Death’s Icy Grip: The Shipwreck of Lydia Ingraham

by Roger Weston

In 1850, one of the most shocking shipwrecks in history unfolded near Owl’s Head Light on the coast of Maine.

It was December 22 near midnight. A storm was raging in the dark of night. An anchored schooner was rocked so violently that her cables snapped. The storm thrashed her around like a toy sailboat in a raging river. She crashed over high waves and plunged down into troughs where waterfalls of saltwater blasted milky froth over every exposed inch of her ship-works. Windblown spray froze on contact. 

The doomed schooner was driven across the bay, and for unknown reasons the captain was not even onboard. The only people manning the drifting vessel were Richard Ingraham, his fiancé Lydia Dyer, and deckhand Roger Elliot. The two crewmen could not control the drifting, storm-tossed vessel, which ran aground on rocks just offshore.

As the ship took on water, Lydia edged out of a hatchway and onto the slippery deck with a comforter and a large blanket. Ingraham wrapped the blankets around her as protection against the freezing winds. He put an arm around her and escorted her carefully along the rail as the storm soaked them.

The lovers found a sheltered part of the deck against the taffrail where they crouched and shivered like wet dogs. The schooner shook and shivered as waves thrashed her sides and decks. Wind shrieked through the rigging like the howls of enraged demons.

Sea spray was constantly freezing in the rigging and on every inch of exposed surface. Even the wet clothes of the victims hardened with ice.

“Wrap the comforter around yourself and snuggle against the taffrail,” Ingraham told Lydia.

Ingraham covered himself with a blanket and lay down next to his fiancé.

Elliot suddenly appeared on decks. He grabbed a door jamb to steady himself. His hair whipped in the wind. He made his way to the others.

With a blanket he brought up from below decks, he lay down next to Ingraham. However, Elliot did one thing different. He pulled his knife from its sheath and kept it handy so that he could chip through the ice of his frozen blanket and ensure he could breathe and escape if the situation became even more dire.

For hours, waves relentlessly broke over the rails, and sea spray continually showered the frozen vessel. Throughout the night, Elliot shook violently and endured through misery and psychological terrors. He repeatedly saw himself as a ghastly corpse sinking in the ocean and devoured by crabs. Besides nightmarish visions, his blood ran cold in his veins. His mind sifted over his life as he contemplated the injustice of having his life robbed from him by fate.

He listened to crashing waves of the sea that he had always loved and which he now saw for what it was—utterly uncaring and probably malevolent in the extreme. Somehow he survived the night though he feared that frostbite and hypothermia were closing in. 

Morning brought a new situation. As the tide turned and went out, Elliot lay there shivering and compulsively chipped away at his ice prison.

His fingers were so numb that he could barely hold his knife, but eventually, he chipped away enough ice to break away a six-inch thick, two-foot long section. This created an escape hatch where he was able to slide out of his icy grave. After struggling to his feet, Elliot could see Ingraham and Lydia. They appeared to be dead and frozen beneath six inches of solid ice. He could see Lydia’s face, and her expression looked serene as if she’d died peacefully. Her hair spread out around her face like a fan. Yellow locks of frozen hair spread out around her face like rays of sunshine. Her blue-gray complexion brought a scripture into Elliot’s mind: “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.”

Shivering, he spoke earnest words for their immortal souls. His numb lips mumbled the 23^rd Psalm.

Elliot could see clearly that the tide had gone out and the ship was left on the rocks, the water having pulled back. He was amazed to see that he could simply walk ashore. The danger of the sea had retreated some, her cold depths receding. What had been a raging bit of offshore storm at sea was now a beach with rocky hills and jagged saddles.

Staggering ashore, he threw a look back at the tragic fate of his beloved ship. With sadness he saw that the schooner that had broken in two. It looked like two icebergs had washed ashore.

After Elliot turned his back to the sea, a rogue wave rushed him and slammed him down, his head striking a rock. He lay there unconscious and facing certain death. Only the splash of another wave restored his senses. He was sufficiently revived to regain his feet and struggle to get beyond the surf zone.

Several times, he slipped on the frozen shore and fell on the solid ice. Pain brought flashes of heat to wounded bones deep within his half-frozen flesh. It was hard to walk and harder to get up off the ground because he wore hard, frozen clothes that chaffed against his skin and limited his movement. His numb feet felt like aching blocks of ice.

Elliot pressed on through the snow and ice but found his way blocked at the high-tide mark by long, sloping snowdrifts at the beachhead. With no choice but to endure, he slogged through the deep snow, counting his progress by inches. Step-by-step, he pushed and dug through massive drifts.

Finally, he found a roadway, but he had no idea which way to go. He knew that if he guessed wrong, he would surely die of hypothermia before he found salvation. However, he was able to see the direction of the hoof-prints of horses.

One-step-at-a-time with numb feet and toes, he followed the hoof-prints in the snow. Every time he fell, he climbed back onto his miserable feet. His frozen pants chaffed against his knees. He eventually found his way to Owl’s Head Light, but the door to the tender’s house was locked and the windows shuttered. Nobody was there. Elliot kept on and on down the road. His inner dialogue was making peace with his maker because his intuition told him a grim tale of approaching death. It was as if he was walking through an arctic dream of tragic destiny.

Then the unexpected rose up like a mirage in the vast white silence of a wintery desert. Through the frigid snap morning he heard sleigh bells. As the mirage emerged in the winter wonderland, he saw horses pulling a low, one-horse box-sleigh on runners. That was the last thing he remembered as he lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground.

The sleigh master was Light Keeper William Masters of Owl’s Head Light. Masters lifted Elliot into the sleigh and drove the horses toward the lighthouse. He carried Elliot inside and lay him on the floor. He cut Elliot’s frozen clothes off his freezing body. He put the poor man to bed and covered him with snug blankets.

Half-conscious, half-delerious, Elliot was ranting incomprehensible nonsense. Masters tried to calm the panicked victim, assuring him that he would make it. Then Masters realized what his patient was saying.

Elliot was making desperate pleas for two other shipwreck victims.

“You have to get them!” Elliot pleaded. “Before the tide comes back!”

“I will.”

“Hurry! They took shelter under the taffrail.”

“Just calm down and get some sleep. I’ll leave right now.”

“I had to come ashore! I didn’t want to leave them.”

“It’s okay,” Masters said. “I’m leaving now. Go to sleep.”

Masters rang the lighthouse bell, which signaled to every able-bodied man in the area to hurry for a rescue effort.

The tide was rising as a dozen men boarded the doomed wreck. With picks and axes they hacked at the ice that was covering the dead sailor and his beautiful fiancé. A fire axe hacked into the ice inches from Lydia’s lovely face which the men could see under the ice like a face behind a window. Soon the big picturesque piece of ice was broken free.

Ten men carried the slab of ice with its frozen lovers. They handed the slab over the rail and down to men who stood waist deep in the rising surf.

“They’re dead alright,” one of the men said. “At least they’ll get a Christian burial.”

“We’ve got to try and bring them back to life,” said another.

A couple of the men scoffed at the absurd prospect, but most of them agreed they must try.

The huge ice slab was carried ashore and to the sleigh. Men strained and groaned as they loaded it onto the timbers. A whip snapped in the winter wind. The horses pulled their load through snow as they trotted down the path. Flying snow kicked up from hooves and covered the ice slab until Lydia’s face and floating locks of hair were no longer visible beneath the ice.

At the lighthouse, the slab was carried inside into Master’s kitchen. Over and over, water was poured over the ice. At first it was cold treatment, but each bucket brought warmer and warmer water. The ice slowly melted off the doomed sailor and his tragic fiancé. Soon her green eyes were exposed to the air and her golden wet hair stuck to her face and gathered in bunches around her ears.

Masters and three helpers slowly and carefully moved the hands and feet of their patients. As arms and legs gained in flexibility, the rescuers worked faster, yet with tenderness. He and others worked to massage their bodies. This tiring work was continued for half an hour.

Then Masters was startled. He jumped back from his patient and gasped in horror.

“What is it?” asked another.

Masters pointed. “Her fingers moved!”

Rescuers looked at the body with wonder and amazement and then at each other. 

“Keep working!”

Lydia was the first to recover. After hours of constant attention, she made small movements. Ingraham took an hour longer to come out of his coma-like state.

“Where are we?” he asked.

Masters told him the whole story.

Ingraham looked at Lydia, and she gave him a fragile and slight smile.

The two patients were covered in blankets and allowed to sip lukewarm water. By the next day they recovered sufficiently to eat a tiny meal. Weeks passed in painstaking rehab before they could walk around. Months passed before they made full recoveries.

Eventually, Ingraham and Lydia were married. The wedding was held in early spring of the following year, and their special day was visited by a late snowstorm.

Roger Elliot never went to sea again.