Lost at Sea
Some captains never got the chance to retire, losing their lives to the sea at an earlier age. Captain Jeremiah Grant Park (1849 – lost at sea 1916) was commanding the ship Pyrenees when she was wrecked on a large reef in the Society IslandsSociety Islands
A group of Pacific Islands in French Polynesia, probably named by Captain James Cook. She was salvaged, repaired, and renamed for the reef—the Magna Reva. Years later, the Magna Reva, still under the command of Captain Park, wired that she was in distress off the west coast of Ireland, with her boats gone and drifting before the wind. The message was received and the area searched by steamship, but no trace of the Magna Reva or her crew was ever found.
Captain Park holds a record: in 1911 his ship Acme carried 2,900,000 feet of lumber around Cape Horn. This is the largest cargo ever carried around the Horn by sail.
Captain Benjamin Coombs Pendleton (1844 – lost at sea 1888) and his wife, Mary Ann Park Pendleton, were married November 11, 1865. Mary Ann was likely quite young when she married her 21 year old husband. Over the next eighteen years they sailed together and had four sons who grew up aboard ship.
In 1888 the Pendleton family set sail on the bark Abbie Carver. One son, eleven-year-old Clarence Isaac, stayed behind in Searsport to attend school. The Abbie Carver reached Hong Kong safely that summer. With cargo aboard, the bark left Hong Kong on August 8, 1888 on route to Callao, Peru. During the voyage the Abbie Carver disappeared with all hands, leaving Clarence an orphan.
