VIENNA, Va., February 8, 2012 — Ship disasters are unexpected, chaotic, and tragic.
Back in March 1865 just as the Civil War was nearly over, the steamer SS General Lyon sank off Cape Hatteras, N.C. with only 29 people surviving its sinking.
Normal shipping out of the port of Wilmington, N.C. had taken a back seat to the evacuation of Union soldiers paroled from Southern prisons and the ships transporting men to their homes were civilian vessels.
Large numbers of soldiers and civilians were tightly packed below decks. While the voyage was difficult, the promise of home or a new life lay at its end.
For the former inmates of Confederate prison camps at Andersonville, Ga., Salisbury, N.C., and the Florence Stockade in South Carolina, thin and weakened from long imprisonment, the perils they would encounter on the voyage would be more than they could withstand.
The morning was warm when the SS General Lyon steamed out of Wilmington with more than 600 souls aboard. The ship was heading first for Fortress Monroe in Virginia and before traveling farther north. Some of the passengers were convalescing Union soldiers, many confined to their cots. Some had been mustered out after three-year enlistments and others were paroled prisoners.
A few of the men had been released from military stockades.
A group of 116 civilians who had given up on life in the devastated south were referred to as the "refugees." Entire families had chosen to go north, and passage out of Wilmington seemed the best escape.
Most were from North and South Carolina. Thirty-nine were listed as children. Four were listed either as “servant” or “colored boy.”
The SS General Lyon was an old-style screw steamer, named for General Nathaniel Lyon, the first Union general to die in battle, complemented with sails should the need arise. Her captain was Minott Ward from West Haven, Conn. and he had his personal worries about the ship.
In a letter to his brother about the ship, Captain Lyon complained, “It is now 14 days since I coaled. They do not take anything into consideration especially off here and I am about tired of this business and do not care how soon this war ends or how soon someone relieves me.”
He also wrote about the condition of the ship saying, “I have had a good deal of heavy weather. The engine is in a bad state for the want of repairs. If I cannot get it done at Norfolk, the ship will be obliged to come to N.York [sic].”
Whether or not the condition of the engine was involved in her coming disaster or not will never be known. Explosions were a constant danger in any steam-driven engine. Ward apparently felt that repairs to the boiler were a major concern, writing, “My engineer is in a fret all the time, fearing something will give out and disable the ship.”
The ship left Wilmington that fateful Thursday morning with clear skies and good weather. Captain Lyon decided to lay overnight at Smithville (now Southport), at the southernmost tip of North Carolina where the Cape Fear River empties into the ocean.
The next morning she put out to sea, heading for Fortress Monroe. The repairs Ward felt were necessary had never been made and very few ports had maintenance capabilities. It was a dangerous part of the ocean. Cape Hatteras was known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” with good reason.
That morning the southwest winds began to increase and progress was slow as the wind roared to hurricane strength and the ship tossed around on the rolling ocean. In time barrels of kerosene and oil stored in the engine room near the boiler overturned, spilling the fuel on the hot boiler and starting a fire, which rapidly ignited everything in its path. An alarm was sounded immediately.
The hatches were closed to prevent water from rushing in, and smoke quickly spread below decks. The frightened passengers surged to the deck to escape the choking fumes, but flames drove them back. The screams of the terrified women and children were drowned out by the roaring of the sea.
First Mate James Gibbs and others began to man the pumps, pouring water on the flames. Many of those below had already suffocated, and nothing could be done for those up on deck and engulfed in flames. Many seized pieces of wood and jumped overboard, trying to stay afloat.
After some 30 minutes, the engines partially stopped. The ship had 10 lifeboats, which were immediately lowered. Capt. Ward “having lost all control of himself and crazed with fear” jumped into the first lifeboat with ten soldiers. The boat overturned and his body was never recovered.
Another vessel, the General Sedgwick, was a mile away when the fire began and began steaming toward the Lyon. Unfortunately winds threw the loaded lifeboat into the side of the stricken ship. The lifeboat capsized, and everyone was lost.
The Sedgwick stayed on the scene for hours, but there was no hope for the General Lyon. After fighting the fire for as long as they code, the Lyon was abandoned by the crew. The ravaged boat drifted toward the rocky shoals, burned to the water line, and sank.
Only 29 passengers and crew survived the day of terror. An apocryphal story is told of one crewman, Henson G. Raines, who was said to have survived by clinging to a wooden door. The story goes that he was picked up by a tramp steamer, landed on an island, living there for ten years. The tale cannot be verified but still accompanies the story of the SS General Lyon.
While the SS General Lyon’s story is one of the lesser-known naval tales, the loss of life in that short voyage on March 29, 1865 has gone down as one of the highest with only 29 survivors. The returning troops of the 56th Illinois alone would lose 205 men that day, a greater loss than the regiment suffered in the whole war.
Some 16 soldiers survived from Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. A formal letter from the Ocean and Lake Transportation Department advised that only three such vessels were lost during the last fiscal year, one being the SS General Lyon, with reports insisting “…and the loss of life was not great.”
Less than a month later the Sultana would explode and sink on the Mississippi River with more than 1,700 lives lost, again mostly Union soldiers returning home, a story that would be deemed more newsworthy.
Somehow very few have heard of the tragic fate of the SS General Lyon, perhaps because the event was overshadowed by the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox on March 29, 1865 and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln two weeks later.
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