COMPLETE particulars of the hurricane at Samoa, on March 16, have now come to hand, enabling us to realize such a picture of terror and destruction as the records of the ocean have seldom, if ever, before presented. On the night of the date mentioned, seven warships, together with a few merchant vessels, were lying at anchor in the harbor of Apia, between the town and long reef which shuts it off from the Pacific. Three of the warships were German, three American, and the seventh was her Majesty’s steamer Calliope—a screw cruiser of the third class of 2,770 tons and 4,020 horse-power, commanded by Captain Kane—watching the still but half-extinguished feud between the representatives of the Fatherland and of the Great Republic. The beautiful scene— for Apia, like all the islands of that sea, is a perfect paradise of loveliness—was somber with the hush and gloom of a coming storm. The barometer was falling, but at that season cyclones of a mild character are common about the Samoan archipelago, and the harbor, though much encumbered with rocks, and having only narrow exits east and west, was apparently the safest place. The seven warships, therefore, kept to their ground-tackle, but got their steam up, and waited.
In the middle of the night the tempest broke upon them—no local cyclone as had been expected, but one of those terrific whirlpools of wind which from time to time scour the Pacific and carry death and horror in their awful path. As morning approached the hurricane developed itself fully, blowing right away from the mainland, and straight on to the long belt of reef which shuts in the harbor.
In these frightful typhoons the fury of the wind is such as to beat down the water into a seething milky turmoil, which for the time being shows no waves. Each crest that would rise is flattened into the mass by the fierce passage of the tempest, and the ship at anchor amid the furious gale rides with strange steadiness, but with her cables stretched like harpstrings, and a roar in her rigging as of ten thousand demons shrieking. Yet, let the wind lull only for a moment, or chop round ever so little, and that milk-white surface of the sea suddenly leaps into billows, which, once raised, are rolled by the storm almost instantaneously into vast mountainous ridges of water, and these hurled with indescribable wrath, against a vessel, split her bulwarks to splinters, sweep from her decks every movable object, and fling her from her moorings with such vehemence that either the chains must part, or the flukes snap, or the deeply- buried anchors plough backward through the ooze and “come home.”
Fearful was the strain upon every one of those seven warships off Apia when the light came on March 16, and hardly had it dawned before the Eber, a German gunboat, dragged helplessly, parted her cables, and, in spite of her hard-working engines, crashed on the rugged reef, slid back again with the reflex wave, and went down in the deep water under the coral shelf with all hands. A whole watch was below with hatches battened down, for the chain had very suddenly snapped. They were, of course, drowned with all their fellows, and hardly a cry heard; while shortly afterwards a huge wave wrenched the Adler from her anchors, hurled her upon the remorseless reef, and flung her broadside over its face. A few officers and men made their escape by favor of the waves, while near at hand the United States sloop Nipsic, overpowered, and drifting, managed to get steering way for a smooth bank of sand, and ran high and dry upon a spot where, by lowering boats under the lee, the captain could save all hands, except six men, drowned through capsizing.
Here were three good vessels already gone, strewing the harbor waters with corpses and wreckage, and still the awful storm raged unabated. The American corvette Vandalia—a fine old-fashioned, wooden, bark-rigged ship of 2,100 tons, which carried General Grant in his tour round the world—was the next victim. The fury of the hurricane swept her loose, and dashed her on the reef, fifty yards from where the Nipsic lay, but, unlike that vessel, on hard rock, where the first wave washed her captain and many of the company to their death, and the next bilged the vessel in, so that she sank with part of her hull and her tall masts remaining above water, covered with clinging sailors. The Trenton, American second-rate, of 4,000 tons and twelve guns, was still riding it out, but drifting nearer and nearer to the Calliope, the British cruiser, whose steam was up at its high- pressure, waiting for the final moment when she must “cut and run.” Already the Calliope had collided with the hapless Vandalia; and she must soon have the Trenton upon her; the day was waning, the tempest strong as ever. Captain Kane determined to trust his powerful engines and make for the open sea.
The account says:
It was a momentous resolve, for the anchors and engines together had failed to save the other vessels in the harbour. When Captain Kane threw the head of the corvette into the teeth of the storm, and slipped his cables, the Calliope for an appreciable period of time, remained perfectly still. Then she gathered headway by inches, and finally moved at a snail’s pace past the Trenton. As the Calliope steamed into safety the 450 men who formed the officers and crew of the Trenton, though momentarily expecting a fatal disaster to themselves, raised a ringing cheer as a tribute to the brave daring of the English commander. The crew of the Calliope returned the greeting as heartily.
Consider the scene and the matchless heroism and generosity of the Yankee crew. Almost sure of instant death themselves, they could see the Queen’s ship at her utmost steam-pressure, fighting, fathom by fathom, her way to life and safety; could appreciate the gallantry of the effort, cheer the brave, handsome ship defying the hurricane, and, finally, see her glide past, overcoming the roll of the sea and the savage wind with the generous pleasure of true mariners, glad of a smart and daring deed. We do not know in all naval records any sound which makes a finer music upon the ear than that cheer of the Trenton's men. It was distressed manhood greeting triumphant manhood; the doomed saluting the saved; it was pluckier and more human than any cry ever raised upon the deck of a victorious line-of-battle-ship; it never can be forgotten, and never must be forgotten by Englishmen speaking of Americans. Sure we are that the echo of that noble “Huzza!" must have made every man on board the Calliope long to lay hold of the Trenton, and give her a “cast-out” at any cost beyond the dreadful reef.
It was, however, all she could do to clear her American consort; to have towed behind even a gig or a dinghy would have certainly lost the battle she was waging foot by foot against the hurricane. Her mighty engines, pressed to their utmost, saved her at last; little by little she struggled out to the sea-gate, and, once free of the reef, a bit of headsail flung her bow to the wind, which soon aided the panting engines to drive her far away to seaward, out of all danger. But let landsmen realize how that success was won. Let them think of the stokers toiling in the tossing engine-room, urging the fierce furnaces; of the engineers driving up the steam gauge, risking deadly explosion to save life and the ship; of the officers and crew on deck, hardly sure that the vessel stole forward an inch upon the reef, hardly able to see or speak or stand, but doing their duty perfectly to the Queen, and with breath and heart enough to answer that noble “God-speed” of the Yankee flag-ship. Since seafaring began there never was a wilder sight than Apia harbor that March 17, nor any nearer touch-and-go escape than the skillful start of the Calliope, nor any more gallant, generous, and unselfish demonstration than the cheer which the Trent on gave the Queen’s cruiser as she forged ahead out of that death-trap of storm and ruin between the reef and the town.
The next incident, says the account, was the sinking of the Vandalia, and this, too, embraces an instance of noble conduct. Her rigging was thronged with men when the Trenton found herself in her worst difficulty. The fires were out, the sails gone, the pouring of oil on the waves had proved useless, and the danger was imminent of a collision between the Trenton and the Vandalia, which would destroy the last hopes of the survivors clinging to the rigging of the latter. At this juncture Lieutenant Brown, of the Trenton, ran up the ship’s colors, the only flag that floated at Apia that day, ordered the ship’s band to play “The Star- Spangled Banner” and sent half his company into the port-rigging, rightly calculating that their weight on the side next to the storm, and their mass of resistance to the gale, might help the maneuvering of the ship. As the Trenton and the Vandalia approached towards collision, the Trenton men cheered the Vandalia crew. The latter replied as well as they could, with their throats enfeebled by exposure, but with all good-will, as recognizing that the Trenton was their unwilling executioner. Yet, strangely enough, the Trenton never came alongside a dock more gently than her stem now touched the Vandalia, whose survivors swarmed upon the larger vessel’s decks into comparative safety. Thus out of peril came sudden salvation, and the American corvette, which cheered our ship, not only lost no hands, but saved the survivors of the Vandalia, though she afterwards went to pieces.
The German corvette Olga, which drove ashore, has since been got off, and taken safely to Sydney, and the Nipsic was also floated again, but never to re-cross the Pacific to her native coasts.1 Altogether one hundred and forty-three lives were lost in this most disastrous tempest, and at least four good ships of war, besides many merchantmen, yet greater and more majestic than any hurricane, than any death or disaster, is once more proved to be the spirit of man, which, in a scene of dreadful tumult of nature, where strong vessels were helpless as chips, and the stoutest skill was useless, could raise above the whirlwind that dauntless cheer to the Calliope, the expression of an immortal courage—a cry, all things considered, of such indomitable Anglo-Saxon pluck as to ring finer than any which has ever echoed under the flag of victory, or in the happiest hours of security and success.
1 Editor's Note: The Times’ article was printed but a short time after the disaster and before the Nipsic sailed to Honolulu.
It is too had this Times' article, especially lines 9, 10 and 11, page 954, could not have been reprinted at Geneva when the British correspondents were looking for press copy!