My great-grandfather perished the night the steamship Portland went down.
My father used to talk to me about living at his grandmother’s house in Portland, Maine, with his mother, Mabel, and Uncle Charlie, and Aunt Gladys, who died an old maid. My father always felt bad about that. Poor Gladys was only 30 when tuberculosis took her, but still my father thought of her as an old maid. My grandmother, on the other hand, was pregnant as a teenager. I loved it when he told me stories.
He wasn’t able to tell me much about his grandfather, Charles Woodman Sr., because Charles died in that terrible blizzard of 1898. My great-grandmother, Emma Lizzie Coffin Woodman said simply that my great-grandfather “went out and got lost in the storm the night the Portland went down.” It was as simple as that ... 500 New Englanders lost their lives in that storm.
On Saturday, November 26, 1898, The Portland set off from the India Wharf in Boston bound for Portland, Maine, just 90 miles away. The Portland was a luxurious ship, and holiday travelers were returning from the Thanksgiving holiday. The weather was calm. The captain was a good one. He had checked the weather reports, and he was aware of a cold front coming from the direction of the Great Lakes, but he had no way of knowing of a disastrous warm, moist depression racing up the Atlantic coast. No one did.
Two hours after passing Gloucester, the ship was caught deep in the terrible blizzard that resulted from the collision of the two weather fronts. Winds reached 100 mph and more. During the ensuing horrific situation, the Portland was seen or heard from half a dozen times over 24 hours, but no one could help. On Sunday night, The Portland went under. It seemes from a recent National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) discovery, the top of the ship "peeled" off the hull of the battered Portland. Only 40 of 192 bodies were ever recovered. Of the bodies with watches, time stopped at 9:15 p.m.
John Rousmaniere says, “’The night the Portland went down’ became one of those events against which people measure time.”
In my family that was all too true. Read the account.
In Portland's African American community, the sinking of the Portland sounded another death knell. Ten percent of African Americans in town made their living on the Portland. That was now over, and the Black community closed their Abyssianian church and moved on to more stable towns and employment..
In 2002, a NOAA remote, deep-sea sonar device exploring Massachusetts Bay sent up images of the hulk of a ship, which was soon identified as The Portland last seen in a storm more than 100 years ago. See it here.