PROBABLY no other vessel in the navy has had so eventful, though so short a career, as the Idaho. She was designed, during the later years of the war, as a steam frigate of the first class, to have a speed of fifteen knots an hour; her enthusiastic and confident projectors even guaranteeing to abate a hundred thousand dollars of her price for every knot less than fifteen, provided they should receive an equal sum for every one she might exceed that rate. Alas for human calculations! On her trial trip she was scarcely able to make nine. The well-known patriotism and undoubted integrity of the distinguished citizen who had contracted for her, the world-wide reputation of her builders, and the unrivalled beauty of her hull, determined the government to accept her as she was, and, removing her engines, she became and has ever since remained a sailing-vessel. The war was over, and the immediate need for steamers no longer existed; whence it happened that the problem was never solved, whether engines of a different construction might not have accomplished other results.
The Navy Department had, for some time, been proposing to establish floating hospital and store ships at the head-quarters of the several foreign stations, and the Idaho was deemed a proper vessel with which to make the experiment. She was accordingly fitted out with merely sufficient sail power to carry her to her destination ; and on the first day of November, 1867, she left New York for Nagasaki in Japan, where she was “ to be permanently stationed, and used in part as hospital and store ship for the Asiatic squadron.”
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In naval circles she was undoubtedly regarded as a costly failure. Her only appearance upon the ocean had been discreditable. Many even doubted whether she could reach her destination, and the excuse for refusing requests was more than once given that she would certainly be lost, and that there was no use of wasting more money upon her. The officers who joined her went on board with misgivings as to her powers, doing so with that growl of resignation which becomes a habit with men who lead that uncertain career, in which obedience to orders brings often more danger and discomfort than ease and pleasure. Her men superstitiously foreboded evil to her because she commenced her cruise on Friday. Scarcely, however, had she started on her long voyage ere she gave evidence of her extraordinary powers, and nobly did justice to the genius which had modelled her beautiful lines. Soon after leaving New York the wind drew ahead, and hour by hour she logged fourteen and a half knots with her yards braced almost as sharp as they could be. Both crew and officers at once became enraptured with her ; and, as if to merit the praises they lavished upon her, she made sixty-five knots (about seventy-five statute miles) in four hours, running down to Rio de Janeiro before the southeast trades,— a rate which she afterwards exceeded, on one occasion, in the South Indian Ocean, when she ran all the line off the reel, marking eighteen and a half knots, before the sand had entirely left the glass, and when she was, in all probability, moving through the water twenty miles an hour. Nautical men, who have not personally inspected her log, need not be blamed for regarding speed so unparalleled as an idle boast or exaggeration. Even one who has stood upon her decks and witnessed how steadily she glided over the sea, cutting the billows noiselessly, leaving no wake of troubled foam, not even bending to the breeze, but standing upright as a steeple, would himself have been incredulous, until he had seen the chip thereon, and counted ten, twelve, and fifteen, with a recorded force of wind which would have impelled many another noble vessel, with proportionably greater spread of canvas, only six, eight, or nine.
But it was not all a summer day on board the Idaho, nor her march one of triumph only. At two o’clock of the afternoon of November 22d, just as the officers had finished their tiffin, and were lazily occupying themselves after their wont, reading, writing, smoking, or chatting, one of the passengers rushed up from the lower wardroom with uncovered head and blanched face gasping out, “My God, the magazine is on fire ! ” and thick volumes of black smoke quickly following him showed that it was no false alarm. Immediately the fire-bell rang, and the crew hastened to their several stations, working with that desperate courage which characterizes the disciplined sailor, no matter what the emergency. All on board were conscious of their fearful peril. Trained from their entering into the service to be so careful in handling powder, that even when it is brought on board in securely fastened copper tanks, they extinguish every light and fire, however distant, and do not even go into the magazine with ordinary shoes lest the iron nails might strike a spark, here they saw the flames themselves fiercely playing around thousands of pounds of the dangerous explosive. The demon of fire had entered the very chamber of death, but brave men followed to do him battle, and toiled amid the smoke and the darkness and flame, without a hope of life for themselves, to save the lives of their shipmates on deck, who stood there, many with nothing to do, and all the more wretched therefore, greedily listening to the wild reports that came from below, that the fire was gaining, that the magazine cork could not be started, — that it was all up with us. For ten minutes — hours they seemed — men looked death steadily in the face (later in the cruise we stared at him as many hours in reality), and thought of those dear ones at home whom they were never again to meet, and of the agony they would suffer when they knew how they had been bereaved. Few men, I imagine, who have any one to love them, even at such a time, think of themselves or their own future, but pray for escape only for the sake of others, — dear mother or sister or wife. Gradually the flames subsided, the smoke became denser, and fainting and half-suffocated men, drawn up from below, announced the danger over. One seldom escapes a more imminent peril than this, but it was to be the lot of the Idaho to bear us still nearer the brink of eternity.
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Having made the extraordinary run in the Indian Ocean, already stated, the fickle wind, as though content with having given the ship an opportunity of showing her pace, deserted her. A succession of provoking calms and head-winds befell her; and the fastest sailing-vessel afloat in any sea made a passage of two hundred days to Japan, — one of the longest on record. She lingered fifty-three days among the straits and islands which constitute Ombay Passage, twenty of that time being consumed in making only seventeen miles. Her stay at Nagasaki was uneventful. The reports of her speed, and the remonstrances of officers that such a beautiful specimen of our naval architecture should be left to rot on duty for which she was so manifestly unfitted, finally determined the government to recall her, and she was ordered to Yokohama, prior to going to HongKong to discharge her surplus stores, and then sailing for Panama with the invalids of the squadron, and ultimately for San Francisco, there to be repaired and refitted as a cruising vessel.
As anticipated, fifteen months’ swinging at the same moorings in the harbor of Nagasaki had so fouled her bottom with sea-weed and barnacles, that she did not exhibit anything of her famous speed on the passage to Yokohama. Her bad luck, however, still attended her, for in a course which led first south-southwest, then southeast, afterwards east, and finally north-northeast, she invariably experienced an opposing wind, and on the 19th of August encountered a typhoon, which, though it sorely strained her rotten sides, demonstrated her admirable qualities as a sea-boat. Notwithstanding the severity of the hurricane, which, as afterwards discovered, occasioned an immense amount of injury to the shipping at and near Yokohama and in Yeddo,—among other ravages, lifted a building one hundred feet long more than thirty feet into the air, and there blew it to pieces, — the Idaho did not lose a spar, nor scarcely shipped a sea. Seams were opened, bolts drawn, and beams broken, but she behaved nobly, and established her claim to be considered the paragon of sea-goers. Violent as was this hurricane, it was only a moderate gale compared with the ordeal soon to be undergone by the ship, and which it is the purpose of this paper to relate. Three hundred souls, which this gallant vessel bore within the very gates of eternity and brought safely back, have had an experience vouchsafed few men, and hence their story has a claim to be put on record, if only in the interests of science.
Preliminary to the narration of these events, it may be desirable to explain to the non-professional reader something of the nature of typhoons. The term is of Chinese etymology, denoting in the original merely “a very great wind,” and is accepted by ipariners as expressive of the most violent of that class of hurricanes, generically termed “ cyclones,” or revolving gales. They occur most frequently among the West India Islands, in the Indian Ocean, and especially in the China Sea. In the latter region the prevailing winds, termed “ monsoons,” blow from May to September steadily from the southwest, and from October to April from the northeast. The seasons of the changes of the monsoons are especially fruitful of atmospheric disturbances, and particularly the time of the setting in of the northeast monsoon, which, coinciding with the autumnal equinox, is that when the most violent typhoons occur. There is a general tendency in all winds to move in a curvilinear direction, and in the case of hurricanes it becomes completely circular, and the gale, while advancing bodily over the face of the ocean in any one direction, at the same time revolves upon its centre, as the earth rotates upon its axis while speeding along in its orbit, or a cart-wheel turns upon its axle-tree while rolling over the ground.
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It is evident, therefore, that while the gale itself may be travelling, say to the northeast, the wind will be blowing from every point of the compass in the several parts of the circumference of the tornado, and of course in its opposite sides or semicircles, as they arc technically called, in directly contrary directions. The diameter of a cyclone varies from one to several hundred miles, the velocity and intensity of the wind increasing from the exterior towards the centre, where it abruptly ceases. This centre of calm, or vortex of the whirlwind, may be so small that the wind shifts almost without lull from one direction to the opposite, or, as in the instance about to be narrated, when it was nearly two hours passing over the Idaho, it may have a diameter of twenty miles. The extent of range of a revolving gale is often several thousand miles, over which it advances at a speed of ten to thirty miles an hour, while, independent of this progressive rate of the whole mass, the gyratory or rotatory velocity ot the wind in the several planes of the gale itself may have every conceivable force, according to its nearness to or distance from the vortex.
On the 18th of September the Idaho was reported ready for sea, and the 20th was appointed her day for sailing for Hong-Kong. On board ship there was a very general desire to remain only a week longer, for two reasons,— the first, to await the arrival of the mail from home, — that one only real pleasure in the lives of such exiles as ourselves ; the other, because by that time the bad weather, which usually attends the equinoctial period everywhere, and here invariably, would have been over, with the additionally greater prospect of a favorable monsoon to urge us along, which even a week or fortnight at this particular season would have given. Friends afloat and on shore, sailors, naval officers, merchants, and insurance agents, advised and exclaimed against our indiscretion, and pointed out that a large number of merchant vessels, laden and ready for sea, were then detained in port only by the refusal of policies of insurance. But the decision did not rest with ourselves, and when we actually uttered our good-bys, they were responded to with many a “ God bless you,” and many a prayer that we might escape the dangers there were so many chances of encountering. We sailed on the forenoon of the 20th, our “ homeward-bound ” pendant gayly streaming hundreds of feet beyond us towards our goal. The premonitions of impending bad weather dated from one o’clock that very morning, the barometer having fallen from 30.05 to 29.96 at eight, soon after which we commenced getting under way. The clay was disagreeable, gloomy, and threatening. Some of the old residents and experts in signs of the weather had, even on the previous day, predicted a typhoon, and the event established the correctness of their prescience. We were taken in tow by the Ashuelot, but the ship, as though ashamed of receiving such assistance, with a fresh, fair breeze blowing directly out of the harbor, quickly ran away with the little doublcender and compelled her to cast off her lines. The wind slightly freshened during the day, but held its direction from the northward and eastward. Towards afternoon the sky cleared up and the spirits of those on board rose under the influence of the quick run we were making towards home; but the barometer slowly yet steadily fell. All night long the ship sped merrily along with studding-sails set, never making less than ten knots, and almost inducing us to believe that our forebodings had been groundless. At daylight of the 21st a drizzling rain set in, and by eight o’clock in the morning the sea had become moderately rough, and the ship began to ride uneasily, though the force of the wind, now from the southward and eastward, had increased but little, and the fall of the barometer was so gradual that at noon the mercury still stood at 29.70. There was, however, no longer any doubt that a gale was approaching, and preparations were made to meet it. At one o’clock the topsails were closereefed, and the wind freshened so rapidly that the mainsail and mizzen topsail were soon after furled. Two hours later the foresail began to split and was taken in, and by four o’clock the ship was hove to on the port tack, under fore storm-sail and trysail and close-reefed maintopsail, heading southwest by south, a furious gale blowing from southeast, the barometer at 29.50, a fine, drizzling rain falling, and the sea rough and irregular. The ship rode as lightly as though she had been in port.
From this time the mercury fell rapidly, and the wind as rapidly increased in violence, steadily maintaining its direction from southeast, and blowing in terrific gusts, which abated as though only to gather renewed force. The gale had become a hurricane. It was evident that it was quickly nearing us. A few minutes after five o'clock the main-yard, a piece of wood ninety-eight feet long and seven in circumference, was broken into three pieces with a thundering crash ; and almost simultaneously with this disaster the maintopsail split with a succession of loud cracks like rapid volleys of musketry, and disappeared to leeward. The maintrysail was soon close-reefed and set, only to be blown into ribbons; and not long after the fore-trysail vanished in a twinkling, followed by the fringes of the storm-staysail. The hurricane had become a tornado ; we were wrestling with the great scourge of the sea, the dreaded typhoon. It is a hopeless task to attempt to give an idea of one of these fearful convulsions of nature, even to nautical men, who have not had the misfortune to experience one. The howling of the wind, which continually varies in tone and force, is like no other noise ever heard on earth, but is such as all the fiends in pandemonium, yelling in discord, might be supposed to make. It pained and deafened the ears and sent strange thrills of horror throughout the frame. The ship lay quietly over on her side, held there by the madly rushing wind, which, at the same time, flattened down the sea, cutting off the tops of the waves and breaking them into fine white spray, which covered the ocean like a thick cloud as high as the topmast-heads. At times the mainmast was invisible from the quarter-deck. It was impossible to elevate the head above the rail or even to look to windward. The eyelids were driven together and the face stung by the fleetly driven salt spray. Men breathed it and became sickened. They crouched about the decks, clinging with all their strength to whatever seemed most secure. One or two had crawled upon the poop, but had to lie down at full length. Orders could not be heard by the man at your elbow ; had they been, they could not have been executed. The ship lay almost on her beam-ends, with her helm up, stripped of even the sails, which had been furled upon the yards. Mortal hands could do nothing for her.
By half past six o’clock the fury of the typhoon was indescribably awful. Each gust seemed unsurpassable in intensity, but was succeeded, after a pause that was not a lull, by one of still more terrific violence. The barometer indicated 27.82. Masts and yards came crashing down one after another, though the deafening howling of the wind almost drowned the noise of their fall. The ship began to labor heavily, shipping great seas at every lurch, which swept everything movable off the decks, carrying away boats and bulkheads, cabin, armory, and pantry, skylights and hammock rail, and washing men and officers aft in one confused and helpless crowd. At half past seven the barometer had fallen to 27.62, which of itself will satisfy nautical men — who watch with intense interest the hourly changes of tenths and hundredths of the scale of this little monitor — that the elements were performing one of their grandest tragedies. A tremendous sea now came over the weather bow and gangway, completing the destruction its predecessors had commenced, sweeping the decks clean, and tearing off the battens and tarpaulins which had been placed over the hatches to keep the water from below. The tempest was at its intensest fury. The darkness was impenetrable, save when lighted tip by occasional flashes of lurid sheet-lightning, adding fresh horror to the spectacle, at which pallid, awe-stricken men silently and despairingly gazed. The ship quivered in every part, her timbers working and cracking as though she were every moment about to break in two.
Suddenly the mercury rose to 27.90, and with one wild, unearthly, soulthrilling shriek the wind as suddenly dropped to a calm, and those who had been in these seas before knew that we were in the terrible vortex of the typhoon, the dreaded centre of the whirlwind. The ship had been fast filling with water, and fruitless efforts had been made to work the pumps ; but when the wind died away the men jumped joyfully to the brakes, exclaiming, “The gale is broken! we are all safe!” For the officers there was no such feeling of exultation. They knew that if they did not perish in the vortex, they had still to encounter the opposite semicircle of the typhoon, and that with a disabled ship. It was as though a regiment of freshly wounded soldiers had been ordered to meet a new enemy in battle, and that without delay, for the cessation of the wind was not to be a period of rest. Till then the sea had been beaten down by the wind, and only boarded the vessel when she became completely unmanageable ; but now the waters, relieved from all restraint, rose in their own might. Ghastly gleams of lightning revealed them piled up on every side in rough pyramidal masses, mountain high, — the revolving circle of wind which everywhere enclosed them causing them to boil and tumble as though they were being stirred in some mighty caldron. The ship, no longer blown over on her side, rolled and pitched, and was tossed about like a cork. The sea rose, toppled over, and fell with crushing force upon her decks. Once she shipped immense bodies of water over both bows, both quarters, and the starboard gangway, at the same moment. She sank under the enormous load, no one thought ever to rise again, and some making preparations for a few more minutes of life by seizing ladders and chests, by which they might be buoyed up when she should disappear from beneath them. She trembled violently, paused, then slowly, wearily rose, with four feet of water on her spar deck. Her seams opened fore and aft, the water pouring through in broad sheets, and giving to those who were shut down by the closed hatches upon the deck below a feeling of the most wretched hopelessness. For them the situation was even more appalling than for those on deck, since for them there was absolutely no prospect of escape. They saw the water streaming through the opening seams of the deck above, and watched it rising inch by inch in the pump-well, — once fifteen in less than an hour; they witnessed the contortions of the vessel, and looked at huge beams and sturdy knees breaking in half, stanchions fetching away, bolts drawing, butts opening, water-ways gaping, and masses of rotten wood dropping out from places where a smooth surface of paint and varnish had hidden the decay, and they knew that a single plank out of that ship’s side would convert her Into their coffin. In one place a man thrust his arm through a hole to the very outer planking. Both above and below men were pitched about the decks, and many of them injured. Some, with broken bones and dislocated limbs, crawled to the surgeons, begging assistance.
At twenty minutes before eight o’clock the vessel entered the vortex ; at twenty minutes past nine o’clock it had passed and the hurricane returned, blowing with renewed violence from the north, veering to the west.
The once noble ship, the pride not only of our own navy but of the whole craft of ship-builders over all the world, was now only an unmanageable wreck. There was little left for the wind to do but entangle the more the masses of broken spars, torn sails, and parted ropes which were held together by the wire rigging. One curious bundle, about four feet in thickness, of sail and cordage and lightning-rod, so knotted together that the efforts of a dozen men failed to undo it, has been preserved as a trophy of our battle with the winds, and a remarkable example of the mysterious effects they are able to accomplish, An hour or two later the tempest began sensibly to abate, and confidence increased in the ability of the ship to hold together. When daylight dawned the danger was over, and we first became aware of the astonishing amount of damage the ship had incurred in bearing us through the perils of that dreadful night. It was evident that she had sacrificed herself to save us.
All hands were soon hard at work clearing away the wreck, and rigging jury-masts and sails; and ere the sun again set the ship was slowly working back to Yokohama, whence she had sailed but a few hours before in all the trimness of a well-appointed man-of-war. There was something almost funereal about her return, for she was eight days crawling back over the distance she had so gayly sped in one, before she re-entered the harbor and reached the anchorage which she will probably never again leave. There she lies, condemned by the board of survey as unseaworthy, an interesting relic of our naval history, and a noble monument of that immortal genius which enabled man to cope successfully with the elements in one of their grandest contests.