Everythin’ has been always big about Rockaway, even before the big hotel. It used to be a big summer resort, years and years ago, for old New Yorkers, and I was reminded the other day, while talking of recent disasters at sea, that some years ago there was a big shipwreck right off the coast of Rockaway, which was, up to the time it happened, the biggest shipwreck that had ever taken place off the coast of the United States.
In two respects the shipwreck of which I am speakin’ directly concerned New York. From all accounts the pilots in New York Bay were partly to blame for the disaster, or at least they might have prevented it, and the disaster itself made a lot of legislation up at Albany about the New York pilots, and was the cause of the present bill bein’ passed about ‘em.
A bark called the Mexico was seen one Saturday (New Year’s eve) near the Highlands of Neversink, New Jersey. There the bark hove to for the night. The next day, Sunday, New Year’s day, early in the mornin’, the bark bore up to Sandy Hook. It had a signal flyin’ for a pilot, and it also posted a signal of distress, the distress bein’ caused by the bark having run out of provisions, which, I take it, was distress enough. It turned out afterward that the ship’s passengers, one hundred and thirty-seven in all, men, women and children, besides the crew of twelve men, had been put on an allowance of one biscuit a day for nearly two weeks back.
While the signals for a pilot and of distress were flyin’ at the mastheads, a tugboat, towin’ a vessel in, passed by; but neither tug nor vessel paid any attention to the signals. Then the snow began to fall and the passengers on the bark, in addition to the pangs of hunger, felt the pangs of cold, and above all, experienced a horror worse than all–the horror of feeling themselves deserted by the outside world.
All New Year’s day, while New York was feastin’ and payin’ calls. the human beings on board the Mexico were freezin’ and fastin’ and callin’ in vain for succor–a New Year’s day at sea which was the very opposite, in every respect, of a New Year’s day on land.
All Sunday night it snowed fast and froze faster, but they Mexico kept afloat, and on Monday there it was to be seen, near Sandy Hook again, with its pilot and distress signals still flyin’ from the mastheads.
But no help or pilot answered the signals, the captain of the Mexico, Captain Winslow, ordered several guns to be fired to attract attention. But the guns seemed as useless as the signals. All the world seemed suddenly to have become deaf and blind, to the woes of those on board the ill-starred Mexico at least.
Monday night came and the Mexico tried to keep off the coast as far as possible, so as to not to ground, yet to keep as close to shore as possible, so as not to get to sea again, as the provisions were now entirely exhausted. This tryin’ to do two directly opposite things at once proved a failure, as such tryin’ always will, and at five o’clock early Tuesday mornin’, the Mexico struck the Hempstead beach, near Rockaway, on the south shore of Long Island.
The wind was blowin’ fiercely along shore. There was a high sea, a tremendous surf, and the thermometer stood at only four degrees from zero. The cold was so intense that whereever the spray of the sea touched, and it touched everywhere, it became ice.
Wind, hunger, ice and water–these were the four relentless enemies which the weak, starved, freezin’ passengers and crew of the Mexico had now to fight, and fight alone.
Alone for a while, but pretty soon the dwellers in and around Hempstead and Rockaway came to the beach–most from curiosity–but a few to see if there wasn’t some way to save some of the poor wretches who were perishin’ before their eyes.
Among those who wanted to try to save somebody was a Long Island man, a resident of Rockaway, called Raynor Smith. Then a Mr. Seaman, the appropriately named wreck master of the beach, he, too, wanted to do somethin’ better than look idly on.
So Seamen, Raynor Smith and six volunteers, noble-hearted fellows, with strong arms as well as hearts, put off in a boat through the ragin’ sea, and at the peril of their own lives saved the lives of eight others.
These eight dropped down one by one from the ropes of the wreck into the surfboat, which was, after a world of difficulty, fastened for a while to the bowsprit.. Among the eight persons thus saved was Captain Winslow, of the Mexico, and young Broom, the son or brother of the owner of the vessel.
But a few men, however brave and noble, and one boat, however well managed, could do but little toward saving nearly a hundred and fifty people in such a sea. For twelve hours or so the bark Mexico held together, and the majority of its passengers, more dead than alive, held together to it. Then one by one, or sometimes by threes and fours, the poor starved, frozen, tattered, helpless creatures fell off from the sea-beaten ship into the ocean, and were either swallowed up by the water or were cast on the shore dead.
Durin’ the time that the Mexico was beached, and while the people on her weren’t yet all quite dead, the longboat belonging to the vessel was launched, makin’ fast a hawser to it. Some of the men on board the Mexico began to take heart at this, hope revived once more. But, alas! alas! by the pitchin’ and rollin’ of the big ship from the blows given it by the surf, and from the hawser being taut, it broke, and although the longboat, strange to say, gained the beach in perfect safety, it gained the beach empty, not a soul in it; which really looked as a fate was doin’ all it could to mock and make mad they poor devils who had to watch all this and then die.
For nearly a day and a night the sound of shrieks were heard proceedin’ from the doomed vessel, but about the midnight of Wednesday all was still; still as death, for all were dead. After one o’clock on Tuesday night, or rather Wednesday mornin’, not a sound was heard but the roarin’ of the sea, or the crackin’ of the log-fire which had been lighted on the beach to warm the bodies that might be cast alive on the shore, but, alas, which only reached it dead.
Meanwhile the waves were throwin’ on shore every now and then their victims. And as fast as the frozen corpses were thrown on shore people stood ready to free ‘em from ice and seaweed, and to carry them reverently to where the British consul, who had come down to the beach, and the sheriff and coroner of the county were holdin’ an unnecessary inquest, and were makin’ the necessary arrangements for the burials.
Lott’s tavern was chosen as the place for deposit for the bodies, and the big barn attached to this tavern was filled with corpses stretched out side by side to the number of fifty-two.
The dead bodies were scattered all over the floor–all frozen solid as marble statues–all in the dresses in which they died–almost all of ‘em with an arm crooked or bent by clingin’ to the riggin’.
On the arms of many were plainly to be seen the impression made by the ropes to which they had vainly clung in their last moments–the marks of the twist of the ropes were sunk deeply in their flesh. In some cases the corpses were still attached to the ropes which had failed to save ‘em.
Among the corpses on the floor of the barn were five girls, from four years of age to say fifteen. They were five sisters, the daughters of a Mr. Pepper, who, with his wife, lay frozen in another part of the barn.
The five girls looked just like five angels–five frozen angels. They were lovely still, and as still as they were lovely. Their cheeks and lips looked lifeless even yet, and their calm blue eyes were open.
The five sweet sisters lay together, and near ‘em was stretched the body of a negro sailor, with his head thrown back, his lips parted and his hands crossed as if he had frozen to death in sayin’ his prayers.
A little beyond there were two corpses, lyin’ tightly frozen in each other’s embrace. They had died together, and even in death had resisted the efforts of those who had endeavored to separate ‘em. They were buried in one box, which served as a common coffin. There was a case of love which it was no mere figure of speech to say the grave itself could not divide.
Most of the men corpses had their lips compressed tightly together, and their faces looked agonized, as though they had died hard. But the woman corpses had often a smile on their set faces, as if they had become resigned to death before it came.
One dear, dead, frozen baby was lyin’ on the barn floor, with its hand still clutchin’ a doll, while one little girl was stretched out frozen, with her toes extended. She had died standing on tip-toe, freezin’ as she died.
The next day preparations were made for the funerals of these victims of disaster.
Jacob Coles, Stephen Shedeker, Peter T. Hewlett, the De Mott brothers, and other well-known residents of Rockaway and Hempstead including, John Jay Lott, the owner of the barn, and Raynor Smith, the hero of the surfboat, took charge of the internments, which were conducted in a manner which reflects lastin’ honor on all concerned therein, especially on the women.
The ladies of Hempstead and Rockaway all went in a mass to Lott’s tavern and turned it into an undertakin’ establishment, workin’ day and night, makin’ with their own hands shrouds for the dead.
The clergymen of different denominations took part in the funeral ceremonies, which were very solemn. Out of fifty-two bodies recovered from the waves, seven were claimed and buried by their friends. The remaining forty-three were interred near the Methodist Church, three colored men bein’ buried at the same time and place with the forty white. Death, like love, accordin’ to the poet, levels all distinctions. Thousands of people attended this colossal funeral, which was nearly two miles long. There were over three hundred carriages in the line.
Three hundred and fifty dollars belongin’ to the unfortunate passengers of the Mexico, which were never claimed, were afterwards appropriated by the New York legislature for the erection of a monument over their remains, while the eight men who ventured out in surfboats each received a gratuity of fifty dollars, which they richly deserved.
The disaster itself could have been prevented had there been a pilot boat on hand when the Mexico signaled for one, and the disaster made such a stir as I have mentioned above, that the New York Legislature took action in the matter, and before it got through remodeled the whole pilot system in New York harbor, and appointed harbor commissioners to oversee the pilots. So good came out of evil at last.
[Editor’s notes: This editor knows the story of the Mexico well, having written about it in my 2016 book, The Heroic Age of Diving. A few years after the wreck, America’s first diving apparatus company, led by William H. Taylor and George W. Taylor, attempted to salvage cargo from the Mexico and another nearby wreck, the Bristol.]
