ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 27, 1997 TAG: 9701270003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Monty S. Leitch
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
ON THIS date in 1871, the bark Templar and the steamer Kensington collided 60 miles northeast of Diamond Shoals, in that notoriously dangerous passage off North Carolina's Outer Banks. In his narrative history "Graveyard of the Atlantic," David Stick documented more than 600 ships lost off the Banks between 1526 and 1952 - ships not merely damaged in storms, but lost, sunk, disappeared from this Earth.
In this wreck, no lives were lost.
But prior to Stick's exhaustive research into contemporary newspaper accounts, "The World Almanac" listed the Templar/Kensington collision as "one of the worst maritime disasters in history," with 150 lives lost. Working from contemporary newspaper accounts, Stick concluded that "the plain facts are that no one was lost on either the Templar or the Kensington, though the steamer did go to the bottom."
But these two crews were lucky. Other wrecks off the Banks have been deadly: 23 lost in June 1868, with the bark Istria; 22 lost off Lookout Shoals in June 1869, with the steamer Gulf City; 14 lost off Frying Pan Shoals with the clipper Henrietta in November 1873; and 16 lost with the bark Nuova Ottavia in March 1876 - seven of these men from Currituck who'd tried to save the sailors.
Jan. 27, 1871, fell on a Friday. The Kensington, with a crew of 30 and 18 passengers, had left Savannah for Boston on the previous Wednesday, carrying cotton, rice and lumber. The Templar had just sailed that Friday from Hampton Roads for Rio de Janeiro, captained by a fellow named Wilson.
Around 7:30 p.m., Wilson spotted the Kensington "on his starboard beam" ... "and supposing that [she] would pass under our stern we held our course. ..." The steamer, however, also held her course: heading straight for the bark.
"Realizing that the steamer would, on that course, cut his own craft in two," writes Stick, "Captain Wilson ordered his wheel hard over. Slowly the bark turned aside as the Kensington passed under her bow, taking away the `bowsprit, jibboom, fore and main topgallants, foretopmast, and all attached.' A moment later the bark crashed into the side of the steamer.
"A sailor, who at the time of the accident was perched in the forward rigging of the bark, was thrown to the deck of the Kensington" where he "found all confusion." The Kensington, with a hole in her side, was rapidly filling with water and the crew had already begun lowering lifeboats. Because it was a calm night, everyone managed to clear the steamer before she sank, and they were all picked up late the next morning by the steamer Georgia and taken back to Savannah.
The Templar, however, drifted under improvised sails for two days before the steamer Yazoo spotted her and took her in tow, "reaching Norfolk the following day, and subsequently the vessel was repaired and made ready for sea duty again."
Beyond mentioning that the night was "comparatively calm," Stick does not speculate on the cause of this collision. Carelessness? Foolishness? Fog? Did someone doze off at the helm? And how did the fatality reports end up so skewed? Who knows?
From 1823, when the lighthouses were completed at Cape Hatteras, Ocracoke Inlet, Cape Lookout and Cape Fear, until 1945 when the Coast Guard's life-saving stations were decommissioned, North Carolina's surfmen regularly risked their lives to rescue sailors. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were saved. Had this 1871 collision turned out differently, the men of Chicamacomico Station, and others, would have responded. Whatever the weather.
Just two weeks ago, the Coast Guard pulled a man from Currituck Sound who'd survived 14 hours in 40-degree water. Four others, however, were lost: two children and two men.
Eternal Father, strong to save. ...
hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea."
And, for those who go in search of them.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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