Two Seattle Shipmates and the Hurricane That Sank a Fleet
Capt. D. Mullan and cigar-store owner L. S. Borchers, survivors of the 1889 Samoan cyclone, met in Seattle and remembered the Nipsic's escape.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There are two survivors of the Samoan disaster in this city at the present time: L. S. Borchers, who owns the cigar store in the Butler hotel, and Capt. D. Mullan, of the Mohican. At the time of the storm Capt. Mullan was in command of the United States warship Nipsic, and Borchers was a seaman on the same vessel, serving as captain of the foretop. The veterans met yesterday after an absence of nearly six years, and once more discussed the incidents of the disaster.
It will be remembered that the storm lasted during March 15, 16, and 17, 1889, and the American warships Vandalia and Trenton and the German warships Eber and Adler went down, while the Nipsic was beached and so damaged that she was never again fit to enter active service. The English warship Calliope was the only vessel that escaped, and she put to sea at the beginning of the storm and escaped injury. It is estimated that 150 seamen and officers lost their lives, not counting the crews of several native fishing vessels. Speaking of the storm, Mr. Borchers said yesterday:
'I shall never forget Capt. Mullan's conduct during the storm. At one time, when the German ship Eber broke her anchor and drifted down upon us, we believed we were as good as lost. The Eber would ride up on a wave and, it seemed, would topple right down upon us. At such times our crew would rush to the opposite side of the vessel, so as to be as far from danger as possible, but Capt. Mullan never moved a muscle; he stood his ground and issued his orders in a manner that kept the crew in check, and demonstrated that he knew no fear in the face of danger. When finally the Nipsic's anchor chain broke, he gave the order to steam ahead, and he succeeded in saving the vessel and the crew by beaching her on the side of the bay opposite from the reef where the other vessels met their fate. Only seven men from our ship were lost.'
“Capt. Mullan never moved a muscle; he stood his ground and issued his orders in a manner that kept the crew in check, and demonstrated that he knew no fear in the face of danger.”
The 1889 Apia hurricane was one of the great naval disasters of the age, but in Seattle it lived on as a reunion of two old shipmates. Their meeting shows how global events came home in port-city memory—and how a captain's calm in a storm becomes a local legend.
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