For a warship constructed hurriedly during the Civil War, the USS Oneida had an active career. Built in 1861, the 198-foot, 10-inch schooner-rigged screw steamer, survived battles from 1862 to 1864, including service with Rear Admiral David Glasgow Farragut when he damned the torpedoes at Mobile Bay. Nothing, however, in her active past or sedentary later existence could save her from destruction at the bow of a more technologically advanced ship.
Although the Navy was soon to experiment with iron and steel, the Oneida was made of wood, as was her one-month-older near twin, the USS Kearsarge. That ship won fame for defeating the commerce raider CSS Alabama off Cherbourg, France, just two months before Mobile Bay. Feelings in the United States were strong against Great Britain for violating its neutrality by allowing the Alabama to be built in an English port. By the end of the decade hotheads on both sides of the Atlantic were threatening a new war.
In August 1869, two years after the Oneida was assigned to the Asiatic Squadron, a typhoon battered the ship. During the storm, she lost her second cutter, dingy, and ship's launch. This event was to loom large in her future. By the end of the year she had still not replaced the lost boats. The cause of the delay was never determined, but the Oneida's commander, Captain Edward P. Williams, complained, "I have asked for boats and cannot get them." As a result, the steamer was left with just the first and third cutters hanging in the davits on the port side and the ship's gig on the starboard quarter. She arrived in Yokohama, Japan, in November 1869 to have her boilers repaired. Once her refit was complete, she was to sail for New York.
Homeward Bound
The afternoon of 24 January 1870 was a festive one with little but thoughts of home on the minds of the Oneida's 24 officers and 152 Sailors. At 1700, the warship weighed anchor and, with steam up in her boilers, proceeded slowly out of the harbor. The crew then set fore and aft sails to augment the ship's steam power. The executive officer, Lieutenant Commander William Stewart, made certain that everything was tightly secured, including a spare boom lashed to the starboard side of the hull.
Despite a stiff breeze blowing out of the northeast, the surface of Tokyo Bay was smooth with a long gentle swell. The air felt much colder than its 47 degrees, and the water temperature was 42 degrees. The course was set at South by East, by ?? East.
At 1745, Master Isaac Yates arrived on the bridge to relieve Stewart as officer of the deck. Stewart told him the course and informed him that lookouts were stationed and men posted to sound for depth. A sandbar, known to the Americans as Saratoga Spit, jutted out from the east side of the bay. The Oneida would pass close by the shallows. Farther down the bay, the Kanon—Saki Lighthouse marked a rocky headland protruding from the west. Between these two points of land were at least 3?? miles of open water separating the east and west shores of Tokyo Bay. Beyond the Kanon—Saki headland the bay opened into the Pacific Ocean. The Oneida, however, would never get that far.
The navigation officer, Lieutenant Commander Alonzo Muldaur, appeared on deck, and Yates confirmed the ship's course with him. Stewart then went below. Seamen Albert Ruguart and A. S. C. Lewis relieved the two men at the ship's wheel at 1800. With the vessel on a port tack, Ruguart took the weather side of the wheel and Lewis the lee, or starboard, side. Each man had a binnacle-mounted compass before him to steer by.
Five minutes later, Muldaur went below to get his dinner. Shortly after the navigation officer departed, Captain Williams came on deck to remind Yates to be vigilant and constantly check the depth of the channel. Seaman Christian Yager was at that time in the starboard chains—a platform supporting the rigging chains—heaving the lead. Using a 12-fathom line he could not get a sounding. So far, the water was plenty deep.
The captain, who had been very ill for quite some time, then went below to his stateroom. A candle on his table was lit, as was a swinging lamp hanging in the pantry. He stretched out in his long sleeping chair to rest. His clerk, William Crowninshield, who shared his cabin, was sleeping in the starboard transom bed.
Watch the Light
Sometime after 1800 a lookout reported a steamer's masthead light five to six miles ahead of the Oneida. Yates, who had been watching the Kanon—Saki Light, shifted his gaze to the ship and watched as she rounded the light, traversing from east of the lighthouse to the west of it. In a short while the steamer had moved from ahead of the Oneida to off her starboard bow.
In the starboard chains, Yager also saw the steamer's masthead light. A few minutes later, as her hull came over the horizon, he could pick out her green sidelight as well. He continued heaving his line, and each time he looked back at the steamer he saw that her lights had moved farther and farther off the starboard bow of the Oneida.
On the bridge, Yates became concerned that the wind was causing the Oneida to drift to leeward. He sent for the navigator and ordered the crewmen at the wheel to bring the bow around more to port. According to later testimony, when Muldaur arrived he asked, "What is the matter, Yates?"
"I thought we were sagging in towards the western shore," Yates replied, "and besides there is a steamer's light on our starboard bow." He then pointed in that direction.
The navigator was more concerned about the presence of shoal water off Saratoga Point. "We must resume our course," he told the master.
After Yates ordered the helmsmen to return to the original heading, he and Muldaur stood watching the steamer as she approached on a nearly parallel course. Yates estimated she was between three and four miles off.
"There, do you see her green light?" Muldaur asked Yates. "She will pass to starboard of us." Content that neither the shoal water on the port nor the strange steamer on the starboard was a threat, Muldaur again went below.
Deep in the ship, Fireman First Class Patrick Cunningham had eight fires burning under the boilers. The engines were running smoothly, giving the ship an estimated speed of seven knots.
Fate Intervenes
On deck, as officer of the watch, Yates continued to monitor the activities of those on duty. Every five minutes Seaman Yager heaved his lead, still without hitting bottom. Saratoga Spit was just about even with the port beam. Soon the danger of shallow water would be behind them. The lookouts, meanwhile, kept a constant watch on the unknown steamer. Her course was steadily taking her on a path that would pass the Oneida well to starboard.
Seaman William Anderson, who had been watching the steamer's white and green lights off and on for some time as he went about his business, heard the quartermaster on the forecastle call to the officer of the deck, "We will go clear of her, sir." About five minutes later, Anderson looked up and saw the steamer coming right at them not more than half a ship's length away!
On the bridge, Yates had seen the iron-hulled steamer inexplicably change course and head right for the Oneida. As she turned, Yates could see her portside red lantern for the first time. She was so close that he knew instinctively that he could not hope to turn toward her and pass port to port. He called for an emergency turn away. Ruguart and Lewis spun the wheel and the Oneida began to play off rapidly to port. Yates had done the only thing he could possibly do to avoid a collision, but would it be enough? It looked as though the steamer would strike them amidships and cut them in two. The time was close to 1830 when the crew braced for the expected shock.
Before the ships made contact, however, the mystery steamer suddenly swung her bow to port and for a heart-stopping moment it seemed as though she just might cross behind the Oneida. But the maneuver was too late. Just prior to the crash, a voice, in English, was heard coming from the bridge of the other ship saying, "Stop her!" Then a second or so later the same voice, directed to the Oneida, said, "Where the hell are you going?"
The unidentified ship stopped her engines at the moment of impact, but the big steamer had too much momentum. She hit the Oneida at a 45-degree angle on the starboard side, first destroying the gig. Her sharp iron prow then sliced into the Oneida's hull at the mizzen chains and cut its way diagonally across the stern of the wooden warship. Helmsman Ruguart was thrown from the wheel.
The steamer cut the aft quarter completely off the Oneida and it fell into the sea. As the steamer crossed the stern she mangled the spanker boom, sail, and gaff of the mizzenmast and then, trailing broken shrouds and other debris from the U.S. ship, coasted on a short distance.
Mayhem and Duty
Injured, Ruguart tried to return to the wheel but found it was gone, along with the relieving tackles and the starboard binnacle. The deck was sheared off abaft the break of the poop. Also, his wheel mate, Lewis, was missing.
In the captain's cabin, Crowninshield was flung out of the transom. He opened his eyes to discover that the companion ladder to the deck was gone. In its place was a huge gaping hole from the side of the ship all the way to the rudder post. Captain Williams was on the floor, knocked out of his sleeping chair.
Thomas Begley, an off-duty coal heaver, and Seaman Joseph Long cleared away wreckage covering the stateroom skylight then climbed down into the cabin. The candle and swing lamp were still burning, throwing their light out into the vacant night. Water was pouring through the hole into the hull below the stateroom. Begley and Long lifted Williams up through the skylight and climbed up after him. As yet, no water was on the cabin floor. Crowninshield climbed out through the hole in the stern and scrambled up onto the spar deck.
When Yates told the captain that the steamer had changed course and rammed them, Williams snapped back, "I know it, sir. Let us save the ship." Meanwhile, Stewart, the executive officer, called out to the other ship, only 50 or 60 yards away: "Steamer ahoy! You have cut us down. Stay by us." But after clearing away the clutter on her bows, the ship restarted her engines and continued on her way, leaving the Oneida to her own resources. Stewart then called for emergency signals, but the flares stored in the stern had been carried away with the poop. Someone tied open the steam whistle and let it blow continuously. Less than five minutes had elapsed since the collision.
In the fire room, Patrick Cunningham was ordered to light two more fires in addition to the eight already burning. He was then directed to put the bilge injection on and activate the siphon pump. The steam pumps were already operating, but men on deck were sent to man the hand pumps so that all pumps were now going vigorously.
Captain Williams, meanwhile, asked Yates to go forward to see if the jibs were set and gave the order to set the foretopsail. The ship was heading east toward shallow water, but the sails were soon set aback by the wind. Without a rudder, the ship was unmanageable and losing speed. Any hope of running her aground in the shallows quickly disappeared.
Seaman William Taylor helped clear away one of the two remaining lifeboats, each a ten-oared cutter with a capacity of about 30 men. Surgeon Studdards, with Acting Boatswain Nicholas Anderson and 15 men pulled away from the Oneida in the third cutter in the hopes of hailing a Japanese junk that some of the men claimed to have seen in the darkness. That left only the first cutter with the Oneida.
Signals Ignored
Someone on deck called for the magazine keys. With water and foam rapidly spilling into the captain's stateroom, Seaman Joseph Long climbed down into it after the keys. By the time he left, the water was up to his knees.
While Gunner Thomas Stevenson ran to the forward locker after primers, someone else brought an armload of cartridges to the No. 1 gun on the starboard side. Stevenson returned with the primers and helped Stewart and Ensign George Adams load and fire the gun. They got off three blank shots and were loading the fourth by the time the rising water stopped them. Still, the steamer failed to heed their distress signals and disappeared into the night.
Deep in the hull, the rising water extinguished the boiler fires within six minutes of the collision. The engines were kept running for as long as there was steam to drive them, perhaps another minute or so. Fireman Cunningham left the fire room when the water was up to his knees.
The chief engineer reported that the water was rising a foot every minute, and Williams gave orders to clear away the remaining cutter. Seaman William Anderson encountered the captain on the bridge. As Anderson climbed aboard the cutter he said, "Captain, you had better go into this boat." Williams answered, "Never mind me; I will go down with the ship; you stay in the boat."
Muldaur, the navigator, asked Yates to see how the ship was heading and to check their position. The master went aft to the port binnacle to check the compass and noted that the Kanon—Saki Lighthouse was on their starboard beam. There were three inches of water on the deck at his feet. Yates reported the bearing to Muldaur, who was trying to find bottom with a lead line. The navigation officer sent Yates to tell the captain their position. Moments later Muldaur came running up and said, "Captain, we will sink by the stern in three minutes!" He asked the captain to get into the lifeboat, but again Williams refused.
She's Gone
By this time the ship was very low in the water and sinking fast. Yates was on the bridge next to the captain as the Oneida rolled slowly from side to side. Filled to capacity, the cutter cast off and drifted slowly away from the foundering ship. Men still on board the Oneida climbed into the rigging in hopes of staying above the rising water. Muldaur and Crowninshield joined them as the ship settled.
Yates meanwhile asked the captain to jump with him into the cutter, which was abreast of them. But again Williams said he would sink with his ship. The master thought that the time had come if he was to save his own life. Taking a running jump from the bridge, he hit the cold water. As the men in the cutter pulled him into the boat, the Oneida sank. The time was 1845.
Captain's Clerk Crowninshield, in the rigging with Muldaur, released his grip and floated free as the water rushed up to meet him. He swam to the cutter and was also pulled aboard. The navigation officer, however, was nowhere to be seen. Master Yates and Crowninshield were the only officers in the boat.
Men in the water were quickly numbed by the cold. Soon after the sinking, an officer in his shirtsleeves was seen swimming for the boat. It was Stewart, the executive officer. He called out, "For God's sake, Yates, save me!" The master ordered the men at the oars to back the boat down, but Stewart sank out of sight just beneath the stern of the lifeboat. Fifteen minutes after the collision, the Oneida, along with 115 of her crew, was gone.
For a while Yates had the cutter stay nearby, but the boat was so heavily loaded that water was coming in over the gunwales with each swell. He ordered the men to use their hats, boots, or anything else that was available to bail out the boat. Thirty-seven men were in the cutter; seven more, who could not be accommodated in the overcrowded boat, were lashed by their neckerchiefs to the gunwales and towed alongside as the boat was rowed four miles to the western shore of the bay.
Doctor Studdards meanwhile gave up on the fruitless chase after the junk and returned to the scene of the collision with his half-empty boat but could find no survivors. He too had his men pull toward the western shore. The mood in both cutters must have been somber indeed as the men in each boat were unaware that there were any survivors other than themselves.
A Cool Reception . . .
At 1945 the British merchant steamer Bombay, of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company, chugged into Yokohama Harbor and dropped anchor with a piece of a ship's boom impaled in her bow just above the water line. Her captain, however, did not notify the local authorities that anything out of the ordinary had occurred out in the bay.
It was not until 0400 the next day, when Studdards and several survivors of the Oneida stumbled into town after an all-night, 18-mile walk up the coast, that news of the sinking reached Yokohama. Studdards reported the disaster to the commanding officer of the storeship USS Idaho, the only American Navy ship then in the harbor. Studdards was still unaware of the men in the other cutter. He reported that he and the 16 men in his boat were the only survivors.
Even though several British, French, and Russian warships and at least one American merchant vessel were riding at anchor in the harbor, none but the Bombay had steam up. In the hope of rescuing any men who might still be clinging to floating debris, Lieutenant Timothy Lyons was dispatched from the Idaho to the British packet steamer to request assistance.
Captain Arthur W. Eyre of the Bombay gave Lyons a very cool reception. After making a trivial excuse about his ship being damaged and denying any responsibility for the collision, he flatly refused to go on a rescue mission. Lyons next went to the British Navy's station flagship, HMS Ocean, where he received much heartfelt sympathy. A British officer was dispatched to HMS Sylvia with an order to get up steam at once. Another officer was sent with Lyons back to the Bombay with instructions to "request the captain of the Bombay, as his was the only ship in harbor with steam up, to go down to where the accident took place and see what he could do."
Again Captain Eyre refused, claiming, "I can't, I've got a hole in my bows." He would later admit "that the ship was making water, but nothing very serious." His true feelings, expressed in private, were very antagonistic toward the Americans. A British naval officer heard him boast that he "had cut the quarter off a Yankee frigate, and it served her right!"
As soon as other vessels in port could get steam up they set out to render assistance. Yates and the waterlogged men with him were picked up on the western shore and brought to Yokohama. Eventually, the agent for the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company convinced Eyre to take the Bombay out to look for survivors, but of course it was too late.
. . . And Colder Result
Within days of the collision, on 27 January, the British convened a court of inquiry that met through the middle of February. It comprised the British consul at Kanagawa as president, two Royal Navy commanders, and two masters of British merchant ships then in harbor. Eyre testified as to the condition of his ship by stating, "The next morning I steamed down to the scene of the collision and back, without having made any repairs."
The Oneida's survivors voluntarily appeared before the British court to present their case. When the president of the court informed Eyre that, if evidence showed he was responsible for the deaths of the Oneida's crew, the Americans could prosecute him for murder, the captain quickly reverted to spin control. He was very careful not to say anything that would implicate himself in any way, and in so doing he contradicted the testimony of his own officers. Several witnesses on board the Bombay reported clearly seeing the candle-lit table exposed in the Oneida's stateroom after that ship had been broken open. But among other things, and in spite of having asked one of his officers at the time of the collision if there was shallow water where the stricken vessel could be run aground, he claimed that he was unaware that the Oneida had suffered serious damage. He alone among the Bombay's officers denied hearing the verbal hail or the signal guns from the Oneida. He also claimed that he was "not aware whether it was customary for two vessels which have come into collision on a dark night to communicate in order to ascertain the amount of injury each has sustained."
Much to the surprise of the Americans, and in spite of conflicting testimony from the Bombay's officers, the British court absolved Eyre of any culpability in the sinking of the Oneida. It did, however, cite him for leaving the scene without rendering assistance. For this he had his master's license suspended for six months, a penalty he immediately appealed.
The Americans were outraged. If the British court found that the Bombay was not at fault, then by implication the entire fault lay with the Oneida and her dead captain. The prevailing belief among the men of the various foreign ships then in Yokohama was that if the British court had been comprised entirely of Royal Navy officers the outcome would have been different. In fact, it was the Royal Navy that went to the aid of the shipwrecked crew and joined in the search for drowned victims.
Politics Trumps All
The Americans later convened their own court of inquiry. Although British citizens could not be compelled to appear at the court, the transcripts of the British proceedings were admitted as evidence. Both ships' positions and courses, as indicated by uncontested testimony by both sides, were plotted on a chart of Tokyo Bay. The result indicated that, if Eyre had not unexpectedly and unnecessarily changed course, it would have been impossible for the Bombay to have collided with the Oneida. In addition, inconsistencies in the testimony of the Bombay's officers were pointed out, which when taken as a group indicated that Eyre's testimony was consistently at odds with that of his junior officers.
The American court absolved the captain and crew of the Oneida of any fault in the collision, placing blame squarely on Captain Eyre and the Bombay. Because the steamer hailed from London, proceedings to recover damages could only be brought against her owners in an English court. But President Ulysses S. Grant was loath to antagonize Queen Victoria's government at a time when shortsighted men on both sides were agitating for war as a result of hard post-Civil War feelings. Rather than fight, Grant's secretary of state was in the process of negotiating arbitration by an international tribunal to settle the matter of the Alabama Claims brought against Great Britain for its part in aiding and supplying the Confederacy. Britain eventually settled the claims for damage inflicted upon American shipping by the CSS Alabama and other Confederate cruisers built and outfitted by British interests, and made reparations to the United States as a result of the 1871 Treaty of Washington.
Overshadowed by the political posturing of the two global powers, the fate of the Oneida was quietly forgotten. Perhaps in the interest of peace it was for the best. But sadly, the one lesson that should have been taken from the disaster was also quietly ignored, hushed up, no doubt, because it reflected poorly on the American Navy. If the Oneida had been supplied with a full complement of ship's boats, most of the crew could have survived in spite of the collision. On a bleak winter night in 1870, this cold fact was painfully obvious to more than 100 doomed Sailors desperately scrambling up the rigging of a sinking ship. It, however, took the drowning of nearly 1,500 passengers and crew lost with the SS Titanic in 1912 to hammer home the importance of requiring an adequate number of life boats.
"U.S.S. Oneida Lost January 24, 1870, in Yeddo (Tokyo) Bay, Japan," U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland., reminiscences by Rear Admiral O. W. Farenholt, U.S. Navy, Retired.
41st Congress, 2d Session, House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. 236, Part 2, Loss of the United States Steamer Oneida, Letter from the Secretary of the Navy in Further Reply to the resolution of the House calling for information regarding the loss of the Oneida, May 11, 1870 (including Proceedings of court of inquiry upon the loss of the Oneida).
"An Account of the Loss of the Oneida,'" by Lieut. Commander T. A. Lyons, USN, in Scribner's Monthly, September 1880.