El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1898-02-21
AMERICAN NAVAL DISASTE rs.
Long List of Sea Horrors and Great
L'Ss of Life.

vi
A long list of mysteries and disasters
in the American navy prece6es the
blowing up of the Maine. There was
the Saratoga, which went out from
Philadelphia and captured three Brit
ish m erchsntmen in 1850. On The way
back to port she encountered British
n an-of-war and was obliged to flee,
leaving the prizes behind. The next
day storm arose. The Saratoga
was never heard of afterwa ard.
On Septemb r Is, 1850, the Levant
left Honolulu. She was swallowed,
with all on board, and the history of
the American navy is to this day with
out an explanation of the fate of the
PIP men.
After a storm in the gulf near Tam
pico, the Hornet, with 200 officers
and men, was missing. That was in
1880.
The Grampus, with sixty five officers
aud men, started on a cruise along the
Atlantic coast in 1912, and never made
d TT agsin.
pany with another vess,] of the Amer
lean navy one day in 1854 at the en-
trap ce of Fo-mosa channel and disap-
peared for ever.
In 1900 the thirty ght-gun frigate
Ipsurgent, ich the United States mad
captured from the French in 1870, went
down while on q cruise in the North
Atlantic, leaving no survivor.
That same year the fourteen-gun
brig Pickering started uuder orders
for Guadeloupe and never reached her
destination. 1t is supposed that :she
carried down all on board in q heavy
storm.
When this. government built and
equipped ten gunbOats to make war on
Tripoi ore of them did not reach its
idestin alton, and no trace of it was ever
found.
\The war .loop Wasp went out OF
Portsmouth, N; H, in 1904, captured
ffteeS British prizes and was never
hes "a from sitter taking the fifteenth.
The naxt year the brig Esperv1er set
ont with a copy of treaty to submit
tn the Rev ~ Algiers. She passed the
Straits ri GSSsltar and was never
seen again. These are some OF the
ships of the United States navy Wnico
have gone down leaving no survivors.
The Saginaw was losHj the Pacific
in 1870, officers and crew Escaping 20
desert island, with little f6oo. Sapt'
Montgomery Scard was cOIp maha ln ng
He Sc MT an officer and four nSn l,ooo
miles 10 small boat to the HNSlian
Islands. The boat was capsized IN Inc
surf. Only one man in the party
reached the shore and gave the IL
formation of the disaster. Sicar
now an admiral commanding the Sd
ron at Dry TOrtugas, to which
Maiue belonged.
Io 1863 the brig-of-war Bsinb-idge
was capsized off Cape HstteraT
and the only survivor was a cOlore4
cook.
The sloop-of-war Huron weH
ashore in a storm one night twenty3
odd years ago on the Atlantic coast,}
and ninety eight lives were lost. J
The slcop-of-war Oneida, startingf
home from Yokohoma in 1869. was cu9
down by Brit So steamer ard the enS
tire complement of officers and,
men, with one or two exceptions, went
down.
AS strange as the fate of the Meme
have been some of the losses in the
American navy. The sloop-of-war
Water ee, in 1868, while off Afr. ca, Peru,
was caugh up by tidal wave. carried
several miles inland and left in a
forest.
The corvette Monongahela had al
most that experience in the year pre-
cedinp. She was at Santa Cruz, and
while anchored, was lifted by a tidal
wave following an earthquake. The
wave was 40 feet high. 1t left the
corvette on the beach, and the cost of
getting her afiost again was 500. 900.
At least one explosion has taken
place before this one on an American
warship. The Missouri was badly
wrecked many years ago by the blow
ing up of her magazine while she was
in port.