Remembrance, redemption for Almonte’s forgotten hero
Wireless operator from Almonte stuck to his duties as steamer struck rock in 1909
On the edge of a cornfield outside Almonte, a new sign replaces a weather-beaten plywood one marking the birthplace of one George Eccles.
Eccles died in 1909 while trying to save the passengers of the SS Ohio, a 340-foot steamer that struck a rock off the coast of British Columbia in the dead of an August night, Kelly Egan writes.
In the 30 or so minutes before the ship sank, Eccles became the first wireless operator to die in a shipping accident, sticking to his duties until more than 200 passengers were safely disembarked.
Even with water lapping at his feet, he is said to have gone searching for a shipmate below decks, a decision that probably cost him his life.
Eccles’s final, desperate transmissions, as reported in multiple newspapers: “Passengers all off and adrift in small boats. Captain and crew going off in the last boat, waiting for me now. Good-bye. My God, I’m ...”
Until last week George Eccles — who had been celebrated at home and around the world as a hero — was slipping from memory on a rotting wooden sign on Concession 8, Ramsay Township.
One summer day in 2014, David Frisch was driving along a concession road outside Almonte when, on the edge of a cornfield, he spied a plywood sign with a long message, in letters ragged-edged and weather-beaten.
With fresh eyes — he was a Toronto native fairly new to the area — Frisch stopped to investigate.
The sign was marking the birthplace of George Eccles, who died in 1909 while trying to save the passengers of the SS Ohio, a 340-foot steamer that struck a rock off the coast of British Columbia in the dead of an August night.
In the 30 or so minutes before the ship sank — “in the hungry maw of the sea,” wrote one excited typist — Eccles used his wireless telegraph to alert two nearby ships to the emergency and send out the vessel’s location, while frantically sticking to his duties until more than 200 passengers were safely disembarked.
Even with water lapping at his feet, he is said to have gone searching for a shipmate below decks, a decision that probably cost him his life.
Heightening the drama were Eccles’s final, desperate transmissions, as reported in multiple newspapers: “Passengers all off and adrift in small boats. Captain and crew going off in the last boat, waiting for me now. Goodbye. My God, I’m ...”
And there the words ended. His last breath wasn’t far behind.
“Think of it: 208 people were alive that day because he didn’t cut and run,” Frisch said.
And why, he wondered, are there statues in town for James Naismith, who invented a game, or museums for sculptor R. Tait McKenzie, and George Eccles slips from memory on a rotting wooden sign on Concession Road 8, in old Ramsay Township?
“I feel like he was forgotten once,” said Frisch, as we trod softly at St. Paul’s Anglican cemetery, where Eccles is buried without a stone or marker. “I don’t think it should happen a second time.”
So he and others made inquiries, the old story about the flap of a butterfly wing that eventually moves a stone.
Last week, a group of politicians and heritage activists gathered at the old Eccles farm to unveil a brand new sign, this one coloured and laminated and meant to last.
And Frisch? He missed the unveiling, too tied up with yard work at home, but happy with the small part he’d played in restoring some visible honour to a native son.
What is remarkable about the full Eccles tale is the way he was celebrated as a hero around the world while living his own backstory of personal redemption.
In 1909, wireless transmission was a new technology, so new that Eccles is described as the first wireless operator to die in a shipping accident, just three years before the Titanic. (He is recognized in a plaque in Manhattan’s Battery Park at a monument erected to fallen “wireless boys.”)
The youngest of eight children, Eccles was born in 1873 and, as a young man, learned the new art of telegraphy from the resident CPR ticket agent in Almonte. At one point, he moved to Ottawa to be a sessional clerk at the House of Commons, but wireless communication appears to have been his passion.
The skill took him to Winnipeg to work in the rail yards, then Seattle, where he hooked on with the firm that ran the SS Ohio to Alaska. While in Winnipeg, he married Nettie Barry, had two boys and was blamed, perhaps unfairly, for a workplace accident in 1905 that no doubt scarred him. One newspaper report said he had been at his telegraph station for 36 hours straight when a communication error led to a head-on train collision that resulted in at least one fatality. He was dismissed.
(Adding to the cruel timing of the sinking, too, was the fact Eccles had given notice of his resignation and the fateful trip was to be his last one.)
In Almonte, meanwhile, he was mourned like a hero for the ages. At his funeral, the town literally shut down and the mayor and councillors led hundreds in a cortège described as “the largest in the history of the town.”
The newspapers, meanwhile, tripped over themselves with portraits of glory.
“It is surely not possible that the people of Canada will let pass unheralded the steamship Ohio tragedy,” began a piece in the Montreal Star.
“Every Canadian’s breast should swell with pride at the name of Eccles. Let us know something of the man; let us help his wife and family, if he has either. Tell us of his father and mother. Don’t let him lie at the bottom of the ocean unnoticed. Eccles has shown to the world what a man’s sense of duty is.”
Frisch is a professional actor by training. In stirring the Eccles ashes, he and a collaborator began to toy with the notion of a film or theatrical production about the heroism of the Almonte farmboy.
These acts of nobility and selflessness, he pointed out, never get old.
“What kind of person does that?” he asked about Eccles, a sombre-looking man who parted his dark hair down the middle. “And thank goodness there are people like that.”
Think of it: 208 people were alive that day because he didn’t cut and run. I feel like he was forgotten once. I don’t think it should happen a second time.