Gripping Account of the Wreck

Pleasant this morning, more humid than yesterday, but no breeze or I would be on the downstairs front screen porch. Judging by the lights on her, a sizable vessel gliding silently westward as I went down for Linda's PCNH, but too dark to tell for sure, and so dark I couldn't even tell whether she was in the near channel heading in to port or in the far channel headed out to sea. 

This morning I'm going to publish the second, more detailed, account that Dr. McKenzie so kindly sent me. There are a couple more for another day, to which I will add my own personal family remembrances.    

From his earliest childhood my son Joe has been gifted at building scale models, airplanes, boats, cars. Three years ago he built a model of the Annie & Jennie. The sails are remotely controlled, and Joe and I have sailed her here in front of the house when the Bay was calm. I'm a cautious person, afraid something will happen to it, and haven't sailed her again. She's the centerpiece of our livingroom, on the mantle over the fireplace. My friend and neighbor Bill Lee, who grew up right here, says it's a good likeness of the twin-masted schooners called fishing smacks. 

Here's the newspaper article from January 22, 1918, two weeks after the wreck. TW

St. Andrews Bay News

VOL. 3. St. Andrews, Florida, January 22, 1918 NO. 34

SMACK ANNIE & JENNIE LOST WITH FOUR OF CREW

(Ed. Note - Owing to the great demand for an authentic account of the disaster of January 5th (sic), the following story of the wreck is republished from the Panama City Pilot, of January 10, corrected, and with such additional facts as have come to hand.)

The saddest blow that has ever fallen upon St. Andrews came Tuesday morning, January 8th, when news reached the city of the loss, early the preceding day, of the smack Annie & Jennie, with four of her crew, including two young men of St. Andrews, Alfred Weller, Jr., son of the owner of the vessel, and Leonard Stephens, son of Mr. Henry Stephens of West End.

Just before Christmas the smack lost her rudder in the Gulf and was brought to port by her master, Emanuel Caton, using a dory as a jury-rudder. Facilities for repairs not being immediately available in St. Andrews, her owners decided to send her to Carabelle to have the rudder replaced, and at one o’clock Monday morning, January 7th, she left the Ice Plant dock, bound for that place.

Arrived at the bar, they found a high sea running, and Odom Melvin, as they neared the east end of Hurricane Island, noticed that the front light on the off-shore range was extinguished and reported the fact to the Captain, who replied, “Well, I will get my course.” All went well until she reached a point just inshore from the sea buoy, when Melvin, Bishop and possibly others, saw breakers dead ahead and told Captain Caton. In answer, Caton called to Dewey Bishop, one of the survivors, “Never mind, boy, never mind.” Almost immediately, Caton ordered Melvin to luff her up. This he attempted to do, but she would not answer to the rudder, and a few moments later she struck on the sand spit that has built out from the east side of the dredged channel.

Caton shouted to his men to take in the flying jib and put the mainsail on her, but almost as he spoke a sea took her head on and covered her up. All of the men then took to the rigging, while the breakers crashed over her and quickly filled her up. Melvin states that the second time she bumped the keel burst up thru her bottom.

The men remained in the rigging until the battered hull began to go to pieces and the masts toppled over into the water. As the masts fell, Captain Caton was heard to shout, “Well, boys, we’re gone now.” As they dropped into the water, a large piece of the forward deck tore away and Capt. Caton, Alfred Weller and Dewey Bishop managed to cling to it. Bishop saw Odom Melvin in the water and called to him to come to them on the raft, but before Odom reached them, all three were swept away by a sea. He reached the raft and saw Bishop struggling to get back to it; the others were never seen again. Bishop made the piece of wreckage, and then another sea covered it, sweeping Melvin off. He fought his way back, and just as he reached it, it was torn free of the hull, and with the two survivors was swept away thru the breakers to the eastward.

Bishop states that before Alfred Weller was swept away he had become only partly conscious. Bishop tried to keep Alfred’s head up out of the water, and asked him if he had been hurt, but Alfred was unable to speak. He may have been struck by some of wreckage, and too, it was bitter cold and he was only thinly clad, and barefooted.

It was about three o’clock when the Annie & Jennie struck, and by four-thirty, or thereabout, Melvin and Bishop had drifted well out to sea. Their perilous voyage lasted all that morning and until about one o’clock in the afternoon, when they were cast up on the shore of Crooked Island by the breakers, some fifteen miles from the scene of the wreck.

“We tried to wade the Sound,” said Melvin, in telling of their escape from death, ‘but the water was too cold, as we went further up and waded across. We were trying to get to the mainland, which we finally did, and found a home where we hoped to get something to eat. However, there was no one at home, and from the way the place looked, it had been deserted for a year. I began looking for some matches over the doors, when Bishop spied one on the floor. I got some grass and paper and made a fire in the old kitchen -- one of those old-timey stick-in-dirt chimneys. We sure did have a good fire, and got warmed up. I left my overcoat at that house -- got so tired I had to leave it.

“We put out then to find something to eat. By and by we came to another house. Nobody was there, and it looked like they had been gone a good while. We went in and found some old sweet potatoes. They had been frost bitten, but we bit them again. They sure were good, and we ate about a dozen apiece.

“We then put out for Leonard Raffield’s place on Crooked Island, and made it about nine o’clock that night. We got supper there; they had to cook it, but it sure was good when they got it ready. We stayed there all night.  Leonard Raffield was working with his cousin, Cullen Raffield, over at Auburn on East Bay, about two miles away.

“Leonard Raffield, Bishop and I left his place Tuesday morning to go to Auburn. Bishop soon got so bad off that he could not walk, so Leonard Raffield left and went to tell Cullen Raffield about us. I carried Bishop on my back for a while, but when Cullen reached us we had a fire and were warming. We saw the Ford coming through the weeds presently, and soon we were eating breakfast at his place. After breakfast Cullen Raffield brought us down to St. Andrews, and I told Mr. Weller about the sad accident, and he and a large crowd put out to look for the others who were on the Annie & Jennie.

“Before I would take another wreck like that, I would fight the Germans all by myself.”

Charles Acker, a young Nova Scotian who was one of the lost, is believed to have been injured by flying wreckage, soon after the vessel grounded, and was one of the first to die. His body was found on Crooked Island on Sunday January 13, and was brought to St. Andrews, the funeral being held the following morning, with interement (sic) in St. Andrews cemetery. Little is known of Acker other than that his mother is living somewhere in Nova Scotia. He had been fishing out of St. Andrews for some months previous to his death, and was well liked. Efforts are being made to communicate with his mother.

The body of Captain Caton was also found on Crooked Island, on the 12th, both bodies having come ashore very close to where Melvin and Bishop made the land. Owing to the bad weather, and no boat being available at the time, the remains of Captain Caton were taken to Apalachicola for burial. Emanuel Caton is said to have been born in Portugal, and is survived by several daughters, living in Massachusetts. He was in his fifties, or possibly older, and was well known among the fishermen of this coast, bearing a reputation for fool-hardy courage at sea, to which, in part, must be attributed the late disaster.

While it was nothing short of criminal for Caton to attempt the trip with such a sea running, the fact stands out that the front (red) beacon of the off-shore range was not burning, and Caton could only guess whether he was in the channel, so his compass could not warn him of the drift cause by the strong cross-channel current setting to the eastward. Melvin and Bishop believe that he thought the breakers were in the channel, and that the smack would quickly drive thru them. It is customary for fishermen and others acquainted with the channel on the bar to “open the ranges,” using the lights not in line, but open.

While the loss of the men is a bitter blow to all concerned, the death of our two St. Andrews boys caused heart-ache and sorrow that will long dwell in the memory of our people. Leonard Stephens, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Stephens, of West End, was a quiet unassuming young man, attending strictly to his own affairs, and enjoying the high regard of his friends and acquaintances.

And the passing of Alfred Weller has left vacant a place in the life of his friends that cannot be filled. Clean, honest, always cheerful, always generous, he was loved by all who knew him in a way that it is given to but few to be loved. Altho young, he was a man among men, a “regular fellow.” He was making the trip not as a member of the crew, but to superintend the repairs on the vessel, and his most intimate friends, as though warned by some prescientient of impending disaster, begged him not to go on the vessel, but to make the trip by rail. However, he preferred to accompany the smack, and left them, laughing at their fears for his safety. His father, A. D. Weller, and others still continue the search for his remains and those of Leonard Stephens.