Posts in Shipwreck Stories at AFAM
Shipwreck Stories: UNY at the American Folk Art Museum
Thomas Chambers, Storm-Tossed Frigatec. 1836-45Oil on canvas21 1/16 x 30 3/8 inches (53.5 x 77.2 cm)National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.365-2008-4Photo courtesy: Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Thomas Chambers, Storm-Tossed Frigate

c. 1836-45

Oil on canvas

21 1/16 x 30 3/8 inches (53.5 x 77.2 cm)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

365-2008-4

Photo courtesy: Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Nineteenth century maritime painter Thomas Chambers was not only inspired by real NYC disasters like the wreck of the Bristol, in which some sixty passengers perished within sight of Rockaway Beach, but also by ill-fated vessels in works of literature. In conjunction with the Thomas Chambers show at the American Folk Art Museum, we asked you to do the opposite, drawing inspiration from Chambers’ paintings, as well as other NYC shipwrecks, for our Shipwreck Story Contest. Our winner was Rachel Dix, who to our surprise and delight, turned out to be a 16 year old high school student from Virginia. 

Rachel, Sara Weiss, Claire Shefchik and David Hollander all read at the Shipwreck Stories event in the Museum's atrium. The audience, which Museum staff estimated to be about 200 strong, were also treated to the shipwreck-themed song stylings of Lindsay Sullivan and the Sailors, Richard McGraw, and a performance by Aaron Diskin (Golem / Lycaon Pictus) and Annette Kogan (Golem) of an original musical fragment by Ben Greenman (editor at the New Yorker and author of several books of fiction). 

Please enjoy these videos of the event!

Underwater New York Shipwreck Story Contest winner Rachel Dix reads her winning entry, The Storm, at the American Folk Art Museum, Friday, March 5, 2010. Read The Storm and see the Thomas Chambers painting that inspired it here.

Lindsay Sullivan and Doug Keith perform original shipwreck-themed songs.

Richard McGraw performs a set of shipwreck-themed original songs and covers at the American Folk Art Museum Friday March 5

Aaron Diskin and Annette Ezekiel Kogan give a rousing singalong performance for Ben Greenman's musical fragment.

FRAGMENTS FROM JEANNETTE! THE MUSICAL

This musical was written as a tribute to the June 1881 sinking of the USS Jeannette, which was seeking passage to the North Pole through the Bering Strait. It was originally published in the New York Herald—whose publisher, James Gordon Bennett., Jr., owned the Jeannette and co-financed the expedition—in 1891, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the tragic event. Unlike my more modern musicals, this one was written in the fashion of a Harrigan/Hart production; in fact, a critic at the time suggested that Harrigan play the role of the sailor, and that “seafaring is not so distant from The Mulligan Guards’ Surprise as one might imagine.” Because the musical itself was long—more than five hours—I have chosen to reproduce only its centerpiece, the mournful, jaunty “Sailor’s Overture.”

[The ghostly figure of a SAILOR appears. Icicles hang from his beard.]

SAILOR

The HMS Pandora
Her name contained a warning
Perhaps we should have heeded it
And avoided needless mourning

A few years after she was built
James Gordon Bennett, Jr. bought her.
From Le Havre to San Francisco:
That was where he brought her.

Bennett was a wild man
A rich man who lived fast
He published New York’s Herald
His fortune was quite vast

He paid for great adventures
He was a roguish dreamer
He placed his money and his trust
In this bark-rigged steamer

He renamed it the Jeannette
And said he couldn’t wait
To sail up to the North Pole
Via the Bering Strait

CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually

Just above the Napa River
In Mare Island Navy Yard
The Jeannette was given boilers

Her hull made thick and hard

In June eighteen seventy-nine
She departed from the dock

The rain was cold and cutting
It was half past ten o’clock

She sailed under Naval blue
Though she was a peacetime ship

Twenty-eight brave officers and
Three civilians made the trip

The captain was one George DeLong
An upright Navy man
He pledged himself to fully serve
His patron’s fateful plan

The engineer on the Jeannette
He was called George Melville
The names of these fine sailors
They stir my spirit still

CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually

It took a month or maybe more
To reach the Norton Sound

We sailed away from St. Lawrence Bay

The crew was Arctic-bound

We passed by Herald Island
As some like to tell it
It was named for Bennett’s paper
But in fact Henry Kellett

Back in eighteen forty-nine
Had landed there and named it.
Walked around it, kicked some stones,

Dropped a flag and claimed it.

Near Herald Island, in the sea,
Was Wrangel Island, small and cold,

DeLong took us east of there
His instincts were too bold.

CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually

Then came that fateful winter day

It began like any other
One sailor dreamed of flying,

Another of his mother

Another still of sitting
On a warm beach way down south.
The name of his young girlfriend
Lay gently in his mouth.

“Come up, come up,” the captain said.
“We’re locked into the ice.”
It hemmed us in on both our sides
And held us like a vise.

At first we didn’t mind it
Our eyes stayed on our goal
We were drifting Northwest
Ever closer to the Pole

CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually

Our instruments were working
Our spirits remained high
We took our soundings and positions

From the stars in the sky

In May of eighty-one we spied
Some islands in the distance
We gave them names and marveled

At our craft’s persistence

But marveling is irony
And pride precedes a fall
And soon enough our progress
Had slowed down to a crawl

Now the ice was pressing in
And crumpling the hull
The way a great and fearsome weight
Can crush a grown man’s skull

CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually

We jumped off the Jeannette

Unloaded our supplies
Dragged three small boats to safety
We heard our ship’s last cries

She sank on June 13th

In the first hours of dawn
We put our packs upon our back
And went to soldier on

We searched for open water
Our hope was strong at first

Some men were felled by cowardice
And others by their thirst

The three small lifeboats we had manned
Eventually broke through
One drifted off, forever lost,
Thus leaving only two.

CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually

Of those two boats, one came to shore,
George DeLong was inside.

Some scouts were sent to go ahead
The men who stayed all died.

The third boat reached the Lena River
Its sailors lived. But then

Melville turned around and went
Back for the other men

Beneath the frozen corpses
Were the expedition’s notes.

Those he brought to safety with
A fleet of rescue boats.

Twenty men were lost in all

Just thirteen kept their lives
Thanks to Melville’s bravery
Our memory survives

CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually

Time has kept on moving
It’s what time tends to do
And we wish to be remembered
The lost men of that crew.

So I claim your memory for
The men of the Jeannette

We are all that’s happened and
What hasn’t happened yet

Once a year, think of those who
Expired in polar snow,
Who stayed upon its surface

And slowly sunk below

I was among the twenty
I perished with a groan.
The ice was all around me
And I was all alone.

CHORUS
A ship can sail
A ship can float
A man can live
Aboard a boat
A man can live
Upon the sea
But all men die
Eventually