Charles Van Rensselaer and the Wreck of the S.S. Central America
“Mr. Van Rensselaer (Charles W.) was . . . a member of a family
whose name is identified with
every period of the history of our State
(New York).” 1 He was a scion of the Van
Rensselaer patroons – lords of the manor of
Rensselaerwyck, the 700,000 acre land
holding in the Hudson River Valley. Hendrick
Van Rensselaer, the builder of the family mansion, Crailo, had, among his
numerous descendents, a great-great-grandson named Charles Watkins
Van Rensselaer. Charles W.
Van Rensselaer was born on January 29,
1823 to Judge John Sanders Van Rensselaer. Charles attended the Albany Academy and, though the son
of a judge, the legal profession was not where he envisioned his future. “With a natural taste for the sea, he early
adopted it as a profession.” 2 According
to his brother Maunsell, “My brother Charles
had shown a predilection for a seafaring life and my father had secured a position for him on a Boston
ship sailing to China.” 2
In
a letter to Maunsell from Albany, dated November 7, 1844, his mother writes, “.
. . your
Father took Charles to Boston . . . The vessel, which is called the Yumchi, was
to sail to-day or to-
morrow.
Charles has behaved with manliness and noble and generous spirit which
does him great
credit, and has raised him in the esteem
of every one. It was necessary to raise
$300. to pay Capt.
Steele to instruct him in Navigation,
and give him a footing equal to Captain’s clerk on board the ship. . .Your grandmother advanced the money and
he signed a paper that she was to repay herself out of his income.
After he left the house, she thought she would make him a present of it.
.”2 But after receiving a letter from his grandmother informing
him that the money was a gift to him and not a loan, Charles wrote his grandmother back. He thanked her for her generosity but asked
that the money be given to his younger siblings.
Charles’
mother wrote to his brother Maunsell that, “Poor Charles sailed last
Saturday. He
wrote a most elegant feeling farewell
letter to us all, which none of us could read aloud. (Apparently,
they were all too overcome with emotion)
He said, although he left home with saddened feelings, he
would not return, as here he was
nothing, and he felt that a bright
career was opening before him,
where he could be useful to himself and
others . . .”. 2
Charles
wrote his family that – here (at home) he was nothing. What does he mean? Is it a
twenty-one year old’s post-adolescence
angst? Does he feel that he cannot
attain all that is expected of a scion of the Van Rensselaer family?
Does he feel he has failed himself and his family? No matter what the reasons, it is a most
heartrending statement – here I am
nothing.
By
1857, Charles Van Rensselaer had been earning his living on the sea for over a dozen
years. In September of 1857, he was the First
Mate, second in command, and paymaster on the steamship S.S. Central America. “The US Mail Steamship Company owned the S.S
Central America, which was a three masted side-wheeled steamship
that carried passengers, mail and gold shipments from Panama to New York. The S.S. Central America
had successfully completed 43 voyages along the third leg of the sea route from San Francisco to New York
during the California Gold Rush of the 19th Century.” 3
“Before
construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and the Panama Canal, one of the
few options for the efficient transportation
of goods from the west to the east coast of the United States involved the use of two sea routes: the Pacific route (usually shipping out of
San Francisco) and the Atlantic route (usually shipping out of
New York). Both of these routes used to terminate in Panama, where ground transportation across the
narrow Isthmus of Panama made commerce between the two routes simple and efficient.” 4
On
Sept. 3, 1857, the Central America left Panama, headed for New York City,
carrying
approximately 476 passengers and 102 crew. The cargo
contained a large amount of gold – estimated
at 20 tons. The gold came in various
forms – gold dust, gold coins, gold ingots.
Earlier in 1857, the “Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Co. - a major banking institution in New York - collapsed, with rumours of embezzlement rife. The ensuing panic led
to many customers trying to withdraw their money from other banks. For that reason, a particularly large cargo
of gold was dispatched from the San Francisco Mint to shore up the eastern banks.”5 It has been estimated that the gold on board
the Central America was worth approximately $2 million in
1857 or $54 million today – hence, the Central America is known as “The Ship of Gold”.
As
the Central America made its way from Panama to New York City, it encountered a
hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas. By the
second day of the hurricane, Sept. 10 1857, the Central America had to deal with increasingly serious
problems – first among those problems was that the boiler, which was necessary to turn the side-wheel,
started going out as ocean water entered it. Capt. William Lewis Herndon organized the crew and male passengers
into bailing brigades. It was a losing
battle – as fast as they bailed, more water entered the
ship. The winds grew fiercer – the waves grew higher. After the boiler went out for good, the Captain
tried to set the sails into the wind to prevent the ship from capsizing but the hurricane winds cut the
sails to shreds. All the while, the men
bailed to the point of utter exhaustion. The Captain had the
flag turned upside and had rocket flares shot off to signal distress to passing ships. After a long
and gallant fight, the inevitable could not be denied – they would have to pray for passing ships to come
and rescue them.
And
where, in all this chaos ,was Charles W. Van Rensselaer, First Officer of the
ship? By all reports,
he was helping the women and children into lifeboats. “To the courage of Charles W. Van Rensselaer, there are fifty-seven living
witnesses – tender women and their little children. He supervised their embarkation and then took
his station by the side of his commander, and awaited in
dignity the sinking of his ship.” 6
An
article in the New York Times, dated Oct. 2, 1857, states “that everything was
done by Mr.Van Rensselaer that seamanship could
devise. He aided in helping the women and children into the boats,
and then when the fatal hour came he and Capt. Herndon went to their
state-rooms, put on
their uniforms, and took their places
side by side on the paddles box, the officers’ post. Mr. Van
Rensselaer then lighted a cigar and was
calmly smoking it when the steamer reeled down beneath
them into the depths below . . . they
died as they should, nobly.”
“Nobly”
– the mot juste. What an awe-inspiring
scene – attired in their dress uniforms, calmly smoking cigars, as their ship dives into
the cold, black, storm-tossed sea – the tragic romance of it all. But could there by another story of
Charles Van Rensselaer’s demise?
According
to Ansel Ives Easton, a wealthy Californian, who was on his honeymoon aboard
the Central America, the death of First Officer Van Rensselaer was a bit
different. “Easton, carried down with his life-preserver, soon arose to
the surface, where he was seized by Van Rensselaer. The first mate had no life preserver, and ‘it was soon apparent that one would not
sustain both’. Then came a death grapple between the two. The mate
tried to retain his grasp upon Easton’s coat, while the latter knew his life depended upon
getting free. They struggled briefly,
Easton finding himself unable to shake off the hold of the first
mate. By a sudden movement, he ‘slipped
his arms from the sleeves and left the garment in his hands. In an instant, the first officer sank
to rise no more’.” 7
Perhaps
this version of Van Rensselaer’s death sounds more realistic –but much more sad
and terrifying. Why didn’t Van Rensselaer have a
life-preserver? Had he given his to
someone else? Van Rensselaer didn’t die resigned to his
fate – he was a young man who fought with all his strength to stay alive.
“At
the end of this fierce and ultimately unsuccessful battle, the Central America
sank by the stern in about 8,000 feet of water,
taking 425 people to the bottom with her. It was one of the worst maritime disasters of the 19th
century.” 8
Charles
W. Van Rensselaer was described by John Tice, 1st assistant engineer
on the Central America as, “ . . . one of the bravest and most generous
fellows that ever lived.”9 William L.
Maury, a former officer on the Central
America, stated that Van Rensselaer was
“. . . my ever faithful shipmate . . . not a dismayed countenance
nor a faint heart.” 10
So
the young man from Albany, who went to sea because he felt he was “nothing”,
left a legacy of dedication to duty, selflessness and
courage.
There
is a postscript to this story. In the
early 1980’s, a marine engineer from Ohio, Tommy Thompson, began his search for the S.S.
Central America. After painstaking research, with the help of geologist Bob Evans, “They took (their information) to Dr. Lawrence D. Stone,
one of the world’s leading experts on search theory, a
method using probability and statistical analysis to find objects, particularly in the ocean. . .
Utimately, he (Dr. Stone) came up with a 1400-square-mile search area” 11
In
order to finance the expedition to find the S.S. Central America, Thompson
founded a group of investors, The Columbus-America
Discovery Group, which invested millions of dollars to find “ the Ship of Gold.”
A
great deal of careful planning was done
in order to make this expedition successful.
Thompson would use “Nemo, an undersea
robot specially designed for historic shipwreck excavation
using archeological techniques” 11
Thompson and his crew began bringing millions
of dollars worth of gold to the surface.
The salvaging of the treasure continued
between 1988 and 1991, when Thompson’s legal problems
began to increase.
In
2005, the expedition’s investors began legal action against Thompson, claiming
that they had not seen any return on their
investment. At the same time, Thompson
was selling the gold coins and bars of gold that had been recovered
from the ship. “ . . . by 2000 he had sold over 500 gold bars and thousands of coins . . . for $50
million.” 13
By
2006, Thompson’s crew was suing him because they had not received their share
of the
bounty.
At that point, Thompson went into seclusion. “ He grew increasingly
reclusive, and his behavior turned bizarre”. 14 He ignored court summons that were issued to
him. In 2012, Thompson seemingly disappeared. The hunter and finder of a massive treasure
was a fugitive from a federal arrest warrant.
On
January 27, 2015, Tommy Thompson was arrested at the Hilton Boca Raton, in Boca
Raton, Florida, along with his girlfriend and
fellow fugitive, Alison Antekeier. The
fugitives had been hiding in plain view. According to Peter Tobin, US Marshal, “
Thompson was one of the most intelligent fugitives ever sought by the US Marshals.” 15 Thompson and Antekeier are presently awaiting
trial.
And
so, the saga of the S.S. Central America continues. The lust for gold and
greed, as displayed in the 19th Century, has its
analog in the 20th and 21st Centuries. But the story of the S.S. Central America has other components that display the
more redeeming and noble aspects of human nature. For every Tommy Thompson, there is a Charles W.
Van Rensselaer.
notes
1.
Annals of
the Van Rensselaers in the United States by the Rev. Maunsell Van
Rensselaer,DD,LLD
Charles Van Benthuysen and Sons,
Albany, NY p. 229
2.
Ibid., pp
142-143
3.
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, Oct. 31, 1857
5.
The Telegraph,
January 29, 2015
6.
Albany Evening Journal, September 22, 1857
7.
San Francisco Bulletin, October 23, 1857
8.
w.w.w.Seamunger.com, posted
September 12, 2013
9.
The Final Voyage of the Central America, 1857,
by Normand E. Klare, Clark Co. Spokane,WA 1992
p.166
10.
New York Times,
November 9, 1857
12.
Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1990
14.
USA Today,
September 13, 2014
Coin World,
January 28, 2015
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