AUTHOR’S NOTE: Mary L. Penney and a group of other gold-seeking stockholders in the Kings County Mining Company of Brooklyn, New York, sailed for Alaska in mid-February, hoping to strike it rich. Their plan called for sailing around Cape Horn and then north, first to San Francisco and then to the Yukon River.
Barnegat blues
Spiritualism was still in vogue in the late 1800s in the United States and Europe, and Brooklynite William F. Penney was a strong adherent of the movement. During one Spiritualism meeting that he attended with his wife Mary, the medium in charge revealed a strong visual sense she was perceiving from Mary: “All I can see is sky and water,” she said, “sky and water.”
Mary’s husband and her five children were to recall those words in the middle of 1898, well after Mary had boarded a three-masted bark called the Agate in Brooklyn harbor in mid-February and had sailed away on a gold-seeking expedition headed for Alaska.
At first, however, the Penney clan experienced a few weeks fraught with the possibility that Mary might never be returning home.
Just after noon, on Monday, Feb. 21, an ocean tug owned by the Luckenbach Wrecking Company attempted to respond to a distress call from an unidentified vessel caught in a gale off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Stormy seas prevented the tug from approaching the vessel, and within two hours the other vessel had disappeared from sight.
Luckenbach officials were alerted, and they dispatched two more tugs to search the area, but they found only debris. Also, on Monday, a British vessel named the Kingsland, sailing north, spotted miles of wreckage strewn along the coast near a New Jersey cape known as Barnegat. Initial reports expressed concern that the debris had come from the Agate.
In addition to 30 passengers, including Mary Penney, the Agate carried a crew (depending upon the report) of eight to 15 men and its captain, Thomas Suttis, an experienced Canadian-born mariner in a family of mariners.
Officials of the Kings County Mining Company — owners of the Agate and in charge of the expedition — quickly rallied to assure family members that the wreckage did not belong to the Agate and that their ship and those aboard were just fine.
Nevertheless, they did their due diligence: Trustee Adolph Sussman called on the Maritime Exchange in Manhattan and was told that the story of a distress call was “pure fiction.” Sussman smelled a rat, as reported by the Brooklyn Eagle: “Mr. Sussman said that he believed that the story was the work of some of the people who had instituted suits against the vessel before it sailed and were chagrined over their failure to delay the expedition.”
Insurance broker George H. Stetson also tried some reassurance: “Any seaman who knew anything about his business and who wanted to strike the course to Cape Horn (the Agate’s destination on its way to San Francisco) would first take an eastward course and strike latitude 40 by longitude 40. This would fetch them to the Cape Horn course. This is just what the captain of the vessel probably did, and it is my opinion that the vessel is (still) safe on its course.”
Meanwhile, company secretary Harry Pons headed for Barnegat, just to be sure. From there, he sent a telegram back to company headquarters, according to the Times Union newspaper, in which he “absolutely” denied that the wreckage had come from the Agate.
Still, anxious family members remained worried and for weeks kept up their inquiries, while company officials kept waiting for communication from the vessel itself. They continued fretting until April 7 when Sussman announced that he had received word that the bark Agate had been positively sighted off the coast of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), with all well aboard.
When the ship put into port on May 2 at the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo — less than halfway to Alaska — Mary Penney was able to send her first message home, including this observation: “Sky and water — that’s all I see — sky and water.”
Mess in Montevideo
On about the same day that the Agate had left the harbor in Brooklyn, the U.S.S. Maine, a second-class battleship sent to protect American interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain, exploded and sank in Havana’s harbor, killing about two-thirds of its crew. The United States blamed Spain, created a naval blockade of Cuba and initiated the Spanish-American War, which began just before the Agate sailed into Montevideo to resupply its stores of fresh water.
Since the vessel was already behind schedule because of its delayed departure from New York, passengers and crew had hoped for only a brief stop before they headed around Cape Horn and began traveling north on the Pacific Ocean. But because of the war and a perceived threat from the Spanish torpedo boat, the Temerario, the American Consul in Montevideo ordered the Agate to remain in port.
About 10 days later, Captain Suttis managed to sneak the ship out of the harbor under cover of darkness and avoid the Spanish vessel, but before that happened, two of the Kings County Mining Company stockholders abandoned the expedition altogether.
Of the passengers on the Agate, a trio of young men had come from New York City’s populous Eastern District. All three men were similarly named: Frederick Kohlmeier, Fred A. Meyer and Fred Muller. In order for the 24-year-old Kohlmeier to join the expedition, his grandfather, a wealthy New York builder, had given him $800, and his father (William Kohlmeier, also a well-to-do builder) had provided Frederick with a complete miner’s outfit.
In Uruguay, young Kohlmeier wasted those gifts, and he also apparently convinced an unnamed companion — likely one of the other Freds — to join his prodigal behavior.
At Montevideo, the pair left the ship, spent lavishly and then, after Kohlmeier used his family’s good name to borrow an additional $200, engaged passage back to the United States. In mid-June, they arrived in New York, where his father was not pleased to see him.
Father and son engaged in a row at the father’s home, and William Kohlmeier subsequently went to the Lee Avenue Police Court to obtain a summons against Frederick on a charge of disorderly conduct.
In court on June 16, Frederick claimed, “The reason I came back was because I was afraid of the warships.” The judge was unconvinced. Although he dismissed the case, he told the son to stay away from his father and cause him “no further annoyance.” He also warned Frederick that if he failed to comply, the judge would not hesitate to send him to jail.
At the same time this scene was playing out in a New York courtroom, the Agate was cruising northward along the Pacific coast of the Americas. Passengers and crew of the three-masted bark sailed safely into the harbor at San Francisco on Aug. 12, optimistic and joyous, but months behind schedule.
One of the first things Mary Penney did after stepping onto dry land was contact her family. A dozen days later, the Brooklyn-based Daily Star featured this double-decker headline: “MRS. PENNY [sic] HEARD FROM: She Telegraphed Her Husband that She Is in San Francisco, California.”
Next stop: Alaska.
The New York American newspaper dedicated a large portion of its front page on Feb. 24, 1898, to a story about the possible wrecking of the Agate, which was carrying about half of the members of the Kings County Mining Company. The man labeled “The Captain” in this illustration was Thomas Suttis.
