1890 — July 13, Steamboat Sea Wing capsizes in storm, Lake Pepin (MS River), MN — 98

–98 Blanchard estimated death toll.*

–97-180 Grazulis. Significant Tornadoes 1680-1991, 1993, p116. (Range of estimated drownings.)
— 100 US Gen. Weather Svc., USA Sig. Corp. Monthly Weather Rev., XVIII/7, Jul 1890, 182
— ~100 Willsey and Lewis. “Minnesota,” Harper’s Book of Facts. 1895, p. 516.
— 98 Bernard. “Before radar forecasts: The Sea Wing disaster…” MinnPost, 8-19-2014.
— 98 Budig. “98 People Killed…Excursion…Lake Pepin…Disasters on Upper Mississippi.”
— 98 Johnson. “Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sea Wing. MN History Mag., Sum. 1990, 72.
— 98 Supervising Inspector-General of Steam Vessels. Annual Report of… 1891, p. 5.
— 98 US Life-Saving Service. Annual Report…June 30,1891. 1893, p. 249.
— 97 Berman, Bruce D. Encyclopedia of American Shipwrecks. 1972, p. 262.
— 97 Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours. 1977, p. 690.
— 90 Way’s Packet Directory, 1848-1994: Passenger Steamboats…[MS Riv. Sys.]…1990, 422.

* Blanchard estimated death toll: Though there are accounts which have the death toll at 90 or 97, or 100, or 96-180, we are persuaded by the accounts, some very detailed, showing ninety-eight deaths.

Narrative Information

Budig. “98 People Killed”:

“A wave lifted Harry Mabey onto the Minnesota shoreline, and he climbed out of the wind-whipped Mississippi River. It was late in the night of July 13, 1890. Short hours ago Mabey had been one of about 215 people enjoying a day-long excursion on Lake Pepin. Now he was a survivor of the one of the deadliest river disasters ever to occur on the Upper Mississippi. Mabey hurried along the shoreline until he reached Lake City. There, he began to clang the fire bell to summon help. Aroused towns people soon heard dreadful news. The steamboat Sea Wing had capsized on Lake Pepin during the evening storm. Although delayed by the violent weather, the steamboat Ethel Howard eventually is dispatched to search for survivors.

“The rescue boat docks at Red Wing early Monday morning, her deck laden with 42 bodies. Many more were still missing…..

“The Sea Wing was a stern-wheel rafter, 135-feet long, 22-feet in height — her height was said to make her skittish in wind — weighing about 110 tons. She was built in 1888 and operated out of Diamond Bluff, Wis., across the river and north of Red Wing. Powered by a six-piston steam engine, Sea Wing shepherded lumber and other commodities down the Mississippi River….

“The Sea Wing was captained and partly owned by Capt. David Wethern, 37-years-old, husband and father….Wethern would be accused of “unskillfulness” and temporarily lose his pilot’s license as a result of the disaster, but his loss cut deeper. His wife Nellie and 8-year-old son Perley accompanied him on the excursion to the National Guard camp at Lake City, and both drowned. Survivors remember Nellie sitting in a rocking chair outside a stateroom cabin in which Perley was napping after the picnic and military display at Lake City….

“Wethern testified at an inquest the boat carried more than 300 “floats” and seven life boats….

“Besides boasting a string orchestra — a band member later swam to safety by using his bass viola as a life preserver — excursioners could spend time lounging on the covered barge, Jim Grant, which would be lashed broadside to the Sea Wing….

“The majority of the 98 Sea Wing victims were from Red Wing, and a local undertaker would suffer a nervous breakdown because of the rush of bodies, it’s said….

“The Sea Wing and barge left Diamond Bluff at 8:40 a.m., picking up passengers at stops while enroute to Lake City. She reached at her destination at about 11:30 a.m. and passengers disembarked. Weatherwise, it was an active day. A tornado in the vicinity of St. Paul killed several people that afternoon and trees were uprooted and homes damaged in Hastings. Red Wing, too, was hit by storms later in the day….A local weather observer’s wind gauge measured gusts at 60 mph before being shredded by the wind. Storms plagued the military review at the National Guard camp, but Sea Wing excursioners were enjoying themselves. Some were reluctant to leave. Wethern agreed to remain until 7 p.m., though the Sea Wing may not have departed Lake City until about 8 p.m. Wethern apparently believed the storms were over. Of course, no form of accurate and timely weather reporting existed in 1890….

“The Sea Wing probably had made it less than halfway back to Red Wing when swallowed by storms. Wethern later testified he had been crossing Lake Pepin to seek shelter beneath bluffs on the Wisconsin side of the river when a “squall” came off the Minnesota shore. Wethern turned the Sea Wing into the approaching squall and held course for several minutes. The Sea Wing was likely abreast of Maiden Rock, a landmark on the Wisconsin shore.

“Wethern reportedly ordered passengers to don lifejackets sometime earlier. This was a change of heart and policy for the captain, for shortly after leaving Lake City he rebuked some young people who were putting on life jackets. “Take that off — you will frighten the ladies,” Wethern reportedly said. People were genuinely frightened as the squall bore down on the Sea Wing. Mabey recalled many women and children praying as wind and wave tossed the boat and barge. The clouds looked black and twisting, said Mabey. Crewmen Ed Niles reportedly spotted a funnel cloud crossing the lake about 500 yards ahead of the Sea Wing, though one contemporary meteorologist suggested that Wethern was correct — it was a squall. And a quick moving squall line appearing over the Minnesota bluffs probably was no more than five to ten minutes’ distance from the boat, he opined.

“Disaster, or the accumulated effect of bad judgment, struck Sea Wing at perhaps 8:45 p.m. Survivors remember the boat momentarily listing at about a 45 degree angle before Sea Wing, its cabin filled with passengers, keeled over. ‘The Sea Wing rolled over like an old water-soaked log,’ said Mabey….There may have been 100 or more passengers on the boat….

“The exact sequence of events of the disaster are still in question. That is, how did the barge — which in the end proved a sanctuary for perhaps everyone aboard it — become separated from the steamboat. And did the separation doom Sea Wing. One theory — a theory Wethern adhered to as an old man, anyway — suggests the barge lashed to the side stabilized Sea Wing as an outrigger stabilizes a Polynesian canoe. Wethern said decades later Sea Wing would not have capsized had the barge not been cut loose. But did he or another crew member order that done? Did passengers, some reportedly crying out to cut loose the barge, do it themselves? Or did the storm break the Jim Grant loose? In a letter to the St. Paul Dispatch three days after the disaster, Wethern wrote that the barge had not been cut loose until after the steamer had capsized and then only to save it from being swamped, too….

“Wethern was fighting for his life after the Sea Wing turned-turtle. Trapped underwater in the pilot’s house, he escaped by bracing his legs against the pilot’s wheel and pushing out a window with his back. Wethern swam for shore, saying he intended to seek help. But he succumbed to exhaustion once ashore, he later explained, and spent the night in a nearby home.

“At any rate, whether purposefully cut or broken loose, the barge drifted away from the Sea Wing. Perhaps 25 passengers clung to the keel of the capsized boat, a task possibly made more difficult because survivors report the Sea Wing uprighted herself and capsized several times. The weather was appalling, something out of purgatory. Besides violent wind and rain, egg-sized hail pelted the living and dead. One survivor ascribed the bruises he noted about the head and shoulders of Sea Wing victims the result of the bodies being battered by hail….It’s believed some 57 women were on the Sea Wing and barge on the return voyage and few survived….

“The barge drifted downstream and eventually nudged the Minnesota shore north of Lake City…. Mabey, who appears to have been a man of action that night, later said after alerting townspeople he and others went back to the Sea Wing on a skiff and ferried about 18 survivors ashore….The Sea Wing was towed near shore and National Guardsmen, hacking a hole in the hull, pulled free about 15 bodies from inside the wreck….On Tuesday only one body was recovered. But on Wednesday some 31 bodies floated to the surface of Lake Pepin. The last body, the 98th, that of an 11-year-old Red Wing girl, was found on Thursday….Wethern lost four relatives besides his wife and son….

“On Friday, July 25, 5,000 people crowded the streets of Red Wing for a memorial service honoring the victims of the Sea Wing disaster….” (Budig. “98 People Killed.”)

Grazulis: “MN July 13, 1890 The Sea Wing, a lumber shipping boat used as an excursion craft, capsized in a downburst on the Lake Pepin section of the Mississippi River. The range of estimated drownings was from 97 to 180.” (Grazulis 1993, p. 116.)

Harper’s: “Nearly 100 lives lost by a tornado on Lake Pepin…13 July, 1890.” (Willsey, Lewis. “Minnesota,” Harper’s Book of Facts. 1895, p. 516.)

Johnson: “….Ninety-eight were dead. Whole families had been killed. Of the 57 females on board, 50 had drowned….” (p. 72)

“The Sea Wing, a 109-ton steamer based in Diamond Bluff on the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi, was returning from a pleasure cruise to Lake City when a storm struck. The vessel, with the barge Jim Grant lashed alongside, was carrying over 200 passengers and crew. David N. Wethern, the ship’s pilot and co-owner, steered to meet the storm, but his top-heavy craft was capsized by the winds. Those passengers who had crowded into the ship’s small cabin were trapped and drowned, while others were thrown into the water and lost….” (p. 73)

“A letter from Carol C. Lees of Vadnais Heights, the daughter-in-law of Sea Wing survivor Dr. Arnold F. Lees, provided…commentary on the barge and its role as a stabilizer. The letter contained a 1949 clipping from the Minneapolis Star, which included a brief biography of Dr. Lees in its territorial centennial observation. Lees told of his decision to jump from the Sea Wing onto the barge. He recounted the advance of the storm and how the steamer ‘capsized…instantly. The ship flipped over either three or four times while seemingly being held in one place in the river by the twister. The barge was ripped loose…and somehow stayed upright.’” (p. 73)

“….In 1986 Thomas A Hodgson, meteorologist and principal race officer of the White Bear Yacht Club, completed a detailed examination of how weather and river conditions would have affected the Sea Wing, In ‘A Meteorological Look at the Sea Wing Disaster,’ Hodgson analyzes the eyewitness and newspaper accounts of the storm and uses present-day knowledge of major trends of frontal thunderstorm systems to formulate his hypothesis. His conclusion: ‘the strong probability is that the wind that capsized Sea Wing was a line squall that preceded an extraordinarily strong thunderstorm cell.’

“Hodgson also considered the actual location and topography of the scene. Accounts at the time were confused on this point. Wethern’s report, made three days after the accident, noted that the ship had ‘proceeded up the lake about five miles.’ But newspaper reports named Central Point [MN], approximately one mile from Lake City [MN], as the accident site. It is likely that some reporters assumed the steamer had overturned off Central Point since many bodies were placed there in a temporary morgue. Using his first-hand knowledge of the lake and careful analysis of the storm track and eyewitness versions, Hodgson charted the likely path of the Sea Wing and the location of the accident”

The preponderance of the testimony shows Captain Wethern altering course to port to meet the storm coming off the Minnesota shore. This leads me to believe that the Sea Wing capsized in min-channel about two miles upriver from Central Point, about one half mile downriver from Maiden Rock [WI]

It is likely that the Sea Wing capsized in mid-channel, for there would have been few other locations on Lake Pepin that would allow a steamboat to turn turtle without touching bottom. (pp. 74-75)

(Johnson, Frederick L. “Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sea Wing.” Minnesota History Magazine, Summer 1990, pp. 72-77.)

US General Weather Service, USA Signal Corp. Monthly Weather Rev., XVIII/7, July 1890, 182:

“On the 13th, about 6 p. m., 75th meridian time, a tornado swept over New Canada township, Ramsey Co., Minn., caus¬ing the death of 6 persons, and injuring 23, demolishing build¬ings, uprooting trees, etc. The damage to buildings was es¬timated at $2,000, to crops $7,500, and to animals $500. A funnel-shaped cloud was observed moving toward se., or s. 25° e., attended by a roaring sound. The rainfall was heavy and most abundant before the passage of the cloud; hail-stones large enough to kill chickens fell some distance north of the path of destruction, and a few small hail-stones in the path; the tornado cloud had a whirling motion from right to left; it was attended by loud and frequent thunder and intense sheet and zigzag lightning, and articles were carried up by the storm. On the north side of the storm-track trees, etc., were thrown northeastward, on the south side, southeastward, and in the centre they were confused and indefinite. All build¬ings destroyed were wooden and of slight structure, and were actually torn into shreds. Foliage was stripped from trees and plants, and near the ruined buildings the trees were barked, possibly by flying debris. The area of destruction was about mile in length and from 400 to 800 feet in width. A remarkable feature of the storm was that 500 to 800 feet back of the buildings first destroyed, and from the commencement of the path of destruction, sticks of timber, which were un¬questionably portions of the buildings demolished, were found driven into the ground, the smaller or lighter ends being in¬variably downward. These sticks were apparently drawn up¬ward and thrown backward from the storm with a force much greater than that resulting from gravitation. A remarkable effect of the storm’s action was shown in the wreck of a buggy which was found about 75 feet from the place where it had been left in good condition. The axles and springs were un¬injured and both nuts were on the ends of the fore axle, but the hubs were gone. A hub and nut remained on one end of the hind axle, but the hub and nut on the other end were gone; the nut had not been unscrewed but had been forced off by tearing away the screw thread. About 9 p. in., 75th meridian time, a violent storm passed over Lake Pepin (Mississippi River), 50 miles southeast from Saint Paul, Minn., and overturned the excursion steamer “Red Wing” with over 200 persons aboard; 100 of these were drowned. The estimated loss to buildings in Lake City, a few miles from the scene of the disaster, was $10,000.” (General Weather Service, US. Monthly Weather Rev., Vol. XVIII, N7, July 1890, 182.)

United States Life-Saving Service: “1890, July 13. Sea Wing. American steamer. 110 [tons]. Lake City, Minn. [port sailed from]. Red Wing, Minn. [Port bound to]…98 [lives lost]. Near Lake City, Minn., Mississippi River [place of disaster].” (US Life-Saving Service. Annual Report…June 30,1891. 1893, p. 249.)

Way: Sea Wing. Sternwheel wood-hull rafter, built at Diamond Bluff WI in 1888, measuring 110 x 20.8 x 4.5. “….she was carrying an excursion on July 13, 1890, and capsized on Lake Pepin drowning some 90 persons including Capt. Wethern’s wife. The boat was returned to service….” (Way’s Packet Directory, 1848-1994: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System… (Revised). 1999, p. 422.)

Sources

Berman, Bruce D. Encyclopedia of American Shipwrecks. Boston: Mariners Press Inc., 1972.

Bernard. “Before radar forecasts: The Sea Wing disaster of July 13, 1890.” MinnPost, 8-19-2014. Accessed 10-29-2020 at: https://www.minnpost.com/minnesota-blog-cabin/2014/08/radar-forecasts-sea-wing-disaster-july-13-1890/

Budig, T.W. “98 People Killed: Day-Long Excursion on Lake Pepin Turns Into One of the Deadliest Disasters on Upper Mississippi.” Goodhue County Historical Society; ECM Publishers, Inc., undated. Accessed at: http://www.hometownsource.com/features/SeaWingDisaster/SeaWing.html

Grazulis, Thomas P. Significant Tornadoes 1680-1991: A Chronology and Analysis of Events. St. Johnsbury, VE: Environmental Films, 1993, 1,326 pages.

Johnson, Frederick L. “Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sea Wing.” Minnesota History Magazine, Summer 1990, pp. 72-77. Accessed 10-29-2020 at: http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/52/v52i02p072-077.pdf

Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours – A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present. New York: Pocket Books, Wallaby, 1977, 792 pages.

Supervising Inspector-General of Steam Vessels. Annual Report of the Supervising Inspector-General of Steam Vessels. Washington, DC: Treasury Department, Office of Supervising Inspector-General, 10-19-1891. Accessed 10-29-2020 at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cu09189980&view=1up&seq=269&size=125&q1=sea%20wing

United States General Weather Service, War Department, United States Army Signal Corp. Monthly Weather Review, Vol. XVIII, Jan, March, June-Dec, 1890 (No’s. 1, 3, 6-12). Washington, DC: Signal Office, 1890. Digitized by Google. Accessed 10-29-2020 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=c1gUAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:LCCN74648196#v=onepage&q=&f=true

United States Life-Saving Service. Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Service for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1891 (Treasury Department Document No. 1599). Washington.: GPO, 1893. Google Digitized. Accessed 10-29-2020 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=14EDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=true

Way, Frederick Jr. (Author and Compiler), Joseph W. Rutter (contributor). Way’s Packet Directory, 1848-1994: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System Since the Advent of Photography in Mid-Continent America (Revised). Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 1999.

Willsey, Joseph H. (Compiler), Charlton T. Lewis (Editor). Harper’s Book of Facts: A Classified History of the World. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1895. Accessed 9-4-2017 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=UcwGAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Additional Resource

Johnson, Frederick L. and Goodhue County Historical Society. The Sea Wing Disaster. Goodhue County Historical Society, 1990.