A Tale From the Sea

This is the story of a cousin lost at sea.  Ho Hum you might think.  Gloucester has suffered thousands of such losses but  in every person’s life there is a story  and this is one of the many heroic tales of the sea.

John Handran was lost at sea aboard the Schooner Cleopatra Dec 26, 1885.  He left a wife and 3 very young children just a day after Christmas that year.  I don’t know how long the fishing trip had been at the time of the accident, but it is certain he and the rest of the crew were not home for Christmas that year.

This is a picture from Fred Bodin  of that time period and I like to imagine it reflects what it must have looked like seaside in the 1880s in Gloucester

The Cleopatra story inspired an epic poem “The Ballad of the Cleopatra” available on Google Books from Cornhill Magazine .  I encourage you to read it when you have a chance as it gives an interesting viewpoint from a fisherman’s perspective.  A storm came up and swept 3 men into the ocean, John Handran was one of them.  Another crewman died on the deck.  A distress flag was raised and seen by a British vessel, the Lord Gough.  As they prepared to send a rescue boat, the distress flag was taken down.  The potential rescuers were confused by this but continued their mission.  Apparently the captain and crew of the Cleopatra took down the distress flag so as not to put other sailors in danger by attempting to rescue them.  This seems a very brave decision to me and speaks to the nature of Gloucester fishermen.  The remaining crewmen were rescued and delivered to the Philadelphia port.

This information is from the Out of Gloucester archives.

I believe this to be the same John Handran of Gloucester who, a few years earlier, was  recipient of a peacetime Medal of Honor awarded by President Ulysses S. Grant for heroism in rescuing a shipmate who was swept off the US Steamer Franklin near Lisbon Portugal in 1876.  From the New York Herald:  “”poor Henry O’Neil seemed about to pay with his life the penalty for having gone to sea without learning to swim” when two sailors “were soon in the water making for the spot.  One of them, Edward Madden, held a rope’s end.  The rope proved too short, the icy waters chilled him, to let go the rope was to lose his own life, and he returned.  The other, John Handran, seaman, kept on with vigorous strokes.  This was not the first time he had risked his life to save a shipmate.  As he approached the drowning man with admirable coolness he kept clear of his struggling efforts to clutch, swimming round until he could grasp him with his right hand just so as to keep his mouth above water”.

Such bravery boggles the mind.  Such acts have repeated themselves over and over again throughout fishing’s long history in this area.  This story is representative of the proud heritage of Gloucestermen throughout time.  I am proud to have descended from such men.