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The Wreck of the Julia Ann
By John Devitry-Smith
Between 1840 and 1890, approximately 335 organized companies carried more than eighty-five thousand Latter-day Saints by sea to the United States from around the world. Remarkably, only one of these vessels, the Julia Ann, was shipwrecked and Mormon passengers drowned. A reporter for the San Francisco Herald, upon hearing an eyewitness narrative of the wreck wrote that it exhibited "a picture of suffering, privation and distress seldom equalled in the annals of maritime disaster." The following is an account of that voyage, a look at the lives of the Mormons aboard, and a description of the ordeal that followed the shipwreck.
Australia accounted for less than 1 percent of the total world-wide Mormon migration. The first group of twenty-nine converts, under the direction of Elder Charles Wandell, left Sydney on 6 April 1853, bound for San Francisco. By January 1854, mission president Augustus Farnham and his first counselor William Hyde had set about securing a vessel for the second company to leave for Zion in April. An agreement was reached in the weeks following with Benjamin Franklin Pond, part owner of the relatively small 372-ton American barque, the Julia Ann, skippered by Captain C. B. Davis of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The fare per adult was twenty-four pounds sterling, quite expensive considering wages at the time. Elder John Perkins, for example, worked as a storekeeper in Sydney and earned two pounds five pence per week.
The first company of Mormons to sail on the Julia Ann left Newcastle, New South Wales, 22 March 1854, for San Pedro, California, under the charge of Elder William Hyde. The vessel made exceptional time for the first leg of its journey, but the latter part became "protracted and tedious" after the ship encountered a "succession of head winds for some fifty days." To replenish supplies, stops were made at Huahine, an island northwest of Tahiti, and again at Hawaii. Periods of seasickness, an outbreak of measles, and the death of a Sister Esther Allen following the birth of her child were the low points of the passage, which lasted eighty-three days. Despite these difficulties, Elder Hyde was impressed by the accommodations, crew, and sailing qualities of the vessel, remarking that "the officers generally have shown us every kindness I could reasonably look for." After arriving at San Pedro, Hyde wrote to President Farnham with the news that the Julia Ann would soon be back in Sydney, stating that "should there be a company of Saints in readiness I do not think the chances will be very frequent for finding a vessel on this trade, where the same number of passengers can be accommodated." Captain Pond was likewise impressed with the orderly conduct of the Saints and sent word to Farnham,["[I] should be glad to make another passage engagement with you, and hope that another trip may prove more expeditious and successful than our last."
