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Chapter 77: the Wreck of the Pacific.—the Mississippi Valley Society.
In 1875
Mr. Davis began to feel old age coming on apace, and wrote to invite
Captain Jefferson Davis Howell, then captain of a passenger steamer on the
Pacific coast, to come to us and ease his weary shoulders of their burthen.
Our brother could not leave immediately, but bound to my husband by every tender tie, he promised to come as soon as he could.
Just at this time one of my husband's crowning joys came through our brother, and “sorrow's crown of sorrows” settled on his head soon thereafter in the death of our well-beloved young hero, and pride in him and bitter grief contended in
Mr. Davis's heart as long as he lived.
On February 20th
Captain Howell, who was temporarily out of employment, embarked on the
Los Angeles with a number of passengers for
Victoria.
The evening of the 23d, during a stiff gale, the machinery of the steamer became unmanageable, and the ship commenced drifting.
Seeing all the danger,
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Captain Howell asked for volunteers for desperate service, to relieve the ship.
The second officer and four men stood forth and put off in a small boat under his command, and after two days and nights of strenuous effort, they reached
Astoria, procured relief, and saved the ship.
The passengers passed resolutions, one of which was: “Whereas
Captain Jeff. D. Howell, by noble deeds of daring, succeeded in reaching
Astoria after we had supposed he had lost his own life in the vain endeavor to save us from a terrible death, we return our thanks to the Giver of all good for sparing the life of our noble benefactor.”
One who was present told
Mr. Davis, years afterward, of the enthusiasm the young fellow created in his breast as he stepped forward among the terror-stricken crew, calm and selfpossessed, and called for volunteers to go with him to death for the sake of men he did not know, and to save the property of a company which had causelessly thrown him out of employment a few weeks before.
Attracted by his daring, he was taken into the service of the Goodall & Nelsons Steamship line and given the old
Pacific, plying from
Seattle to
San Francisco, with the hope of commanding a fine steamer then on the stocks,
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The
North Pacific coast is at best a dangerous one, and in the last letter written before his death he said: “This coast is dangerous, and I am never thoroughly asleep until I reach
Seattle and leaving there, keep the same watch to
San Francisco again.
I have not felt robust this year, and in fact have not felt the spring of youth since my imprisonment.”
After she had cleared the harbor of
Seattle, Thursday, November 4,
I875,
Captain Howell went to sleep, but in a few minutes afterward a sailing-vessel came too near the
Pacific, and seeing the danger, tacked first one way and then another, and ran into the
Paczic, wrecked her, and was herself wrecked on the rocks further on. The
Paci/ic had three hundred souls on board, many of them miners and rough men, ladies, children, and helpless people.
The captain kept order, placed all his passengers and crew on boats and rafts, coming on deck stripped to his under-clothes for swimming, and called to his mate on the raft, “Chief, I will go down with her, after you get away; look around for me. If you cannot see me, pray for me.”
He finally, however, gained the raft in company with an old lady, who insisted upon clinging to him. The exhaustion, the cold, the hunger of four nights and three days of exposure, did not daunt his great soul.
During this time he did his
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best to comfort the poor dying woman at his side, uttering never a complaint of his own suffering; but his strength failed, and he was swallowed up in the sea, which gave his body sepulture and freed the soul that had so long worshipped his Creator in spirit and in truth.
Upon this gallant young hero, who had lived but twenty-eight years, one of the oldest captains of the
Pacific Mail S. S. Company, with a burst of tears, delivered this simple eulogy:
Jeff Howell was the best sailor and noblest gentleman that ever walked a quarter-deck.
Another said, “The commander was the last to leave the ship, the young, noble, and chivalrous gentleman upon whose life and character no stain and no reproach had ever rested.”
I make no apology for telling his story here, for it was written even to the hour of death upon the heart of his brother and benefactor.
Thus was torn every prop from the old age of one who had given his utmost aid, confidence, and love to the boy over whose education he had presided with a father's care, and in whose promise he had lived anew.
Our son only was left to us now.
Sore-hearted, rooted up from the labors of his life, impoverished, repenting quickly for his sins against God, and conscious of wilfully wronging no man, my husband sought constant
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occupation to still his grief; but to his life's end our brother was cited as his model of a Christian hero.
The prospect of directing the commerce of the
South American States to New Orleans had always been a cherished hope of
Mr. Davis, and now he turned to it with the expectation of securing this object.
He preferred that to all other cities, and believed its decadence would be arrested and its prosperity assured by the great trade flowing from her wharves over the whole
United States.
There was simultaneously an English and a Southern company organized, called the
Mississippi Valley Society, which he hoped would co-operate together, and the interchange of commodities and products would be inaugurated by ships built in
England and plying between New Orleans and South American ports, until the channel of trade was so worn that it would inevitably trend that way. The defect in
Mr. Davis's plan, however, Was that no immediate personal profits inured to anyone, and an impersonal interest is rarely pushed to the point of success.
In
I877, immediately after the marriage of our daughter Margaret to
Mr. J. A. Hayes, he went to
England to confer with the
English company, and took our little daughter
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Winnie and me with him, and with us the child of a dear friend, who was to be left at school in
Germany.
The hedge-rows of old
England were pranked out in their spring garments of pink May, and looked very lovely to us after our long absence.
Though
Mr. Davis seemed much better in health and his cheerfulness increased, a severe illness of several months and the unremitting attention he paid me, with the failure of his project of forming the company, reduced his newly acquired health.
Capital is too timid to embark in any scheme of which the profits are at the end of a long perspective.
The ships to carry the trade were not promised and the effort failed.
In the autumn
Mr. Davis returned home alone, as I was too ill to bear the journey or leave the proximity of
Dr. Maurice Davis, of
London, our kind and skilful friend of years ago.
