Dan's Papers - October 19, 2007

Last Monday, a fishing dragger working three miles off of Montauk got its line tangled in what they first thought might be an old World War II unexploded torpedo. Such things have been brought to the surface in fishing dragger nets from time to time. But often they are just cut free, sent back down and never reported. The reason is that everyone remembers Captain Daniel Hand and his dragger the Shinnecock I.

In 1991, Captain Hand pulled up a torpedo and as it swayed inside the net high above the water alongside the boat, he called the Coast Guard to tell them he was bringing it into the Shinnecock Coast Guard Station.

The Coast Guard told him do NOT come into Shinnecock, do NOT come into Shinnecock. They evacuated about thirty square miles of Hampton Bays, lowered Navy Seals from helicopters, hauled up the Captain and his crew, and then set some charges and blew the whole thing to smithereens - ship, torpedo, nets and fish. It was later determined the torpedo had not been live.

With that, Captain Hand's career as a fishing boat captain came to an end, at least for the next ten years, until the Navy finally responded to a lawsuit he filed and got him a new boat. Captain Hand died a few years ago, filled with the memory of many catches of drags with his new boat, but also with the pain of a nearly ten year battle with the Navy.

In any case, Captain Aripotch of the Caitlin and Mairead (named for his two daughters), came to the conclusion that even if this were a torpedo, though it seemed too heavy to be one, he'd take the risk. After two hours of tugging and hauling, he was finally able to bring up what turned out to be the largest ship's anchor he had ever seen.

It is twelve feet long, very old, built in the Admiralty design with spades on the end of the two points, and when he got it into Montauk, it turned out to weigh over 9,000 pounds. Today it is lying between the Inlet Seafood Restaurant and the Gin Beach Market. It's quite a sight.

Many believe that this anchor came from a ship built fifty years before the Titanic as the greatest in the world. The Great Eastern, when it was completed in 1859, was considered a wonder of the age. At 900 feet in length, it was only a few feet shorter than the Titanic would be all those years later. As it turned out, however, the technology in 1859 was so new and untested that when it was applied to the Great Eastern, that ship bounced from one disaster and one indignity to another, including hitting an underwater rock six miles off Montauk that created an 83-foot gash in her side, which nearly sank her. She had eight anchors, and apparently when she hit, she lost one of them. Now it has been found.

The Great Eastern was the brainstorm of the owner of a British shipping company named Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The year was 1851 and the use of coal-fired steam engines had been invented only twenty years before. Imagine. Now one could power a ship by the simple expedient of shoveling coal into a furnace, having it boil water and then using the force of the steam created to turn a paddle wheel. By 1851, a few steamships were plying the waters of the Thames and the Mississippi with paddlewheels on the side driven by steam power to propel them forward.

When I tell you what Brunel had in mind in 1851, you will be quite amazed. He wanted to build a great luxury ship with an inner and outer hull made of iron - it would be the first double hulled ship in the world - four steam funnels, six masts and, inside, two giant steam engines below driving two-six-story tall paddlewheels on the sides and several screw propellers in the rear. But in addition, just to hedge his bets, he would include six masts and twenty sails so that in the event, heaven forbid, these two engines were not strong enough, you could sail your way out of trouble. There would also be six 100-foot-long steam driven "lighters" strapped to each of its sides, in the event both the engines and the sails were not enough. And finally, he would fill every storage compartment aboard this giant ship with coal. He intended for it to be able to travel around the world without refueling.

It took eight years to build. During the construction, a worker fell to his death, another died between the inner and outer hulls of the ship, two riveters died and a visitor was crushed to death while being shown around.

The announced launch of the ship eight years later drew a huge crowd, a brass band and many dignitaries to the shipyard on the Isle of Dogs. As the ship began to slowly inch its way down the ways, a worker was killed by the whiplash of a rope, another died while fleeing snapping chains and both spectators and workers ran for their lives as the great ship, crumpled up one of its 24-foot-tall propellers and then, having moved just sixteen inches, stopped. The launch was cancelled.

Three months later, the builders tried again. And this time they succeeded. The Great Eastern was the largest and heaviest object ever launched into the water and remained so for fifty years. It was only exceeded when they built the Titanic in 1911, and even then, by just a little.

In any case, a month after the Great Eastern was launched, with the ship still being fitted with baling pumps, instruments, furniture and rugs, smokestack funnels, chandeliers, stained glass and gaslights, Isambard Kingdom Brunel died. Shortly after that, his company went bankrupt. But a new company was created to finish the job.

Late in 1859, the Great Eastern left Liverpool on its maiden voyage bound for New York. On board it had a full staff of 400 and a similar number of passengers. Shortly after entering the English Channel, a huge steam explosion blew the number one funnel high into the air. It came down and crashed through the roof glass and into the main salon, shattering mirrors and chandeliers. Meanwhile, debris rained down on the passengers, who were on deck at the time. Six boiler men died in the explosion. The Great Eastern limped back to Weymouth, where the survivors disembarked.

After repairs were made, the Great Eastern tried again to get to New York. As a full load of 1,500 passengers were boarding, a great hurricane hit, shattered the glass roof of the grand salon for a second time, and in a freak accident, caused the death of Captain Harrison, the Coxswain and the young son of the ship's purser, who were thrown overboard. The passage was obviously cancelled.

The following year, only 35 paying passengers signed up for the voyage to New York aboard this star-crossed behemoth. The new captain took his time crossing the Atlantic, and after 12 days arrived in Manhattan to be greeted by great crowds. As she came up the Hudson, four people on shore died in the rush to see the great ship. Police finally took control of the situation and dispersed the crowd. During the four weeks that followed, more than 140,000 tickets were sold to sightseers visiting her in the port.

In 1861, the ship, having sailed back to England, made a second successful voyage, this time to Canada, bringing 2,000 soldiers to that country to join the Northerners fighting the American Civil War. In addition to the soldiers, 400 women, 120 horses, 400 crewmembers and 5 stowaways were on board. Two babies were born during the crossing. One elderly man died.

That same year another crossing brought more disaster. In the middle of the Atlantic, the ship, refitted again as a luxury liner, was hit by another hurricane. The two paddlewheels were torn off and the paddle-engine badly damaged. Huge tanks of fish on the deck shattered and the contents fell all the way down to the engine room, where the smell was sent back up through the ventilation system and dispersed through the entire ship. The captain now ordered the engines to be turned off and the sails raised. But they were simply ripped right off their masts.

On the second day of the storm the rudder broke and the lifeboats fell onto the deck and shattered. The ship listed twenty degrees. This list caused sliding furniture and the grand pianos to come crashing across the dance hall, where "stewards had to capture them and bind them down like so many wild beasts," as related by one witness. Eventually, after eight days, the crippled ship returned to England, docking at Cork.

Amazingly, there was no loss of life during the storm, but at Cork, a giant block and tackle struck and killed the quartermaster - the only casualty of this third failed attempt.

Its next attempted crossing was the one that struck the rock off Montauk. By this time, the Great Eastern had bankrupted three companies trying to make a go of this venture. Now a fourth decided to abandon the idea of it being a luxury passenger ship. It would be refitted as a cargo ship.

On a calm day under bright sunshine on August 27, 1862, after five days of an uneventful crossing, the lookouts aboard the Great Eastern spotted the Montauk Lighthouse. No rocks were shown on any charts near the shore there, and as the Great Eastern came within three miles of the lighthouse for a better look, the ship shuddered and slowed, but did not stop. Then it began to list. As the Captain realized they must have hit something, he hurried into Manhattan and with the ship now listing ten degrees, evacuated the passengers. The ship's pumps were now working overtime. Finally, it seemed to be holding its own.

There was no shipyard or dry dock in the City of New York big enough to haul the Great Eastern in 1862. And so they devised an ingenious way to fix the 83-foot-long underwater gash. Building a 100-foot-long wooden cuplike structure, they slid it down into the water until it was over the gash, and then attached it to the side of the hull, pulling it into a watertight seal using fire hose as a washer. Pumping the inside dry - they found that the gash was only in the outer hull and had not pierced the inner hull - it took them 24 days to repair, by which time the British crew had dispersed. A new crew, made up of ne'er-do-wells, drunks and loungers, was now hired to make the voyage back home. And so the fourth company went bankrupt trying to make something out of the Great Eastern.

At this point, the Great Eastern was offered up as the main prize in an international raffle. Nobody wanted it. And so the ship was now auctioned off to two men named Daniel Gooch and Cyrus Field for 25,000 pounds. They stripped it and offered it up as a charter boat for the laying of the Transatlantic Cable. There were numerous companies trying and failing to lay such an underwater cable but none had succeeded because none were big enough to carry all the cable needed in one trip. The Great Eastern was. After one failed try, the crew of the Great Eastern, with the ship loaded from stem to stern with rolls of cable, succeeded in making the first cable connection ever between Liverpool and the town of Hearts Content, Newfoundland. Europe and America now had a direct electronic communication. The year was 1864.

The Great Eastern went on to have a ten-year career in laying cable, including the first cable laid across the Indian Ocean. And then this ill-fated ship with this one major accomplishment was retired, as new, faster cable laying craft were put into service.

For a time, it appeared that the ship would be sold to his Transcendental Highness, the Sultan Abdul-Aziz of Turkey, who wanted to use it for his harem. But instead, it was sold to the Emperor Napoleon III, who refitted it again as a luxury yacht so he could use it as a one-time transport to bring American visitors to his Exposition Universalle de Paris in 1871. One of the passengers on that voyage was Jules Verne, who broke off writing what was to become his greatest novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to write the shorter and only moderately successful Floating City, which described life on board the Great Eastern.

In 1885, her better days behind her, the Great Eastern was taken to rest at a ship's graveyard at New Ferry, where visitors still flocked to see her. On board, after paying their shilling, visitors could enjoy all sorts of entertainments including Bob the Missing Link, The African Mystery, Smith and Orton, the Breakneck Knockabout, Negro Comedians and Boot Dancers and Miss Nelly Fletcher the Champion Skipping Rope Dancer. And in Second Class, you could buy drinks with names such as Flash of Lightning and Eye Opener.

The Great Eastern was taken apart for scrap in 1889, at which time it was reported that between the two hulls were the skeletons of two workmen, apparently in there since the construction of the inner and outer hulls thirty years before.

As for the underwater rock off Montauk, it is on all nautical charts today, so marked as "The Great Eastern Rock."