W.A. Scholten Historical

The SS W.A. Scholten had been in Holland America Line's service for thirteen years when she was lost in the English Channel on November 19, 1887. She was westbound toward New York, approaching the Channel in the kind of weather that makes the Channel dangerous — fog, rough seas, November. A British steamer, the Rosa Mary, struck her. The W.A. Scholten sank quickly. More than 170 people died.

For a company that had been operating for only fifteen years, the loss was significant. HAL had built its early business on the promise that the Rotterdam-New York crossing could be made reliable, that the North Atlantic was manageable by the new iron steamships, that emigration and trade could move across the ocean on a schedule. The W.A. Scholten was, in the worst possible terms, a reminder of what the North Atlantic could still do.

The company rebuilt, as shipping companies do. New ships were ordered, new crossings were made, and the route eventually became what HAL had always said it would be: predictable, dependable, safe. But the W.A. Scholten was never recovered, and the 170 people who were lost with her were never named in any memorial the way later maritime disasters were. They sailed out of Rotterdam in the fall of 1887, and thirteen days later the Channel took them, and that was the whole of it.

— In the Wake editorial

I research 19th-century maritime disasters for a living, which means I spend a great deal of time with documents that are incomplete by nature. The 1887 sinking of the W.A. Scholten is typical of what I work with: a collision inquiry, a passenger manifest that accounts for fewer people than were likely aboard, survivor testimony collected in the weeks after, and a handful of newspaper accounts that contradict each other on the details of timing and sequence.

What the records agree on: the Rosa Mary struck the W.A. Scholten in fog, in the English Channel, on the evening of November 19. The Scholten sank in less than thirty minutes. Most of those who survived were in the lifeboats that were launched before the ship went under. Most of those who died were not.

What the records don't give me: the names of most of the dead. The manifest identifies many of the passengers but not all. The crew list is partial. The survivors were interviewed but not all were found afterward, and some accounts were never written down in any form I can now access. I can tell you that more than 170 people died in the English Channel on November 19, 1887, when the W.A. Scholten sank. I cannot tell you most of their names. The records show the ship. They don't entirely show the people.

That is always the hardest thing about this work. The ships are documented. The people are approximate.

— Dr. Frances O., maritime historian, written 2019