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The Eponymous Mr. Prince, R\rt Two
The Perfect Storm Ends The Perfect Life
(This is the concluding port of a two-part story
on Oliver HiUhouse Prince, for whom Athens' Prince
Avenue is named. Part One, in the August 30
Flagpole, recounted Prince’s early life, his legal,
journalistic and political careers, his landmark legal
digests, his laying out of the city of Macon, his
short tenure in Athens and the plagiarism by the
British writer Thomas Hardy of a sketch Prince
wrote.)
/"V ^ Tuesday, May 22, 1837, shortly before
U M beginning the ill-feted journey to the
North, Oliver Prince wrote a letter to his son,
Oliver H. Prince, Jr., who was at school in
Gwinnett County. To that letter Mary Prince added
a postscript containing a sentence which, Virginia
hirenstein (author of With Kindly Voices) notes,
was "very prer onitory": "My son, if I never see
you more, remember my last words would be
'Remember your Creator in the days of your
youth'... "
Two days later, Oliver and Mary Prince set out
for the North. The purpose of the trip was to visit
Bos Lon to arrange for the publication of the
second edition of his landmark compilation of
Georgia law, the Digest; but while up North the
Princes would also take the opportunity to visit
relatives and friends in New York state.
Accompanied as far as Virginia by Gov. George
Gilmer and his wife, the Princes traveled from
Athens to Wilkes county, then to Augusta and
Charleston, then by steamboat to Norfolk, then to
Baltimore and Philadelphia, then by steamboat ^
to New York city, then by another steamboat to g
Providence, and then by railroad to Boston, £
where they arrived June 9. m
During the next several months, Oliver Prince m
spent a great deal of b : s time in Boston working z
on publication of the Digest, and the rest of the
time with Mary in Watervliet and Troy, New York
where Mary Prince was staying with relatives.
Both Princes missed their children back in Georgia
terribly, and both, especially Mary Prince, grew
homesick for Athens. One of the New York cousins
with whom the Princes stayed later wrote: "(Mary
Prince] was impatient to get home, and every day
seemed to her an age until [her husband's] return
[from Boston] and their departure fren. the
north... She was continually in hopes that some
thing would transpire to hasten his return and
could scarcely be persuaded when by his own let
ters he assured it would not be sooner than he
had anticipated. The constant state of expectation
and consequent disappointment seemed to play
upon her spirits and health, and her feeling
excited my heartfelt sympathy. They remained but
a day or two after Mr. Prince's return... So great
was their impatience to get on that they could
not be persuaded to remain a day, but took leave
the morning of the day following [his] arrival...
On the day of their departure [from New York
City]... [I] went over to the Atlantic Hotel to see
them for the last time. They seemed in good
health and spirits, and impatient to depart... I
was so much grieved at parting that I could
scarcely speak a word. Cousin 0[liver] took my
hand, begged me to look at him once more, and
said in a most affectionate manner, 'Good bye, my
dear'... "
On Saturday, October 7, 1837, the Princes
boarded a steam packet ship, the 5. S. Home,
bound for Charleston. The Home had been in ser
vice for less than a year, and this was to be its
third sea voyage. A vessel of 537 tons, 220 feet
long and with a beam of 22 feet, the Home was
propelled by two paddle-wheels mounted amid
ships; in addition, like most steamboats of the
time, the Home was equipped with masts, sails
and rigging. According to Eric Hause's magazine
article, "The Wreck of the Home," the ship had
been "originally constructed for river trade, [but
then] convened into a passenger liner... The
ship's interior was paneled in deep mahogany and
cherry wood with breathtaking skylights, saloons.
and luxurious passenger quarters... [The] Home
[was] the most plush vessel of its type." Although
$115,000 had been spent converting the Home for
ocean voyages, it was equipped with only three
lifeboats and two life preservers.
When the Home cast off its moorings from the
New York wharf around 4 p.m. that Saturday after
noon, with about 90 passengers and 40 crew on
board, there was only a slight wind and the
weather was beautiful. No ot * aboard could even
have imagined that this ship was heading straight
into the path of Racer's Storm, "one of the most
famous and destructive hurricanes of the century,"
according to David ludlam's Early American
Hurricanes (1963). This cataclysmic storm, Ludlam
says, "has lived long in memory, partly from its
apt name, bui more so as a result of its extreme
duration and the immensity of its path of destruc
tion covering mote than two thousand miles."
Racer's Storm, the first recorded hurricane to rake
both the Gulf coast and the AttanLic coast, was
first encountered in the central Caribbean on
September 28 by the English war ship H M. S.
Racer, for which the hurricane was named.
Moving northwest. Racer's Storm had by
October 3 sliced through Mexico's Yucatan
Peninsula and was rushing through the Gulf of
Mexico toward Brownsville Texas, near the mouth
of the Rio Grande. As the monstrous storm
approached the coast, Ludlam says, "the dynamics
o f recurvature slowed the storm's progress and
turned it gradually into the north and then the
northeast" The terrible hurricane then roared
through the trend cf the shoreline of the Gulf,
pulverizing Galveston on October 4, New Orleans
on October 6, and Mobile on October 7 (the day
the Home left New York wharf). The storm then
headed northeast, smashing into parts of Alabama
and Florida, central Georgia, and central South
Carolina, and on October 8 entered the Atlantic
Ocean somewhere between Charleston and
Wilmington. On October 9, the hurricane crossed
North Carolina's Outer Banks at the very time the
Home was navigating the waters off the North
Carolina coast
It was around noon on Saturday, October 8,
when the snip was east of Chesapeake Bay, that
those on the Home saw the first ominous indica
tions of a storm, and by afternoon the seas were
heavy and the winds increasing steadily. The ship
struggled through the violent weather and seas
and by 3 p.m. on Sunday had sprung a leak. Soon
both crew and passengers were bailing water and
manning the ship's hand pumps. Despite these
efforts, the ship began to fill with water, and soon
three huge waves crashed over the ship, punching
ho'-es in several windows. By now the ship was in
the Graveyard of the Atlantic, as the ocean off the
coast of North Carolina has been known for 200
years. Its masts unsteady and its sails useless or
torn, its hull waterlogged, and its steam engines
weakened by the rolling of the vessel and the
rising water in the boiler rooms, the Home was
now definitely doomed. Around 8 p.m. on Monday,
the furnace fires went out, and the Home's cap
tain decided his only option was to try to beach
the ship on the shore. He headed the ship toward
the beach on Ocracoke Island, part of North
Carolina's Outer Banks.
At 10 p.m., about 100 yards from shore, the
Home struck a reef and grounded parallel to the
shoreline, exposing the ship to the full force of
the huge waves which thunderously swept over it,
one after another. With each wave, part of the
ship was swept away. Many of the female passen
gers lined themselves up on the side of the ship
nearest the shore, but with each crushing wave
some of them were carried off into the raging
surf. The captain, who survived, later wrote that
as the passengers were washed off the ship "their
shrieks and cries ... were appalling and heart
rending Leyond description."
Gov. George Gilmer later wrote about what he
had been able to discover about the final hours of
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