Anders Larsen and his wife, Maren Nissen (Jensen) Larsen and four of their children sailed on the ship, Monarch of the Sea, from Liverpool, England to New York.
The company consisted of 955 saints- including 10 different nationalities- that the ship’s officers claimed to be the largest group of members on one ship at a time. It was listed as the last ship of the season.
A fellow passenger on the ship at that time was Alma Richards Mineer Felt recorded that the ship was old, very rickety and unseaworthy, but another member described it as clean and in very good shape. In any event, they had good weather except for a fierce four-day storm. During the storm the captain tried to calm some of the passengers who were frightened by telling them that, “We’ll land in New York all right. We’ve got Mormons on board and when we have Mormons we always get through.” (Ponder that statement for a moment—one wonders how many times he did not make it through.) In any event, on the return voyage the Monarch of the Sea sank, although the captain and crew were somehow saved. I guess that there were no Mormons on the return trip.
Another passenger described how the storm got so scary that some of the crewmembers broke out the lifeboats but declared that none of the Mormons were going to get into them.
One journal entry relates that during the storm Elder Woodard, the Presiding Elder, called all the elders up on deck. He prayed and rebuked the storm and it soon subsided. Man-o-man! Is the gospel true or what!
(This is mainly taken from Dad’s family history book, page 246. You can see some of his interjections.)
Thanks for putting up this blog. I came across this while researching Johannes Larsen and his parents.
ReplyDelete