From time to time in the history of our Navy one of its ships has vanished at sea without trace. Impenetrable mystery shrouds their disappearance, as unfathomable in this day of steam, radio, and well-charted sea lanes as in the day of "oak and hemp" when the only means of communication lay in mail left at a port of call, or in one ship speaking another at sea.
It has never been ascertained whether sudden catastrophe befell these naval craft or whether they sank in weary surrender after a long and desperate struggle. Naval records show that exhaustive search was made, in nearly every instance, to locate them, or definitely establish the reason for their disappearance—but the sea refused to yield survivor or wreckage; and the last log is missing.
U.S. sloop "Saratoga" (1), 18 guns, which in 1780 took four British prizes, sailed from Cap Francais, Haiti, on March 20, 1781, for the north. She left in company with a French frigate and a large convoy of French and American merchantmen. Shortly after the Saratoga became separated from her consorts and was never heard from again. No roster of the officers and men the sloop carried has as yet been found—thus added to the mystery of her disappearance is that of the number and identity of her crew.
U.S.S. "Insurgente," 36 guns, which was captured from the French by the U.S.S. Constellation in 1799, carried a crew of 340 men and was commanded by Captain Patrick Fletcher. She sailed from Baltimore on July 22, 1800, for a cruise in the West Indies against privateers. After spending a short time in Hampton Roads, the Insurgente set sail on August 8, was spoken in the same month, and then vanished from the annals of naval history.
U.S. brig “Pickering,” 187 tons, 14 guns, was in the service of the Navy, but belonged to the Revenue Cutter rolls. The Pickering with a crew of 90 men on board and Lieutenant B. Hillar in command, left New Castle, Delaware, for the Guadaloupe station on August 20, 1800. Like the Insurgente, she was spoken after sailing and then disappeared. One tangible theory as to the loss of these two ships is the supposition that they foundered in one of the equinoctial storms which rage through the Caribbean during this season.
U.S. Gunboat No. 7.—To protect our commerce from the depredations of the Barbary corsairs our government built fifteen gunboats in 1803. These long, low, narrow craft were so hastily built that they were dispatched before they were named. Upon completion Gunboat No. 7 sailed for the Mediterranean, sprung her mast, and returned to New-York to refit. On June 20, 1805, she again set sail under command of Lieutenant P. S. Ogilvie. She passed Sandy Hook Light and was never heard from again.
U.S.S. “Etna,” a bomb brig of 139 tons, armed with 11 guns and carrying a crew of 30 men, was lost in 1812 in the vicinity of the New Orleans station. The brief notation concerning this ship states that the rolls of the New Orleans station for 1812 have been searched and shed no further light on her disappearance.
U.S.S. “Wasp" (3).—In 1814 this sloop of war, 18 guns, and 140 men, which had made so many captures in the War of 1812, mysteriously disappeared in the South Atlantic. Commanded by Johnston Blakeley, she had engaged and captured the British ship Atalanta on September 21,1814, in lat. 33°-12'N; long. 14°-56'W. On October 9, the Swedish brig Adonis, from Rio de Janeiro, reported that the Wasp spoke and boarded her in lat. 18°- 35' N; long. 30°-10' W., and that the Wasp was standing for the Spanish Main.
U.S.S. “Epervier,” 477 tons, 18 guns, passed through the Straits of Gibraltar on July 14, 1815, carrying her crew of 128 men and 14 passengers to an unknown fate. Her passengers were Captain Lewis of the Guerriere, Lieutenant B. J. Neale, two other officers, and ten citizens of the United States who had been held captive in Algerian prisons and liberated through negotiations with the Dey of Algiers. To Captain Lewis had been entrusted a treaty Commodore Decatur had made with Algiers which was a potent factor in suppressing piracy and slavery of whites in the Barbary states. On August 8, 1815, the ill-fated ship was sighted by a merchantman in lat. 38°-4'N.; long. 61°-18' W. This was the last report the Navy Department ever received of the gallant Epervier, her commander, Lieutenant John T. Shu- brick, and all on board.
U.S.S. “Lynx.”—Sailing for “sunny isles but never to come to shore” was the fate of the little schooner Lynx, 6 guns, and a crew of 50 officers and men. She set sail from St. Mary’s, Georgia, for Kingston, Jamaica, on January 21, 1812. Commodore Daniel T. Patterson reported in letters to the department April 18 and June 9, 1812, that no tidings of the vessel had been received since the date of sailing.
U.S.S. “Wild Cat.”—One of Commodore Porter’s “Mosquito Fleet,” the 48- ton schooner Wild Cat which was employed with the fleet in suppressing piracy in the West Indies, met a mysterious fate. With Midshipman L. M. Booth in command and a crew of 31 men the Wild Cat left Cuba in August, 1824, for Thompson’s Island (Key West), and was never again heard from. Months later an arm’s chest was found on Carrysfort Reef which may have belonged to the Wild Cat. It could not be identified, and the Wild Cat must be added to the list of missing ships.
U.S.S. "Hornet" (3), 440 tons, 18 guns, was lost off Tampico, Mexico. Master Commandant Otho Morris and 140 men, sailed from New York on February 4, 1829, to cruise off the coast of Mexico. Off Sandy Hook on February 5, her commander wrote the last letter received from the Hornet. She was driven from her moorings off Tampico on September 10, 1829, and how she went to her end can only be conjectured.
U.S.S. "Sylph" (2).—Employed in the protection of timber on the southern coast, the schooner Sylph, 1 gun, and commanded by Lieutenant H. E. V. Robinson, was lost in 1831, with all on board.
U.S.S. "Sea Gull" (2).—A pilot-boat tender to the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, which had been purchased in New, York in 1838, and named Sea Gull, is added to this roll of unexplained losses. Of 100 tons, 2 guns, 15 men, and commanded by Midshipmen J. W. E. Reid and Frank A. Bacon, this craft left Orange Harbor In company with the U.S.S. Flying Fish, April 28, 1839. At midnight the Sea Gull was last seen by her consort. Shortly afterwards it began to blow in strong squalls and had rapidly increased to a gale by 8:30 A.M. on the twenty-ninth. The Flying Fish sought shelter in Scapenham Bay but was forced to remove to Orange Bay where the vessel rode out the gale until the morning of May 1.
Commander Wilkes instituted a careful search for survivors or wreckage, but no trace of either was found. How or when she perished cannot be recorded.
U.S.S. "Grampus."—The last word ever received of the schooner Grampus, 184 tons, 12 guns, was through a letter mailed at Charleston, S. C., on March 14, 1843, which stated that the ship would be in Norfolk between April 8 and 15. Early in March of the same year the Grampus with Lieutenant Albert E. Downes and 64 officers and men on board left Norfolk to cruise along the South Atlantic coast. She was off the Charleston bar from March 11 to 15, and then vanished completely.
U.S.S. "Albany."—Flying her homeward bound pennant after an active and successful cruise in the Caribbean, the sloop of war Albany, 1,064 tons, 22 guns, left Aspinwall September 29, 1854, for New York. No tidings of the ship, her Commander, Commander J. T. Gerry, and 210 officers and men were ever received. The U.S.S. Princeton and Fulton were dispatched to seek trace of her, and after making a careful search they reported no trace had been found. The last official intelligence from the Albany to the Navy Department was dated September 28, 1854, and contained the information that on the ensuing day she would sail for New York.
U.S.S. "Porpoise" (2).—On September 12, 1854, the Porpoise, 224 tons, with Lieutenant William King Bridge and 69 men, sailed from Hongkong for a survey of the Bonin, Ladrone, Lu chu, and other islands west and south of Japan. She left in company with the U.S.S. Vincennes whose commander, John Rodgers, reported that he parted company with the Porpoise on September 21, 1854, in mid-channel between Formosa and China, to the northward and westward of the Pescadores. She was enveloped in a driving mist and soon lost to sight. The two ships were to meet at the Bonin Isles and after waiting beyond the appointed time, Commander Rodgers went in search of the Porpoise, visiting all islands and places where it was thought possible she might have been driven by a gale. Later the U.S.S. John Hancock and the Fenimore Cooper thoroughly explored the island of Formosa, but found not the slightest intelligence of the ill-fated brig. Lieutenant Habersham in My Last Cruise says of the loss of the Porpoise:
In the confined China Sea—near the Pescadores, the wind blowing toward the coast of China—it would be singular indeed, if no vestige of a ship wrecked or lost there should be found. It is not probable that the Porpoise was lost until she reached the vicinity of the Bonins.
U.S.S. “Levant.”—Many romantic stories have been written around the lost sloop of war Levant, which was built in New York in 1837, and often erroneously identified as the British ship Levant captured by the U.S.S. Constitution, and recaptured during the War of 1812. Edward Everett Hale in his famous book, A Man Without a Country, places Philip Nolan, the unhappy hero, on the Levant for his last cruise.
Adventure tales have appeared describing her loss on uncharted reefs and habitable islands where the crew have lived for years, as on the island of Pitcairn celebrated in the story of the mutiny of H.M.S. Bounty.
Officially the Levant vanished without trace after leaving Hilo, September 18, 1860. The U.S.S. Saranac and Wyoming were sent from Panama in search of the missing ship when she became overdue, but these and all similar attempts failed to solve the fatal mystery.
Early navigators in the Pacific reported, from time to time, the existence of an uncharted island on the route Commander Hunt indicated he would use. In 1904 the Navy Department sent the U.S.S. Tacoma to search for this doubtful island as a possible explanation of the disappearance of the Levant, but no signs of a shoal, reef, or island were found.
Congress declared the Levant and crew of 210 men lost as of June 30, 1861.
Whaleboat from U.S.S. “Marietta.”— The sea did not again exact mysterious toll of the Navy until November, 1909, when a whaleboat from the U.S.S. Marietta containing five seamen disappeared.
The official report states that when at Limon on November 26, 1909, two whaleboats, manned by five men each, received permission to engage in a race. During their absence the wind shifted and freshened, and when they did not return at dark the Marietta put to sea in search of them. One boat was found to have landed twelve miles south of Point Limon. The crew of this whaleboat reported that the current and wind were so strong that they could not make the return trip to the Marietta. The U.S.S. Tacoma, Des Moines, Marietta, and Eagle continued a fruitless search for the missing whaleboat along the whole coast from Point Limon to Colon. No signs of the men or boat were found. Some time later at Cristobal some fishermen found a whaleboat in perfect order, oars in place, which was thought to belong to the Marietta. How the boat reached Cristobal, or what became of the men who manned her, has never been explained.
The comptroller decided in April, 1910, that there is no absolute proof that the Marietta’s men met their death. They may have been rescued or they may have landed and joined the revolutionists in Central America.
U.S.S. “Nina.”—Built in the last year of the Civil War, the schooner-rigged tug Nina, 357 tons, serving at the time as tender to the Third Submarine Division, Atlantic Fleet, sailed from Norfolk one Sunday morning for Boston with 31 officers and men. She was sighted on February 6, 1910, the day she left port, outside Capes Henry and Charles; but since that time has not been heard from. Vessels of the Revenue Cutter Service and the United States Navy made a wide search for the tug, but found no wreckage, or intelligence of the Nina, beyond the statement of a merchant tug that such heavy seas were rolling on February 6 that she put back to port, unable to weather them. The Nina was declared lost March 15, 1910.
U.S.S. “Cyclops.”—The mystery of the fuel ship Cyclops, 19,360 tons, remains as baffling today as it was in March, 1918, the time of her disappearance. It has since been learned from German official sources that neither German U-boats nor German mines were in the area where the Cyclops was last reported.
Much has been said and written concerning the disappearance of this ship and her 309 passengers and crew; every effort has been made to trace her but no satisfactory theory or evidence has ever been offered.
The writer in conversing with the captain of the SS. Vestris on a trip to South America in 1919 was told by him that he had been in communication with the Cyclops the day after she left Barbados, and that she reported "fair weather" and did not report any distress or difficulty.
U.S.S. "Conestoga" (2).—The last ship of the Navy to vanish at sea was the fleet tug Conestoga of 617 tons, commanded by Lieutenant Ernest L. Jones. With a crew of 56 officers and men the tug left Mare Island Navy Yard on March 25, 1921, for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, en route to Samoa, where she would resume her post as station ship. The Conestoga never reached Pearl Harbor. A search covering several months was made in which all available naval and aircraft forces were utilized.
The steamship Senator on May 17, 1921, in lat. 18°45' N., long. 115°-42' W. picked up a life boat bearing the letter "C." This letter was removed from the boat and forwarded to the Navy Department, the boat having been destroyed by the crew of the Senator. It is probable that this life boat belonged to the Conestoga but positive identification was not possible after the destruction of the boat. All islands in this vicinity were carefully searched without sign or token of the tug or its crew being discovered.
"And the sea mocks our frustrate search"—but will not the day come when the sea will yield a part of its toll, and thereby reveal the fate of some of these vanished ships?
And there be some who say that ships rise
To seek familiar harbors in the night,
Blowing in mist their spectral sails light.