...well

As related in "On This Day" by Robert Morgan, in November 1873, Chicago lawyer Horatio G. Spafford took his wife and four daughters, Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie, to New York, and boarded them on the luxurious French ocean liner, the S.S. Ville du Havre. The Great Chicago Fire had destroyed everything they owned, and Spafford was sending his girls to an English Academy until the Chicago schools (and their lives) could be rebuilt. As he saw his family settled into their cabin, an unease filled his mind and he moved them to a room closer to the bow of the ship. Then he said "Goodbye," promising to join them later in France.

During the night, as the Ville du Havre glided over smooth seas, the passengers were suddenly thrown from their bunks. The ship had collided with an iron sailing vessel, the Lochearn. Water poured in and the Ville du Havre tilted dangerously. Screams and prayers and oaths merged into a nightmare of unmeasured terror. Passengers lost their footing, clung to posts, tumbled through darkness, and were drenched by powerful currents of icy, in-rushing sea.

Loved ones fell from each other's grasp and disappeared into foaming blackness. Within two hours, the mighty ship vanished beneath the waters. The 226 fatalities included Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie. Mrs. Spafford was found nearly unconscious, clinging to a piece of the wreckage. Nine days later, when the survivors landed in Cardiff, Wales, she cabled her husband: "Saved, alone."

He immediately booked passage to join his wife. On the way over, during a cold December evening, the captain called him aside and said, "I believe we are now passing over the place where the Ville de Havre went down." 

Spafford went to his cabin but found it hard to sleep. He said to himself, "It is well; the will of God be done," and later wrote his famous hymn, based on those words:

     "When peace like a river attendeth my way, 

     When sorrows like sea billows roll, 

     Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, 

     It is well, it is well with my soul."

-ron beckham