virons. (Several of his portraits h ang in the National Portrait Gallery.) In 183 0, intent on studying art in England, Osgood booked passage across the Atlantic in the 350-ron Boston, built in 1828 at Thatcher Magoun's Mystic River shipyard in Massachusetts. Servin g the Boston-Liverpool trade, the Boston sailed first to C harleston to load cotton before heading across the ocean. On the evening of 18 M ay, the Boston, under the command of Captain H arvey C offin M ackay, put to sea from Charleston. Eight days out and nearly 400 miles offshore in "fresh breezes and squally weather," by evening the Boston was laborin g in heavy seas and dodging thunderstorms. Shortly after ll PM, a burst of lightning knocked down the stewa rd and a sailor "and filled the ship with electric fluid ." The vessel appeared unscathed until someone discovered that the "cotton in the main hold was on fire, fo re and aft, on both sides, burning li ke tinder." The situation immediately became desperate: "the fire had burst th ro ugh the decks and out the larboard side of the ship . . .. All on board exerted themselves to the utmost to save the ship, but without avail- about three hours had changed one of the best ships that ever floated into a complete volcano." 2 Osgood managed to stuff notes into two wine bottles communicating location and fa te of the ship, should no one survive. Twenty-three persons, including the elderly British admi ral, Sir Isaac C offin, fo und themselves "adrift on the open ocean." A tubercular passenger, Miss Ansella Boag of Manchester, England, died in a lifeboat-the sole death from the disaster. After watching the ship burn over the course of two days, the survivors encountered a brig that transferred them to the packet Camilla, bound for Bos ton. Arriving at the wh arf, O sgood recalled: "thousands had collected to see the unh appy sufferers. The young p ainter was once more in his native place, bur without a h ome."3 In the end, Sir Isaac Coffin's gratitude and friendship would help further Osgood 's career. Osgood 's recollections of the Boston ordeal contributed to an early painting by Gloucester's Fitz H enry Lane (18 04-1865). Using a sketch drawn by the Boston's fi rst officer, Elias D avis Knight, who was as-
SEA HISTORY 150, SPRING 2015
sisted by O sgood, Lane portrayed the fiery disaster in a 19.5 -x-27-i nch watercolor-his earliest surviving work. Knight later wrote: Ag reeable to yo ur reques t that I wo uld w rite so meth ing to attach to the picrure in yo ur possession of the Burning of the Packet Sh ip Boston in 1830, yo ur obj ect I suppose is more fully to establish that it is really one of the earl iest productions of our fellow townsman . ..drawn the same year by Mr. Lane fro m a sketch I made soon after the disaster aided by one of the passengers S. S. O sgood, Esq. afterward a distinguished portrait painter. Mr. Lane had made no pretention [sic] . . . at this time as an artist and pro bably had received no instruction.4 Should Lane's watercolor be considered a "prim iti ve?" H is eminence as a marine artist began with the essentials: a ship almost to tally engulfed in flame, no apparent headway, a list to port, and crowded lifeboats in the fo reground. The artist's biographer, John W ilmerding, has suggested that the fiery scene bears elements of "Chinese scroll painting or Japanese prints."5 Lane's career was beginnin g in an era wh en portra it paintin g trumped both landscape and its cousin, mari ne painting. By mid-century, however, with photography over-running portrairure and with shifting tas tes, all that wo uld change. Boston mi niarurist Nathaniel Southworth (1806-1858) was still painting portraits at mid-century. Sailing fo r Italy in the fa ll of 1847, this Cape Cod sea captain's son certainly was awa re that several of his fellow Boston painters had survived a shipwreck months earlier. In May, lifeboats carrying landscapists Benj amin Champney (18 17- 19 07), H amilton G ibbs Wilde (1827-1884), and W inckworth Alan Gay (1821-19 10), landed on an island after the new clipper Anglo-Saxon struck a ledge off Nova Scotia, with no fa talities. 6 Irresistibly perhaps, C hampney sketched fellow passengers and the wreck. One image that included the sh ip "on her beam ends and full of water" was soon lithographed by Lane & Scott- none other than Fitz H . Lane, proprietor.
Ocean Monarch, 1848 A fter n early a year abroad , Southwo rth boarded the Boston packet Ocean Monarch in Liverpool. Underway, Southwo rth shared breakfas t with the ship's captain, Boston ian Jam es M urdock (1808-1883), wh o h ad ta ken command of the 1,300 -ton Ocean Monarch at its launch barely a year ea rlier. D esigned for the emigrant trade and built by Donald McKay of clipper ship renown, the Ocean M onarch served in Enoch Train's line of Liverpool packe ts. For th is 1848 passage, O cean M onarch had 396 souls aboard-322 of them in steerage. OffOrmshead along the northern coast of Wales, a steward sounded the alarm of "fire below," sayin g "o ne of the steerage passengers h ad m ade a fire in one of the ventilators without reflection ." Despite maneuvering the ship to position the flames downwind of the vessel and other efforts to suppress the fire, M urdock recalled, "in less than five minutes the whole stern of the ship was completely enveloped in the fiery elemen t. ... All was now a scene of the utmost confusion, noise and disorder. My orders could not be heard ... . In their maddened despair, women jumped overboard with their offspring in their arms, and sunk to rise no more. Men followed their wives in frenzy, and we re lost." Shortly, the "mizzenmast went overboard, and the main mas t soon followed." 7 The O cean Monarch tragedy was the subject of three sequential paintings by British artist Samuel Walters (1811-1882); the second of the series is reproduced here (see image next page). In the scene, the foremas t remains intact, with humanity crowded for wa rd-even on the jibboom , and rescue vessels are nearby. The vessel to the left is the cutter yacht Queen ofthe Ocean, which was first on the scene and picked up thirty-two survivors. To the right is the Brazilian naval steam fri gate Ajfonzo, also participating in the rescue. H ad not these and several other vessels been in proximity, the death roll, bad enough at 178 , wo uld h ave been worse. Alth ough a British court of inquiry "exonerated [Murdock] from all blame," some Bostonians initially harbored doubts. 8 Southworth came to the captain's defense: the Boston Evening Transcript wrote that M urdock "manifes ted the utmost coolness 29