American Lutheran History
Lutherans in Peril on the Sea
Rebekah Curtis
he category “Lutheran immigrant maritime disasters” are better understood in relation to the sharper angles in Tis mercifully small, but the category is a limited method the past that built us, by both deep losses and providential of accounting. Three shipwrecks could mean some miss- heights. ing timber or a thousand lives, pathetic mishaps or tragic crimes, inspiration or smothering sadness, goofy hijinks or ho can speak of the General Slocum? For her passen- wrenching laments. In the category at hand, we find some Wgers were cut out of the land of the living in an of each. ineffable horror. The facts are easy to come by, having been Three shipwrecks stand out in the history of Lutheran of recent interest to The New Yorker, the History Channel, immigration to the United States: those of the Famous Dove Smithsonian, and The New York Times. On June 15, 1904, an in 1831, the Amalia in 1838, and the General Slocum in 1904. unknowable number of human beings boarded the General Formal historians have dealt with them in understand- Slocum for a Sunday School excursion hosted by St. Mark’s able proportion to their human impact. The loss of the Lutheran Church, a congregation of the General Council. General Slocum was catastrophic and occurred on the broad The boarders were mostly immigrants to the u.s. from Ger- stage of New York many who lived in City, so it received lower Manhattan’s wide coverage in Kleindeutschland the press. There neighborhood. was also a resur- They were also gence of attention mostly moms and after the events kids looking for of September 11, a day of dancing 2001—which took and fun on the East the General Slocum’s River, since it was a place as the great- Wednesday and the est human trag- dads were at work. edy to strike New The “unknowable” York—and at the Engraving of the General Slocum by Samuel Ward Stanton (1895) number of passen- hundredth anniver- gers is due to the sary of the disaster. The Amalia is of more specific interest: fact that the General Slocum was, like a crate of bananas, this smallest ship in the fleet of the Saxon migration sank packed by weight rather than unit. Children were reckoned in the Atlantic without witnesses and left a smaller group to tickets by twos or maybe more, depending on their size. of stricken families and neighbors. The Famous Dove also Not long into the river trip, the General Slocum ignited sank, but her passengers did not. This story of rescue and below decks and the fire grew out of control. By the official providence has been remembered on mostly a parochial or count, 1,021 people died by fire or water. The life jackets familial basis rather than a public one. were full of crumbling, rotten cork that soaked up water; Familiarity with each of these events is worthwhile in lifeboats that were supposed to be freely suspended from itself, but their spiritual heirs naturally have a greater inher- ropes were instead painted and wired to the wooden ship; itance to claim. While history is concerned with facts and untested canvas hoses blew out when water was pumped causes, we who share an affinity of belief have an interest in through them. People were trapped by the fire, trampled by how our predecessors responded to the history they lived. panicking neighbors, forced to choose between the fire and Additionally, the contours of contemporary Lutheranism the water, or drowned by desperate people falling or hang-
Lutheran Forum 15 still holds German-language services ship Amalia, whose end we can scarcely and events). doubt.”4 Günther published the Ama- But the impact went beyond lia’s manifest by heads of household. St. Mark’s. Business Insider recently He accounts for fifty-eight passengers, invoked the General Slocum to explain identified as cabinetmakers, carpen- “The crazy story of why there are ters, millers, farmers, shoemakers, almost no Germans in New York’s widows, teachers, and seminarians or East Village anymore.”2 This is prob- candidates. There were also fifteen ably overstating the case a bit. Klein- children. deutschland was indeed where many Walter O. Forster cites passengers German immigrants landed, but it’s of the Amalia as the migration’s great- not where most of them stayed once est numerical loss.5 Additionally: they became financially stable. Those The vessel had carried 3,000 who wanted to remain in New York thaler specie, the baggage of favored the Upper East Side, while some of the immigrants, who Zion-St. Mark’s Lutheran Church many others headed for the American were on other ships, and much on Manhattan’s Upper East Side lost a West. Nevertheless, it’s a rare con- of the most valuable equipment thousand parishioners on the General Slocum gregation, immigrant group, or local purchased by the Gesellschaft, community that makes a full recov- such as the entire musical equip- ing on them in the river. If there were ery from the loss of over a thousand ment, which alone was valued at ever a reason for wanting a divine people. 962 thaler. The insurance was sanction on prayers for the dead, the far from adequate to cover the General Slocum is it. f the General Slocum was mass carnage, financial loss sustained, and the St. Mark’s had a pastor who was the Amalia was a secret miscarriage: I conflicting claims of the Gesell- not above showing up for a Sunday an ordinary but happy expectation schaft, of individuals whose prop- School boat trip packed with ladies known as a loss only after the fact, ter- erty had been on the Amalia, and and babies. As a result, George C. F. rible to the injured but injurious only the heirs of those who had per- Haas felt his own body fed upon by to a few. The Saxons launched their ished in its sinking created a seri- the fire, watched his beloved parish- fifth ship pointed toward American ous problem.6 ioners consumed by it or the water shores with dutiful hope. Edward T. below, and lost his wife and daughter O’Donnell notes that “most Ger- Forster also notes that “most of the in the East River. His share in the hor- mans arrived with the two things that unnecessary supplies bought in Ger- ror and loss was equal to that endured distinguished them from the Irish: many, many of which were for the ben- by his congregation, and never was a capital and skills.”3 The manifest of pastor better and worse suited to shep- the Amalia reflects this, and thus the Manifest of the fifty-eight lost when the herd his flock in the days and years loss was both a human tragedy and a Amalia disappeared in a storm off the coast that followed. huge blow to the viability of the entire of France, printed in “The Destinies and The idea of a thousand people migrant group. Adventures of the Stephanists Who from a single parish showing up for The Saxon emigration of 1838– Emigrated from Saxony to America” a Sunday School event held on a 1839 was infamously characterized by Wednesday is well removed from the nearly as much “trainwreck” as ship- contemporary Lutheran experience. wreck, due to the failed episcopacy of By Lutheran standards, St. Mark’s was its leader, Martin Stephan. Gotthold a megachurch. Families at St. Mark’s Günther’s firsthand account of the were large until that tragic day, when emigration addresses both aspects of a host of men found themselves wid- the wreckage in evocative detail. He owed and bereft of some or all of their concludes his bitter history by describ- children. “To see one streamer [of ing the defrauded immigrants living crape, the symbol of mourning] was under trees, incapable of perform- uncommon; on most of the houses ing the necessary work for settlement. appeared four or five.”1 The gutted Finally, he reports a “sad duty to congregation eventually joined Zion inform the reader of the worst tragedy Lutheran Church on the Upper East of this entire disasterous [sic] enter- Side (which parish, Zion-St. Mark’s, prise. It is the unfortunate fate of the
16 Winter 2016 efit of ‘the church,’ had been loaded on the Amalia, and these became a total loss.”7 The impact of these losses was a tremendous tax on morale, skill, physical assets, and public worship for the founders of the Missouri Synod. The Saxons made it, even after the devastation of losing their dear ones and otherwise dear things on the Amalia. Günther wrote out of largely righteous anger, especially large and righteous because his sister Louise was both the material and the effi- cient cause of Stephan’s ousting. But this anger also blinded him to the pain felt by his story’s villains, the pastors. C. F. W. Walther, in whom doctrine and emotion showed the same spi- ritual rigor, wrote in an oft-quoted let- ter to his brother Otto Herman that he felt himself “a murderer of those The Johann Georg, the ship that carried C. F. W. Walther to America, buried at sea.”8 O. H. Walther’s own similar to the ill-fated Amalia, as painted by George H. Hilmer (1937) preoccupation with the tragedy came out in a poem, presented as a dialogue websites. Not a story of lost humanity, the emigrants were helped to shore by between the grieving and the Lord. it has remained the story of a family, people who saw them from the beach. The lament of the mourners makes a full of warmth and charm. Formal Huber and informal church histories moving transition from prayers for the engagement of the history was taken record that these Good Samaritans Amalia to return to prayers for Jesus to up by a son of the migration, Donald were the first people with black skin return.9 L. Huber. that the Germans had ever seen. The The Amalia was an open wound for Huber’s ancestor Johann Adam company continued their travel over the early generations of Saxons. Sus- Tracht organized an emigrant group land for a number of years until most picions about the fancier variety of from Odenwald, Germany, in 1830. of them settled in Ohio, their original pastor after the tragedy-inflected emi- Tracht was tired of being prevented destination. gration is manifest in Walther’s later from shooting rabbits on his own land; Out of this beginning grew a micro- dealings with J. A. A. Grabau, who clearly, America was the place to go. cosm of Lutheranism in America. took a higher view of the ministry His fellow travelers boarded the James The mother churches flourished with than the Saxons would accept. Even Beacham and a smaller ship in July, the zeal of people starting over. Then now, the Amalia remains an active 1831, but the Beacham’s passengers came schisms over unionizing with memory. The 1975 novel Except the renamed their ship the Famous Dove in Reformed neighbors,11 or questions Corn Die by Saxon descendent Robert celebration of their anticipated free- of personal piety like drinking and J. Koenig tells the story of his ances- dom. dancing,12 thanks to the usual suspects tor, whose family sailed on the Amalia. Near the end of the voyage, a storm on all sides. Daughter congregations The book was republished in 1995 by threatened the Famous Dove. A girl were founded alongside mission plants the Perry County Lutheran Histori- named Margaret Arras (age thirteen, from various synods. Descendants of cal Society. Missouri Synod Luther- by Huber’s account) exhorted her fel- the Famous Dove are now represented ans are still naming daughters Amalia low travelers to pray: “[S]ince Christ in elca, lcms, and Wisconsin Synod and are generally more inclined to had stilled the waves and saved the dis- parishes, some of whom still observe upgrade the narthex than buy another ciples from drowning, ‘maybe He will Shipwreck Sunday around September chasuble. save us also.’”10 A sailor scorned this 17 every year. piety, and the captain and crew began he story of the Famous Dove is covertly seeing to their own rescue in hat, then, shall we say to these Tpreserved in the contemporary lifeboats. But with Tracht’s equipment Wthings, aware as we are of the version of the oral tradition: by con- and leadership, the emigrants held the Lord’s warning, “Who is this that scientious keepers of their own gene- crew at gunpoint. The Famous Dove ran darkeneth counsel with words without alogies and in publications on church aground off the coast of Virginia, and knowledge?” (Job 38:2). Aside from
Lutheran Forum 17 recreation, to walk in such a way that at any moment we are able to appear before the face of God.”18 Memento mori, certainly, but there is still more to be remembered. Ste- ven Edmiston, current pastor of St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jenera, Ohio, notes that the Famous Dove’s survivors knelt on that Virginia beach in thanks to God and promised to give thanks to the third and fourth generation for His deliverance. “We’re now at eight or nine generations of remembering not just the storm, but the rescue,” he says.19 Trinity Evan- gelical Lutheran, also in Jenera, observes Shipwreck Sunday annually and reports at least one very young ninth-generation member descended from the Famous Dove.20 Both parishes Model of the Famous Dove at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Jenera, Ohio traditionally review the story of the shipwreck, read Scriptures, and sing the Lord, those closest to the General simplistic or fundamentalist, we might hymns visiting the theme of “those Slocum, the Amalia, and the Famous Dove call upon Kierkegaard, who observed, in peril on the sea.” A non-negotiable have the best right to pass comment. with reference to Job, “And yet how feature of St. Paul’s annual commem- Pastor Haas of St. Mark’s and the weak, indeed almost childishly so, is oration is Mary Ann Baker’s “Master, General Slocum preached in his first ser- not the wild fury of the storm, when the Tempest Is Raging.” Although mon after the tragedy: it thinks it causes a man to tremble for outside the typical Lutheran reper- himself by wresting away everything toire, the hymn’s maritime-miracle It was not God who was respon- from him, and he answers, ‘It is not motif is a good fit for people thankful sible for this long list of our you who do this, it is the Lord who to have been shipwrecked in Ohio for dead. It was the negligence of takes!’”15 Only if God is God of all almost two centuries. men and the greed of a corpora- things is there comfort to be found in tion… This accident shows that Whether the wrath of the storm- Him. God’s laws cannot be violated tossed sea, Fundamentalism is as damaging by men. Common, every-day in private comfort as it is in public precautions would have been dogma, which the Amalia’s lyricist enough to have saved us all. Yet knew. O. H. Walther dealt frankly still in this darkest hour, and with with the persistence of sorrow, pray- all the burden of affliction that ing, “Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, oh, do has come upon us, I still look up not be grieved / That we are still cry- to God. He strikes a silence at ing and weeping.”16 Neither were the our murmurs.13 mourners for the General Slocum forced Haas raises the question of cause into pieties bloated to the point of dis- again, locating blame in the ma- honesty. Rev. Dr. Holstein of Brook- terial realm by means of the familiar lyn, who conducted the memorial Lutheran ground of vocation. The service at St. Mark’s, selected the bald Lutheran Witness of July 14, 1904, also anguish of Psalm 39 for the people’s denounced human negligence in its prayer.17 Der Lutheraner commented article on the Slocum disaster but con- on July 5, 1904, “The entire horrible cluded, “No doubt these and simi- disaster reminds us, nevertheless, that lar statements are well founded and there is only a step between us and true, but be it also remembered that death (1 Sam 20:3), and it admonishes Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, without the will of God nothing can us that death is always present, and Jenera, Ohio, founded by survivors happen.”14 Lest this be dismissed as that even with acceptable trips and of the Famous Dove
18 Winter 2016 Or demons or men, or whatever the Amalia, God of the ark and her 8. C. F. W. Walther to Otto Herman Wal- it be famous dove, God of them that weep ther, May 4, 1840, in Letters of C. F. W. Walther: No waters can swallow the ship A Selection, ed. Carl S. Meyer (Philadelphia: and God of them that rejoice, God of Fortress, 1969), 35. where lies God and very God of very God. The 9. O. H. Walther in August R. Suelflow, The Master of ocean, and earth, baptized are a nautical people, born Servant of the Word: The Life and Ministry of and skies; through water to life on the holy ark of C. F. W. Walther (St. Louis: Concordia, 2000), They all shall sweetly obey Thy the church catholic. At every boarding 46, as quoted from Concordia Junior Messenger 17 (March 1939), trans. W. M. Czamanske. will, we remember that any voyage may 21 10. Donald J. Huber, “The Wreck of the Peace, be still! Peace, be still! take us not where we intended but to Famous Dove,” Timeline 19/2 (2003): 32. fair Canaan’s side. LF 11. Mark Panning, “Trinity Evangelical The place of the Famous Dove with Lutheran Church Jenera Ohio,” unpublished the Amalia and the General Slocum is Rebekah Curtis is a writer living in essay, 1992,
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