Nothing can be done to resurrect the 14 individuals lost nearly 70 years ago in the Chesapeake Bay off the coast of the Twin Beaches area. However, their memories prevail with each retelling of the sad story of the sinking of the Levin J. Marvel in August 1955.
The tragedy is historically significant for being the deadliest sailing disaster on the bay and for the legal and legislative monsoon that followed it.
Last week on Jan. 13, it was all hands on deck among the western shore’s local history enthusiasts, who crowded into Bayside History Museum in North Beach for a discussion with author and Galesville resident Kathy Bergren Smith on her latest book, “Deadly Gamble: Sinking of the Levin J. Marvel.”
The museum building played a lamentable but essential role in 1955 in the aftermath of the three-masted schooner’s sinking. At the time the building was the headquarters for the local fire department.
Sharing the dais with Smith Friday was John Ferguson, who, at the age of 16, was a passenger on the ill-fated vessel and one of 13 survivors.
The Levin J. Marvel was a 125-foot schooner that was built in Delaware during the last decade of the 19th century.
One decade before the fateful Chesapeake Bay voyage the vessel was converted from a cargo ship to one used for pleasure cruises.
“I was a landlocked boat person,” Ferguson quipped. Growing up in the middle of New Jersey, a life at sea was the stuff young Ferguson’s dreams were made of.
When he read about the availability of a cruise on the Chesapeake aboard a vintage cargo ship turned vacation cruise ship, Ferguson convinced his father, John Ferguson Sr., to book them both on board.
Smith detailed the backgrounds of the other passengers, who were all people of means. The author described them collectively as “intellectual, urban.”
The captain of the vessel was John Henry Meckling, who had purchased it the previous year.
The vessel’s state of seaworthiness would later become subject to debate. The passengers who embarked on the ship for what proved to be its last cruise were apparently not greatly concerned.
“Maybe we were all naive,” Ferguson conceded, adding that no one seemed concerned about safety. “We were all there to have a good time.”
Ferguson said he and other passengers were underwhelmed when they arrived in Annapolis to begin the cruise and beheld a less-than-majestic vessel.
“Overall, it looked very sad,” Ferguson said of the Levin J. Marvel.
The father and son shared a cabin and Ferguson kept a diary, chronicling the great time he was having as a teenager.
The vessel made stops at many popular locales along the bay’s tributaries, including the Choptank River. Passengers enjoyed stops in Oxford, Poplar Island, Cambridge and even went swimming during one stopover.
Lurking miles away was Hurricane Connie. First detected as a tropical storm in early August, Connie subsequently became a Category 4 hurricane. Before appearing in the Chesapeake, Connie clobbered the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and North Carolina.
Ferguson recalled that while there had been concern about the storm, warning flags that had been initially flown were taken down. His account depicted a scenario that changed quickly with gale force velocity, transitioning from leisure to desperateness.
He recalled in the early morning hours of Aug. 12, 1955, “water was rising, the weather was awful.”
Attempts to pump out the excess water were futile. A mayday call was made from the ship’s radio. There was no lifeboat aboard but there were life jackets.
Meckling’s plan, said Ferguson, was to loop a rope through the lifejackets so the passengers and crew would stay together.
Looking back, “It was a stupid idea,” Ferguson said. He recalled seeing his father go under.
“I floated around,” said Ferguson. “A body passed by me.” The teen clung to debris from the shattered vessel.
Smith stated the western shore communities in the area where the Levin J. Marvel sank, “came together.”
Two local men — George Kellam and Billy MacWilliams — braved the dangerous waters, making three trips in a small boat with an outboard motor to rescue six people clinging to a duck blind. The structure collapsed minutes after the last survivors were rescued, Smith said.
Other citizens also assisted in the search for survivors.
The firehouse in North Beach served as a makeshift morgue.
Months later, Meckling was charged by authorities with 14 counts of manslaughter and negligence. A U.S. District Court judge in Baltimore acquitted him of the manslaughter charges and gave him one year of probation for negligence.
Ferguson was called to testify at the trial.
Despite losing his father, “There was no animosity in my family,” Ferguson said of Meckling’s actions.
Smith told Southern Maryland News she first heard the story of the Levin J. Marvel when she was a maritime reporter covering the Coast Guard in North Carolina during the probe into the sinking of the Bounty. The replica ship sank off the Carolina coast during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Smith said during the proceedings there were references to the 1955 Chesapeake Bay tragedy.
The Levin J. Marvel incident prompted Congress to pass a measure in 1956, mandating inspections of all vessels with more than six passengers.
When asked if “Deadly Gamble: Sinking of the Levin J. Marvel” reveals any details of the incident the public may not have known before, Smith said her aim was not to do that but to make “every effort to be accurate and factual. My point was not to bring up anything sensational. It had an impact on the boating industry. It had a lasting impact.”
She reached out to Ferguson to be part of the discussion in North Beach and at a similar presentation at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels.
“It’s his story, too,” said Smith, who noted Ferguson has kept his collection of newspaper clippings and other documentation over the years.
While the once-landlocked kid is no stranger to the sea as an adult, his visit last week to North Beach was the first time he had returned to the area where the Levin J. Marvel sank.
He noted a Maryland State Police trooper found the diary floating in the water about a year after the tragedy and mailed it to him.
While young Ferguson’s journal contains none of the grim details of the tragedy, its final entry is a testament to the joy the Chesapeake Bay brings to most who travel its waters when the elements cooperate.
Ferguson said it reads, “Wow! What a day!”
Twitter: @MartySoMdNews
