It has been 36 years since scuba divers in Lake Michigan found the wreck of the 19th-century steamship Lady Elgin and, inside it a few years later, a distinctive 16-carat gold pocket-watch complete with chain and key.
From 1992 it remained in the possession of those US divers – but now a generous maritime archaeologist who felt that the timepiece belonged elsewhere has arranged for its return to the owner’s home town of Boston – in Lincolnshire.
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Inscribed initials and London manufacturer details helped to identify the fobwatch as the property of a prominent Victorian politician, Herbert Ingram. As Member of Parliament for Boston in the mid-19th century, he was a reformer who played a major role in bringing water, gas and the railway to the expanding town.
Ingram was also a newspaperman, and founded what was an internationally ground-breaking title at the time because it carried pictures – the Illustrated London News. A grand memorial to him stands in the town centre outside St Botolph’s Church, which is known locally as Boston Stump.
While visiting the USA in 1860, Ingram and his son were among some 300 people who died when the 77m sidewheel steamship Lady Elgin sank in Lake Michigan on her way from Milwaukee to Chicago. The passenger manifest was lost but Ingram was thought to have been the most prominent victim.
The disaster resulted from a collision with the lumber schooner Augusta during a severe storm on the night of 8 September. Described at the time as “one of the greatest marine horrors on record”, it cost more lives than any other open-water incident in the Great Lakes before or since.
Going on show
Last October the finders of the watch were in touch with US diver and maritime historian Valerie van Heest, who has been involved in the discovery and underwater surveying of many historic Great Lakes shipwrecks.
Co-founder of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association, van Heest was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2007. She has written six books, including Lost On The Lady Elgin to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the sinking of the ship, and has become a public face of Lakes wreck-diving.
Van Heest was set to curate a local exhibition about the Lady Elgin, and the divers offered to make Ingram’s timepiece available for display. However, feeling that it belonged back in Boston, with which she had family connections, she went one better, buying the watch and donating it to the Boston Guildhall Museum.
The museum, which had long planned to mount an exhibition dedicated to Ingram, gratefully accepted the memento to one of Boston’s favourite sons.
Van Heest has just visited the town her paternal ancestors left to come to America, taking part in an official handover ceremony for the watch and giving a presentation on the Lady Elgin.
The pocket watch that spent 155 years in the USA, most of them under water, now takes pride of place in the Ingram Exhibition at the museum and tourist information centre, open Wednesdays to Saturdays from 10.30 to 3.30.
Also on Divernet: Lake divers explore 144-year-old tug wreck, Wreck-hunters solve another Great Lakes mystery, Tragic wreck of ‘safest’ ship found in Lake Superior, Ghost Ships Of The Great Lakes – Pt 1
