Harrington’s partner, Lodner Philips, was a Michigan City, Ind. Harrington and Philips were sent for to search with their submarine armor.” “All efforts to recover the body being fruitless,” reported an early June edition of the Ypsilanti Sentinel, “Messrs. In 1844, Lodner Philips built this 10-foot-long wooden submarine, and nearly drowned in it. In 1855, Scio Township sheep farmer William Briggs drowned while washing his sheep in a small lake near his property. The treasure lay deeper than it was thought anyone could dive.īorn in Westfield, N.Y., just a few miles from Lake Erie, Harrington had previous experience in Michigan – attempting to recover the body of a farmer from an inland lake. Several divers tried, and failed, to get it. The gold remained at the bottom of Lake Erie. The heads of the two steamship companies went to court in a case that ultimately was decided by the Supreme Court, which ruled that both vessels had been at fault. Eisdsmoe received $30 and a suit of clothes.Īnother of the surviving Atlantic passengers wrote a letter home to Norway that included a newspaper account presenting the incident as sabotage by the Atlantic’s captain. In that city, a collection was taken up for their benefit. Immigrants among the rescued traveled on into the new world with no possessions, and some, according to survivor Amund Eidsmoe, one of the 132 Norwegians on board, went in a half-naked state to Milwaukee. The Ogdensburg circled back and picked up about 250 survivors from the water. Some passengers grabbed cushions or anything buoyant and jumped in the water. In the chaos and panic that ensued as the Atlantic began sinking, several of the lifeboats swamped when they hit the water. 20, 1852, by the Ogdensburg, a ship from a rival ferry line. Despite her power and 267-foot-long brawn, the Atlantic succumbed when she was struck on the night of Aug. A towering steam engine churned huge paddlewheels on either side of the vessel. The Atlantic was the fastest one of all, speeding to Detroit from Buffalo in just 16-and-a-half hours. The era’s stream of immigrants pouring west made a profitable trade for passenger steamers traveling the Great Lakes. The deaths represented about a third of the 576 travelers packed onto a steamship meant to accommodate far fewer. So did more grisly testimony of the shipwreck’s victims, estimated as ranging from 130 to over 250. Worth $920,000 today, the riches lay within the wreck of the steamship Atlantic. Many of the overloaded ship's immigrant passengers slept on the deck, as there was no room below.
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