PS Atlantic

The PS Atlantic was a paddlewheel steam vessel built in 1849 and active on Lake Erie, typically shuttling back and forth between Buffalo and Detroit. She was 267 feet long, drew 1,155 tons, and could carry as many as 600 passengers. Westbound off Long Point on the hazy night of 19-20 August 1852, she crossed the path of the fast steamer Ogdensburg. The eastbound, propeller-powered vessel drove its bow straight into the doomed Atlantic, and then threw its engines into reverse, backed out into open water, and steamed away. Contemporary accounts agree that the Atlantic was left to her fate. The captain of the sinking vessel fell into a state of shock and panic, which was soon shared by many of the approximately 575 passengers. Much of the wreckage floated in the calm water of the disaster scene, allowing most of the paddlewheel-powered boat's passengers and crew to be saved. However, about 200 men, women,and children were lost. The loss of life made this disaster, in terms of loss of life from the sinking of a single vessel, the fifth-worst tragedy in the history of the Great Lakes.^[1]

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