond repair, it was dismantled and then towed to Little Misery Island off Salem, Mass. where it was burned unceremoniously.

Richard R. Shaw contributed information to this column. Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net