In November 1898, my grandmother was nine years old, living in Lexington, MA with her family, which had recently moved back to the US from Nova Scotia. With strong ties to the sea, her father’s father and an uncle had disappeared while on a voyage. Her father’s brother, much older than he, became his guardian and took him aboard the ship he captained as the cabin boy. Great grandfather Cann, was so sea sick that by the time the ship reached Europe, he was nearly dead from malnutrition. Upon return to Nova Scotia, his brother apprenticed him to a carpenter named Crosby, hoping he would outgrow his motion sickness and be of value to the crew. Accordingly, Bowman Cann signed on as ship’s carpenter aboard his brother’s ship which sailed a route to Ireland, Liverpool, Bremerhaven and back to Nova Scotia. Once again his sickness rendered him practically useless, so he returned to land and married one of the Crosby daughters, started a family and moved to Massachusetts to leave the then bleak Nova Scotian economy behind.
As Thanksgiving weekend 1898 approached, a massive storm began moving up the east coast, which was to become one of the worst winter storms the area had ever or up to this time would ever experience.
In Boston harbor the steamer Portland awaited its departure time for the overnight run to Portland, Maine. Warned of the impending storm, the captain decided to risk the trip. It is thought he believed he could run ahead of it, and make port before the storm hit the area. He was wrong. The doomed steamer was battered throughout the night by high winds, blinding snow and mountainous seas. The passengers and crew must have been horrified as the captain tried desperately throughout the night to keep the ship afloat. Waves destroyed the superstructure, and most assuredly many passengers were injured as well as extremely ill. Around five AM the Race Point Lighthouse station on the tip of Cape Cod heard four faint blasts of a ship’s horn as a distress signal, and a little later another ship saw the Portland trying to gain open ocean through a break in the weather. She was never seen afloat again.
Bodies began washing up on the shore, clad in life jackets identifying them as from the Portland, but it was days before the disaster was fully known. As the passenger list was aboard the ship, the final death toll was never known, and it is estimated to have been as high as 190.
Meanwhile, my grandmother’s family was huddled in their house in Lexington. Her father brought everyone into the center of the house, as he was sure some of the windows would be blown out. She remembered the family huddling together as the house shook on its foundations. As long as she lived she never forgot the Portland Galee as it became known.
In 1982, as she lay nearing her final days in a nursing home, we went to visit her on a summer day. The room was stifling, and the sweat was pouring off her. We could tell she had been crying. I asked her what was wrong, did she need some water, was she too hot? “No,” she said, “I was just thinking of all those poor people on the Portland.”
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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