‘Boston boats’ collided one dark and foggy night

Bangor residents were proud of their steamboats a century ago. The “Boston boats” were mighty symbols of the age of industrial progress. Those “great white flyers” of the Eastern Steamship Co. with their powerful engines and luxurious accommodations provided grandiose evidence to the people of the Queen City that their tenuous connection to the world was secure. So, when the two most glamorous Boston boats, the City of Bangor and the City of Rockland, collided on June 7, 1906, it was disturbing news spread across the tops of the front pages of the city’s two daily papers.

Even a minor collision like this one was reason for the most confident optimist to pause and contemplate the hairline cracks in the veneer of his gilded world. Nobody had died. Nobody had been seriously injured. But there were so many ifs. What if the crash had happened two seconds earlier, or if the seas had been a little rougher. What if First Officer Thomas Birmingham of Bangor had not saved the day?

The City of Bangor, on its way to Boston, and the City of Rockland, headed for Bangor, had collided at two minutes after midnight on June 7 in “thick and nasty” fog 20 miles east of Portland. Capt. William A. Roix, who had been at the wheel of the Rockland, said he heard the Bangor’s whistle about three-quarters of a mile away. Then, with the help of the full moon that periodically broke through the mist, he had seen the bigger vessel about a half mile away.

Despite the avoidance maneuvers undertaken by both vessels, the City of Bangor struck the City of Rockland a glancing blow about 10 feet forward of her stern. If the Rockland had not been going at full speed the Bangor would have struck her squarely amidship and sunk her, said Capt. Roix. A second account by an unnamed officer from the 274-foot Rockland predicted both ships would have sunk had the Bangor struck the Rockland two seconds sooner.

Capt. Ezra W. Curtis of the 277-foot City of Bangor refused comment to the press. But a University of Maine student, identified as J. H. Mason of Beverly, Mass., who happened to be sitting on the hurricane deck of the Bangor, said the Rockland cut across the Bangor’s bow in what appeared to be “a confusion of signals.” Others complained that the Bangor’s whistle was too weak to be heard. And so the accounts of what happened multiplied.

There were 200 passengers aboard the Rockland and 50 aboard the Bangor. Three staterooms were crushed on the former vessel, and Mrs. Elmer Crowell of Woonsocket, R. I. was thrown from her berth, stunned and bruised, the only casualty. In another stateroom, two girls from Aroostook County on a high school trip had to be removed through a window when their door jammed. As for the City of Bangor, her prow was badly smashed and her stem twisted as shown in a picture printed in the Bangor Daily Commercial on June 8.

The Rockland continued on her way after staying with the Bangor until her cargo had been transferred to another vessel and she was safely headed into Portland harbor. “If the weather had been rough it is believed she would have sunk within an hour,” reported the Bangor Daily Commercial that afternoon.

By the next day, a hero had emerged in the newspaper stories, a Queen City resident who played a key role at the risk of his own life in keeping the Bangor afloat. “Everybody is uniting in praising the bravery of First Officer Thomas Birmingham of the City of Bangor, who lives in this city, who stood alone, waist deep in water, plugging mattresses in the jagged bow of the steamer, for half an hour stopping the inrush of water. He was working in the dark, not knowing whether the boat would go down under him or not any minute,” reported the Bangor Daily News on June 9.

A Portland paper added, “Thomas Birmingham, the mate of the Bangor, distinguished himself after the accident by crawling down the stem of the steamer to her water line and stopping whatever leaks there were or were likely to develop, with mattresses, canvas. etc. This was done with the steamer pitching considerably. For while it was very calm, so far as wind was concerned, there was considerable of a sea on and the deed was one which required considerable nerve and skill.”

The City of Rockland was getting a reputation for bad luck. Doubtlessly, many reading the press accounts recalled the wreck of the vessel two summers before on a ledge off Owls Head with 400 passengers aboard. It was another close call. Not even the most prescient readers, however, could have foreseen the other accidents that lay ahead for the City of Rockland culminating in a wreck in 1923 in the mouth of the Kennebec River that would end the vessel’s career.

The story about the accident on June 7, 1906, on the front page of the Bangor Daily Commercial overshadowed a much shorter piece further down on Page One about the launching of the world’s largest ocean liner – the steamer Lusitania – in Glasgow, Scotland. That must have seemed like such a trivial story next to the collision of two mighty Boston boats. Only hindsight allows us to judge the relative significance of these two stories today.

Readers probably would not remember that on this day, as they were worrying about their next steamer trip to Boston, they had also read about the ship that nine years later would sink off the coast of Ireland, the victim of a German torpedo. The 1,198 dead included 128 Americans, which helped assure United States’ entry into WWI.

“Steamboat Lore of the Penobscot” by John M. Richardson is a good source on the Boston boats. Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.