Whiting’s Tie to the Greatest Disaster on the Great Lakes
John Hmurovic
November 2019
For Christopher Schrage, it was a grim task. Five bodies had washed onto the beaches of Whiting and Robertsdale. He knew where they came from. Lake Michigan’s currents carried them south from the shores of Winnetka, north of Chicago. They had been passengers on the Lady Elgin and were victims of what still is, about 160 years later, the deadliest shipwreck on the open waters of the Great Lakes. It was his job to load the bodies onto his wagon.
Word of the bodies found on the shore of Whiting-Robertsdale appeared in the Crown Point Register on November 1, 1860. Mention was also made in the Valparaiso Republic. There were no newspapers published in Whiting, Hammond, or other areas of northern Lake County, because none existed. This area was still largely uninhabited.
Schrage was from Germany. He was the first of the Schrage family to come to Northwest Indiana, and the father of Henry Schrage, who would go on to become Whiting’s first postmaster and the founder of what today is Centier Bank. We don’t know if Henry helped his father load the bodies onto the cart. Christopher was 36 years old, in 1860, and Henry was 16. He was certainly old enough to help.
We also don’t know why the job of recovering the bodies fell to Christopher. Maybe it was because he had a good team of oxen that could pull a wagon loaded with bodies across the sandy ground. He was probably aware that two men, both named Green, had been caught taking valuables from the pockets of the corpses on the Whiting-Robertsdale beach. We don’t know where the Greens were from, nor what happened to them. All we know is that one posted bail for $500, while the other went to jail. We also don’t know if they were from the area. If they were, Schrage probably knew them. In 1860, the settlement in Whiting and Robertsdale was so small, that everyone, literally, knew everyone who lived here.
In fact, in 1860, there wasn’t even a community called Whiting. The name “Whiting” doesn’t appear until around 1868. Standard Oil’s refinery was still 29 years in the future. Most people who lived here in 1860, were men hired to maintain the railroad tracks. Those tracks were laid just eight years earlier, creating the first connection between Chicago and the east coast. In 1860, this was mostly a wilderness of sand ridges and swales, which are pools of water that fill the space between the ridges.
The Lady Elgin was built in 1851, and was a popular choice for passengers who wanted to travel on the Great Lakes. She was named after the wife of Lord Elgin, who served as the Governor General of Canada. It operated in various parts of the Great Lakes, but Chicago was one of its primary ports. This picture shows it docked at its port of Chicago in the late 1850s.
As remote as Whiting-Robertsdale was, the people here most likely knew about the wreck of the Lady Elgin. The ship was well-known even before the accident. At 250 feet in length, weighing 1,000 tons, the steamship was large for its time. It was a palace steamer, which is what they called luxury ships which carried people and cargo across the Great Lakes. It was one of the grandest on the lakes. Its arrival in any port was often a big event. The “Lady Elgin…decked with waving flags, and beautifully adorned with evergreens,” arrived in St. Joseph, Michigan, just a few days before its fateful night, in an event “which will long be remembered by our citizens,” the Chicago Tribune reported.
The Great Lakes were busy in the years before 1860, as people moved from the east coast and settled in the Midwest. Taking a boat was one of the best means of transportation available in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. So, it was nothing unusual on September 7, 1860, when the Wisconsin Third Ward Union Guard boarded the Lady Elgin in Milwaukee for a trip to Chicago. The group was made up of Irish-Americans, and although they were a local militia, they were highly political. They were staunch Democrats, which meant they supported Stephen Douglas in his race against Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential campaign.
In 1858, Stephen Douglas ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois. His campaign debates with Abraham Lincoln, his opponent in that election, were national news at a time when the entire country was debating the issue of slavery. Douglas won that election, but two years later he was again on the ballot, facing Abraham Lincoln. This time, though, they were both running for president. Lincoln won that election. As for Douglas, he died just a year later at the age of 48. If you drive into Chicago, or take the South Shore, an obelisk to the left of the track and of Lake Shore Drive, on 35th Street, marks the burial site of Douglas.
The Guard had a running feud with Wisconsin Governor Alexander Randall, who was a Republican, an abolitionist, and a stanch supporter of Lincoln. With Civil War looking likely, Randall confiscated the Guard’s guns, fearing they would not be loyal to the North. The Union Guard organized their trip to Chicago as a fundraiser, and a way to defy Governor Randall. In Chicago, members would be able to attend a series of rallies in support of Douglas, and the money raised from the trip would help the Guard buy new weapons.
They were accompanied by a brass band on their trip. When they arrived, with the band playing up front, the Guard marched through Chicago’s streets. The election was less than two months away, and Illinois was at the heart of the campaign. Both Lincoln and Douglas, who lived in Chicago, were from Illinois.
After a full day in the city, the Guardsmen returned to the Lady Elgin for the journey home. Below deck were 200 head of cattle, being transported to Milwaukee. Above deck, about 400 passengers were on-board, mostly members of the Guard. The winds were moderately high when the ship left Chicago, and there was a fog. It was approaching midnight. Some passengers tried to sleep, but the band continued to play Irish airs as the ship left port.
Before long, the winds picked up significantly. Then, a drenching rain started to fall. The waves on Lake Michigan suddenly became treacherous. The Lady Elgin was large, and well lit. A near-by ship, the Augusta, was not. It was a schooner, a 130-foot boat on its way to Chicago, filled with lumber from Michigan, and without a light to make it easier for the crews of other ships to see.
Superstitious sailors of the 19th century believed it was foolish to start a journey on a Friday. They point to the collision of the Augusta into the Lady Elgin as proof of their point. This depiction of the collision appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, which used artists to provide its illustrations in the days before newspaper photography.
The waves made the Augusta hard to steer, the rain and the lack of a light made it hard to see. The lights on the Lady Elgin probably appeared blurred to the crew of the Augusta, making it difficult to tell exactly how close it was. When they did spot the Augusta, the crew on the Lady Elgin yelled into the stormy darkness, with lightning flashing, telling the crew of the schooner to turn hard to the port side. It did no good. The pointed bow of the Augusta rammed into the side of the Lady Elgin, directly hitting the paddlewheel on the side of the Lady Elgin and gashing a huge hole into the larger ship’s side.
The Augusta suffered some damage but was still able to continue its journey. “Shall I stand by?” shouted D.M. Malott, captain of the Augusta, using a megaphone. “Will you need help?” The captain of the Lady Elgin, Jack Wilson, replied, “No. Proceed on your course, if you can.” Fearful of damage to his own ship, Malott decided to move on.
Jack, or John Wilson, the captain of the Lady Elgin, was generally praised for his attempts to save the passengers of his ill-fated ship. One report said he was spotted, along with about fifty other survivors of the wreck, hanging to part of the ship’s deck in the early morning light of September 8, 1860. But just 300 feet from shore, the deck broke apart. While thirty in the group made it to shore, Wilson did not survive.
As the Augusta sailed off, the Lady Elgin began to quickly take on water. Captain Wilson had his men use mattresses to try to plug the gash caused by the collision. It didn’t work. Crew members got into the ship’s two lifeboats to try to repair the damage from the side of the ship. All that accomplished was to damage the lifeboats and make them unusable. He had his crew toss large objects into the water, including desks and a grand piano. When that didn’t help, Wilson ordered that the 200 cattle, being held below deck, be forced into the raging water to lighten the load. That partially righted the ship, but not enough. The captain realized he was running out of options. He then ordered crew members to rip apart the deck and quickly build a raft to take passengers to safety. He had others tear apart anything that could be used as a flotation device, including doors and rails.
But just thirty minutes after being hit by the Augusta, the Lady Elgin’s boilers and engine broke loose and ripped through the hull of the ship, falling into the water below. A beam, holding the paddlewheel in place, also gave way, crashing through the deck. The rest of the ship went down quickly, with a loud, whooshing sound. They were off the coast of Winnetka, just north of Chicago.
About 400 passengers, plus the crew members, were on their own for survival. The raging storm was not letting up, and the choppy, churning waters of Lake Michigan became the primary enemy. About fifty passengers, believed to be mostly women and children, boarded the raft that the crew quickly built. The waves, even more quickly, ripped the raft to pieces. Only fifteen of them, clinging to debris, made it to shore.
Passengers clung to anything that floated, as depicted in this drawing, which is captioned, “Mr. and Mrs. Evison clinging to the pilot-house of the Lady Elgin.”
Others made it to safety clinging to anything they could find. One man clung to the carcass of a dead cow. Another, Charles Beverung, a drummer with the band, clung to a snare drum all the way to shore. Years later, his daughter said the trauma he experienced was so severe, that he was never able to look at Lake Michigan again.
Many of those on board came tragically close to surviving, only to be kept from doing so by the waves. Clinging to debris, some were dashed against the rocks along the shoreline. The pounding waves also created a powerful undertow. As some passengers came as close as 100 yards to the shore, the undertow swept them under and away.
Edward Spencer and a fellow student of the Garrett Biblical Institute named Combs, were the most heroic figures in the Lady Elgin story. With a rope tied around his waist, Spencer repeatedly dove into the water to save passengers of the ship. There were men on the beach, on the other end of the rope, who pulled Spencer ashore each time he found a passenger needing help. Then, he’d dive back in to rescue someone else. Seventeen people are said to have been saved by him. But the trauma affected him for the rest of his life. He was never the same. He became a semi-invalid until his death at the age of 81.
Despite the undertow, two students from Garrett Biblical Institute, which later became a part of Northwestern University, risked their lives to save some of the passengers. Edward W. Spencer and a man known only as Combs, were among the crowd of spectators who watched the tragedy unfold from the shore. Spencer and Combs each went into the water with a long rope tied around his waist, while others on shore held onto the other end of the ropes to pull them to safety.
On one occasion, the rope was too short for Combs to rescue a woman in need of help. He loosened the rope from his waist, giving up his safety, in order to reach the woman. He was able to get to her and bring her back to shore.
Spencer, meanwhile, is credited with saving sixteen passengers. Sixteen times he defied the waves and the undertow, and each time he swam back with a passenger. When he finished, he was exhausted, and spectators on shore said he was delirious, repeating over and over, “Did I do my best?” Despite everyone’s best efforts, only 100 of the 400 passengers survived.
The Augusta, pictured here in port in Chicago after its collision with the Lady Elgin. Many faulted its captain, D.M. Malott, for the accident, and for sailing away after the two boats collided. He is reported to have asked the captain of the Lady Elgin if he needed help, only to be told that none was needed. Others say Malott never heard a reply from the Lady Elgin, and decided to simply sail away.
The Augusta, the ship that rammed into the Lady Elgin, made it to Chicago. It was only then that the crew learned of the Lady Elgin’s fate. Not long after the accident, it sailed into Milwaukee. The city lost a significant number of people from its Irish community, and it is said that the political control of the city shifted from the Irish immigrants to the Germans, due to the loss of so many prominent Irish citizens. While the Augusta sat in Milwaukee’s port, its owner caught wind of a plot to burn the boat, blamed by many in the city for the accident. The owner told the captain to set sail immediately for the Atlantic and sell it to the first person who made a decent offer. “Don’t,” he said, “bring her back to the lake.”
The storm delayed efforts to recover the victims. But when it settled, three miles of beach in Evanston and Winnetka were strewn with debris, and some bodies. But the waves carried many bodies far away. By mid-November, more than two months after the accident, 100 bodies had still not been found.
The bodies which Christopher Schrage recovered from the beaches of Whiting-Robertsdale included a woman, dressed in a wire hoop skirt; a seven or eight-year-old boy; and three men. A North Township coroner’s inquest was held on the shoreline, just a mile east of the state line. Six local citizens served as the jury. They were 43-year-old George Roberts, a farmer and landowner, who the community of Robertsdale was named after; Roger Murphy, a 53-year-old laborer born in Ireland; Henry Troger, a 31-year-old shoemaker, originally from Saxony; 31-year-old railroad hand Robert Newman; Balthasar Birchler, born in Switzerland, a 31-year-old farmer; and Frederick Eggers, one of the area’s major landowners. The inquest was overseen by Ernest Hohman, the Justice of the Peace from Hammond.
The inquest confirmed that the five had been passengers on the Lady Elgin. The bodies were placed in temporary graves, and some were later claimed by friends and relatives. The others were never claimed. They were buried on Eggers’ farm, which eventually became part of the Whiting refinery.
In 1915, 844 people died in the Eastland disaster, which took place on the Chicago River, just off Lake Michigan. Other Great Lakes disasters are better known, such as the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, thanks to a song popularized by Gordon Lightfoot. But in its time, the Lady Elgin was also remembered in song. Lost on the Lady Elgin was popular during the Civil War. Its chorus was, “Lost on the Lady Elgin. Sleeping to wake no more.”