After the Storm: PHM Symposium Explores Portland's Maritime Heritage Through the Loss of the Steamer Portland in 1898

At 9 PM on Saturday, Nov. 25, 1898 the Portland, to Boston steamer, "Portland" cast off from India Wharf in Boston and headed out to sea on routine trip to Portland, Maine. Sometime on Sunday morning she disappeared; none of her 192 crew and passengers survived. During her battle with overpowering waves, she was sighted by passing skippers from as far north as Gloucester to Cape Cod 60 miles to the south. Her resting place on Stellwagen Bank remained a mystery until discovered on August 2002 by NOAA researchers.

One hundred five years later, almost to the day, at symposium sponsored by Portland Harbor Museum and Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary, local authors, maritime scholars, archaeologists, NOAA forecasters and Stellwagan Bank Marine Sanctuary underwater search experts focused on identifying events that led to the sinking of the crack steamer linking the two ports.

"The sinking of the Portland had an extraordinary effect on people," said John Rousmaniere, author of After the Storm. "Myths about the disaster were handed down in families; a remarkable community was formed around this vessel. "The key question is..," said Rousmaniere, "did Captain Hollis Blanchard and his cohorts know what the weather would be? I think they didn't."

Let's try to get a balanced view of the events that led to the Portland's fateful departure, Rousmaniere suggested. "With his years of assignments to responsible positions on the bridge we can assume that Captain Blanchard was competent. In fact he took it upon himself to make a serious study of weather forecasting."

In the minutes before sailing Blanchard hurried across Atlantic Avenue to the Weather Bureau office for a late update. A low moving eastward across the country was predicted, there were reports of freshening winds and increasing waves offshore. Offshore the sea was getting rough, but probably still manageable. Missed by the primitive forecasting methods of the day was a rapidly northward moving low off the southern coast.

Leaving the Weather Bureau office, Blanchard had no way of knowing that in a few hours the two systems would intersect and touch off an anti-cyclonic weather bomb. To be sure, a few post-distaster observations familiar to seamen signaled ominous warnings. "There was an eerie orange yellow glow in the sky," reported one observer. The wind was still; the sea was "greasy" smooth. From India Wharf in downtown Boston, however, most of this was not be visible to Blanchard.

In the disasters aftermath, accusations were thrown at Blanchard. He was an irresponsible daredevil with no fear of the weather. He was in a hurry to get back to Portland for his daughter's wedding. He wanted to upstage the captain of the southbound Steamer Bay State in case he elected to wait out the storm in Portland. Whatever the veracity of these accusations, the fact is that Blanchard did not have the final say in when his ship would depart.

In his Symposium keynote address, Who Lynched Captain Blanchard, Rousmaniere revealed that, according to company rules, the Boston manager called the shots until Blanchard cast off from the wharf. He was on the phone to his boss in the Portland home office who gave mixed signals on the advisability of sailing. Unfortunately for 192 unaware passengers and crew, the company was in the midst of a major personnel shakeup. Everyone involved in the fateful decision making was a new appointee to his present position. All declined to exercise authority to order Blanchard to remain in Boston until the storm blew past.

New evidence on fixing responsibility for the decision to sail surfaced during Rousmaniere's presentation when a member of the audience rose to say that he was friend of the Blanchard family and remembered Mrs.Blanchard's stating that her husband did not want to sail, but was pressured by company officials.

Panelists filled in the human dimension of New England's greatest maritime disaster. "With nineteen crew members and two passengers aboard, Portland's black community was devastated by the disaster," said Portland author, Bob Greene. Unlike the younger white members of the steamer's crew who signed on for a few trips and then move on to other things, said Greene, the black sailors were older heads of Portland families whodepended on their seagoing jobs for a permanent livelihood. Greene's great grandfather, Francis Evans Houston was among the victims. Panelist, Mason Philip Smith, author of Four Short Blasts, an account of the disaster, lost four members of his family. Smith recalled that they were aboard on the final leg of a vacation trip to Denmark.

Panelist Arthur Milmore, a Massachusetts maritime researcher, suggested that the failure of the deck seal around the shaft connecting the walking beam to the paddle wheels may have contributed to the foundering. "When it was found on the beach the hard wood seal was splintered which suggests that the beam was being wracked by the waves," said Milmore. Milmore's slides showed rare photos of the ship and early Portland Steamship Company schedules and advertising.

"The album, compiled by a Portland Steamship Company official, was being discarded by an 90 year old lady who was moving from her Weymouth, Mass home to assisted living," Milmore said. "A friend pulled it out of a trash barrel and presented it to me."

New Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary underwater images of the sunken vessel made another poignant comment on the disaster's human dimension. Somehow a chamber pot finds its way to the top deck near the anchor windlass. The ship's fancy fluted steam relief pipe seen in old photos mounted behind the steamers stack rests nearby. A peek into the galley reveals fine china cups and saucers---some on a work counter, a few on the deck. A school of pollock swims nonchalantly by them, a bitter counterpoint to that storm tossed night of terror over a century ago. .

When the Portland sailed from her safe berth at Boston's India Wharf at 9:00 on November 25 1898, questions of who made the fateful decision became irrelevant. For the next 12 hours the complex interaction of high and low barometric pressures set up the weather bomb that sealed the fate of her everyone of her passengers and crew. NOAA Weather Service forecaster, Joe Sienkiewicz compared the Portland storm to several recent storms that have been studied using the latest technology. His slides contrasted today's data rich computer modeling of developing storms with the primitive weather maps of 1890s forecasters. Their technology wasn't up to detecting the small low off the east coast and predicting its collision with the westward moving low. Captain Blanchard's weather map showed only half of the developing weather pattern.

So, who lynched Captain Blanchard? "All of us." says John Rousmaniere. "There is a human need to make sense out of the chaotic conditions of a major storm with huge loss of life. Captain Blanchard's reputation as a seaman was the disaster's final victim."

Reported by Jack Reynolds

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