Built in April 1863 by S. Gildersleeve Company of Portland, Connecticut, the wooden-hulled screw steamer America was 166 feet in length and 31.8 feet in breadth. While she previously sailed for the Baltimore and Savannah Steamship Company, at the time of her loss the 781-ton second-rate steamer was owned by W.R. Wilson.
In January 1885, the America departed New York, bound for Cuba with a cargo of general freight. Commanded by Captain F.C. Miller, she arrived safely to unload her freight and replace it with a cargo of sugar. On February 7, she departed for Boston. Traveling north, the steamer encountered a winter gale off the Florida coast three days into her return trip. A leak was sprung and the steam pumps were manned, while the America kept on her course. Later in the day, still in the clutches of the storm, Captain Miller discovered that the leak was rapidly gaining on him. Early on the morning of February 11, he turned toward the coast, hoping to beach his vessel. However, rising water soon extinguished the boiler fires and left the vessel powerless and adrift. Fortunately for the crew of the America, the prevailing winds pushed the steamer towards shore. The America’s decks were almost at the water’s edge when the ship grounded on a sandbar just offshore of land. With the vessel’s decks awash and in an unstable sinking condition, the breaking waves steadily pushed the vessel over on her side and proceeded to rip her apart. The crew barely had time to retreat from the vessel, but they managed to work through the breaking surf and safely land on the beach.
But their predicament was far from over. One of the crew summed up their situation: “Our troubles began in earnest after we landed. We had a worse time on land than we did on the sea. ” At the time, the stretch of Florida beach the crew found themselves on was desolate with no settlements in the vicinity. Once the weather improved, they rowed back to sea and worked southward to Jupiter Inlet. Rowing inland, they worked 80 miles down the St. John’s River to Sanford, whereupon Captain Miller abandoned his crew.
Captain Miller testified that they came ashore eight miles from Gilberts Bar House of Refuge, hit shore without sleep for 40 hours, turned the lifeboats over and slept beneath them with the sand flies in wet clothes. Keeper Brown found them and provided food and shelter. Miller sold all salvaged material at a beach auction for $125 to Captain Thomas E. Richards.
The crew managed to beg their way to Jacksonville and eventually secured passage to Savannah. The mayor of Savannah paid for the men’s trip to New York on the steamship City of Augusta, during which the crew shared stories of their adventure with survivors of the Italian bark Vulpini, who were also shipwrecked off Sapelo Island, Georgia, in the same storm.
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