By Arnold L. White
From our May 1974 issue
On Saturday morning, October 21, 1911, a crippled wreck of a schooner, towed by a small power boat, edged its way into Portland Harbor. Patched and stained trysails drooped from her two masts, and long sea grasses trailed from a hull thick with barnacles. The boat dropped anchor at quarantine, off House Island, and hoisted the yellow flag. Port officials boarded at once and hastily put in a call for the ranking port physician.
Word of the ship’s identity was soon out. Here, as if returned from the dead, was the once splendid yacht Coronet, missing for over a month and pronounced lost by maritime authorities. Reporters hurrying out to anchorage were met at the rails by gaunt, silent members of the crew, who turned their backs on cameras and refused to answer questions.
Sometime before noon, a reporter climbed aboard and encountered the deck officer, Captain Harry Whittom. “Is the Reverend Frank Sandford below?” he asked.
Whittom, gruffly acknowledging that he was, advised the reporter to leave the ship. The newsman stayed, however, and in a few minutes Whittom’s reserve weakened, as if the events of the recent weeks were more than a man could be expected to keep to himself. The schooner, returning after a long voyage to Africa, the West Indies, and Venezuela, had been in the North Atlantic since early September. Between Nova Scotia and Portland, severe storms had swept down upon the vessel, all but dismantling it. “I almost gave up hope,” Whittom said, “and if the Coronet had not been the staunchest of crafts, she would never have lived through it.” It would soon be revealed that he had not even begun to tell the worst of the story.
Many questions went unanswered throughout the day. What was the schooner doing in northern waters at this time of the year? Why, with passengers and crew ill and starving, had she not put in to some port long before? Were all hands safe and accounted for? What caused the loss of the sister ship, the barkentine Kingdom, wrecked on an African shore five months ago, her personnel since crowded aboard the Coronet?
Probably the most frequently evaded questions concerned Mr. Sandford, the yacht’s controlling figure and spiritual leader of his now emaciated flock of Shilohites, from Durham, Maine. That day, he was to spend five hours in a Portland jail, arrested in a civil suit of long standing, and awaiting sureties for his release. The case, pressed by a woman who alleged that she and her children had been held against her will on an earlier trip, was set to be heard in the courts at the January term. Few then supposed that this suit, successfully avoided for over a year, would soon be superseded by federal charges of manslaughter.
These charges were hinted at in the next day’s papers, which called the ship “death-stricken” and listed the names of four men buried at sea during the last month. The port physician, Dr. Charles Banks, minced no words in reporting that the cases of scurvy and starvation he had found below decks were the worst he had ever seen. Altogether, there had been seven deaths on the 15,000-mile cruise, including that of a two-year-old child. Two crew members, “mere skeletons,” were removed, against their will, to the Marine Hospital in Portland.
The Coronet was towed “home” to South Freeport, and other ailing men were transported from the yacht by horse and buggy to Shiloh’s own building for the sick, in nearby Durham. Sandford retired to an outlying farmhouse on the Shiloh property where, on the next Thursday morning, he was sought out and arrested once more, this time by a U.S. marshal, on charges of failing to provide food to his crew and followers, death resulting.
I learned of the Coronet’s arrival on that Saturday afternoon while taking my turn at a solitary prayer watch up on the seventh floor, in a tower overlooking the Androscoggin River. This tower was part of an enormous, rambling complex of buildings, in a community of 600 people, variously called Shiloh, the Holy Ghost and Us Society, and the Church of the Living God, whose central purpose was to “practise the total Bible” and “evangelize the world.” The Coronet belonged to The Kingdom, Inc., and the families and crew aboard her were members of the colony, all of them people I knew personally. Frank Sandford was Shiloh’s founder and leader.
Sandford had come to local attention some 18 years earlier when, after completing his education at Bates College and Maine State Seminary and serving six years in two pastorates, he had broken all denominational ties to open a bible school on a barren, sandy hill in rural Maine. The giant complex of Victorian buildings he erected there — topped by turrets, towers, colorful flags and a gold crown — were “built on faith” and yet “without owing a penny to anyone.” They caused a national stir, not altogether friendly. About 1904, the bible school expanded to include whole families who sold their property and donated the proceeds to the Shiloh corporate. Members were to “hold all things in common” as the early Christians had done.
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By the early 1900s, the sprawling Shiloh complex was home to almost 1,000 of Sandford’s followers. Sandford ordered the construction of this building, a school and dormitory, while in prison. The main chapel, pictured on the right, is all that remains of the compound today.
Prior to this expansion, my father had joined the Shiloh community, bringing his family from our dairy farm in nearby Brunswick. I was only 12 then, but later, as a young man, I remained an enthusiastic member of this group of people who believed they were chosen to usher in the imminent return of Jesus Christ.
Frank Sandford’s concept of apocalyptic events included himself as a forerunner of Christ’s ultimate victory against the forces of evil. We Shilohites believed he was God’s modern prophet. What others might regard egotism, his followers accepted as God-inspired confidence. We treasured his praise and encouragement; his passionate outbursts, whether aimed at individuals or groups, were holy anger, necessary in our training for a task so enormous it allowed no room for an uncooperative spirit.
I have no doubt that Sandford himself sincerely believed that God had spoken to him and given him divine authority to carry out evangelization of the entire world. Since the job must be done in Sandford’s lifetime, faster than was possible by the physical means of preaching or teaching, the Shiloh method must cut through time and space. So we prayed. Mild as that sounds, it was our most important occupation.
The Coronet, acquired in 1905 at a fraction of her original cost, played a major part in this worldwide mission. In the years prior to the fateful voyage of 1911, she had already been three times around the world (twice under former ownership), and three times to the Holy Land. Measuring 118 feet at water level, tonnage 153, capable of 14 knots, she was renowned in seagoing circles. This “Royal Yacht,” the “Throne on the Sea,” as Sandford spoke of his beloved ship, rode the oceans of the earth, and every coast she skirted was territory won for God by prayer.
To us, such prayer was spiritual warfare, and since it could be waged effectively only by soldiers who were pure in God’s sight, we constantly strove to overcome the inclinations of the flesh. This quest for holiness, along with Sandford’s determination to carry out God’s orders as he saw them, was the motivation which allowed the Coronet disaster finally to reach such proportions. Such “prayer,” it must be understood, was considered more effective when sailing off the coasts of countries presumably needing our intercession. And prayer, back at The Kingdom, in Maine, continued day and night without ceasing, every adult member of the colony taking his turn at solitary prayer watch.
After a summer cruise to Newfoundland and back, in September 1910, the schooner sailed to the Potomac (to pray for President Taft) and later rendezvoused in Chesapeake Bay with the barkentine Kingdom until after Christmas, when she headed across the Atlantic, bound for the Canary Islands and the coast of Africa. The ship was well supplied with food and other essentials. Medicines were unnecessary, for prayers of the faithful would heal the sick. There was a nurse, however, as well as a taxidermist (Mr. Sandford was something of a marksman), a bandmaster to lead musicians among the crew in sacred songs, and teachers for the children. Sandford’s wife and five children were with him on most of his sea voyages.
No sooner out to sea, the ship was assaulted by a December Atlantic storm. The 45-foot jib boom broke under the strain and thrashed about, in danger of hurling itself into the bow of the ship or of carrying away the bowsprit to which it had been attached. The regular captain was below, sent there in disfavor, perhaps because of a controversy with Mr. Sandford over the accidental drownings of two men the day before. The younger man in charge could not manage, and it was necessary for Mr. Sandford to humbly ask the captain to take the deck. Finally, the spar was safely cut loose and set adrift, alleviating the worst of the danger.
In unfolding the details of the voyage, I must rely heavily on the reports of friends who were aboard, and particularly on the diary of John Adamson, a sturdy, cheerful Swedish boy, one of the sailors on the Coronet. On January 1, he began his diary with the entry: “Sailed under trysails all night and day. Cleaned up some of the jib boom wreckage. Rigged up the outstay on end of bowsprit. Pumped ship.” On the next day, he wrote: “Sewed all day on the jib. Had meeting from three o’clock until midnight. Things not very pleasant. Somewhat discouraged.” Mr. Sandford had retired to his stateroom, where he was to stay for 10 days.
On January 11, John wrote: “Mr. S. with us again.” He had emerged from his rooms. They were halfway across the ocean then, and the diary had included days spent in mending sails, pumping ship, taking watches. On the 19th: “Sailing along at a good rate. Had meeting all day. Prayed for Shiloh, the Kingdom, etc. Main topmast is cracked from strain when she dives into the seas.” They were then 500 miles from the Canaries. “Washed decks; had meeting all day until midnight. Did not eat supper.”
Very quickly now, they sighted the Canaries and were soon alongside Tenerife. The Kingdom met them as planned, arriving almost simultaneously on February 1. For eight weeks, they cruised together among the islands, then went south to the Cape Verde Islands and along the African coast, the lumbering Kingdom following the Coronet into bays and treacherous rivers.
On April 3, the Kingdom ran ashore on the sandy shoals north of Bathurst, Gambia, a total loss. All 36 passengers and crew were taken aboard the Coronet, and the Kingdom was set afire as a “burnt offering to God for Africa.” Now, there were 66 on the little yacht to be fed and quartered, including 20 women and 11 children. No one was happy about the arrangement, particularly Sandford, yet it was not until six weeks later that the Coronet headed for American shores.
Months later, at the trial in Portland, Sandford said he had asked God for guidance, now that they had extra company aboard, and was told to “continue.” He also claimed that he offered freedom to anyone who wanted to leave the ship, but “not a soul left.”
One sailor from the Kingdom, George McKay, testified in court that when he and others asked to be put ashore to communicate with the American consulate, they were not given the chance to leave the ship.
A number of trips were made for water and food, and French officials from the Îsles des Los visited the yacht on April 26 to see if anything was needed. Life went on in an apparently normal way in spite of crowded decks and withering heat. An elderly man died of natural causes; a couple announced their engagement; John Adamson took navigation classes and on May 11 was made second mate.
But, on May 12, the tone of events began to change. From John’s diary: “Everybody called at 2:00 a.m. Had meeting all day until sunset, praying for Mr. S.’s leg. A bone sore. Fasted also.” Two days later: “Had meeting all day for Mr. S’s leg. Getting after things.” This meant soul-searching. Whose sin was hindering God in healing the leader’s leg? It was another week, however, before “prevailing prayer” healed Mr. Sandford’s leg. It was at this time, too, that 40 people were taken ill with “African fever,” all of them healed by prayer, as Sandford was to testify later in court.
Meanwhile, the decision was made to head for the West Indies. During part of the trip, a fast was instituted by vote of the people. Though a passing steamer had allowed them to buy food, provisions were still short and meals reduced to only a breakfast of cornmeal mush and sometimes fish soup. Rain squalls provided water. Yet the people knew how to endure a food shortage in good spirits. They had done it many times before at Shiloh.
About this time, John’s diary mentions pumping the ship as a more and more frequent job. The vessel was leaking badly. Men on night duty were given a cup of hot gruel to keep them going. Daytimes, sitting as much as possible out of the merciless sun, they mended and remended the sails. There was plenty to do, “enough to make one’s head swim.”
Early in June, they sighted Tobago and Trinidad. Still, they did not go ashore. They sailed along the coast of Venezuela and bought some fruit from a sloop. At Aruba, two small boats were sent ashore for provisions, and at Haiti, they secured a quantity of fruit, but court testimony later revealed these to be inadequate supplies. It is not clear why larger amounts of food were not brought aboard, as there was no money problem until October.
Why, when provisions were low, when people were feeling sick and dispirited, and the craft itself leaking and in need of repairs, did not Sandford go directly to a U.S. port for aid? In court, Sandford said they were moving north slowly because they were fulfilling their mission of prayer for South and Central America. What is more, they were “forbidden by God” to visit any country over which they had prayed during the previous year. This meant any U.S. or Canadian port.
It was borne out in court that conditions aboard ship had deteriorated to a point that made Sandford wary of federal inspection. At San Salvador, they were refused docking privileges because of illness on board, which was feared to be infectious. Several men expressed a desire to leave the yacht, and these were branded as “traitors” by the leader. To let them go, thereby reducing the number of mouths to be fed, would be dangerous business. Disaffected ones often tell biased stories, and by this time there was too much to tell that might be distorted by the newspapers.
Tension mounted aboard ship while nearing Chesapeake Bay. Nothing as serious as mutiny would have been entertained by these gentle people against their leader, but Roland Whittom, brother to the captain, and a ship’s officer himself, said in court that “again and again while the men were alone they would insist they must demand that food be secured.” Yet, in the presence of Sandford “our attitude would change to one of complete submission. He exerted some strange influence I cannot describe. That is the only way I can explain our failure to rise up and demand that he take us to land.”
Nevertheless, Whittom made an effort to pressure Sandford into changing his plans to go north. But the fact of hunger remained — and someone must go ashore.
On July 30, it was decided that five men would take the launch to a secluded spot on the Maryland coast and set out on foot to secure food. Since there was no gas for the launch engine, it must make its way over nearly 100 miles of ocean by sail and oars. Two men would take the train north to Maine; the other three, which included Roland Whittom, would get supplies and meet up with the Coronet between Cape Charles and Cape Henry at latitude 37 degrees. Careful instructions were given that if port authorities showed any interest in the whereabouts of the Coronet, the rendezvous must be abandoned, rather than unwittingly lead a Coast Guard cutter to the yacht.
Uneasiness now increased as the Coronet waited and watched for the return of the launch. John Adamson wrote: “Feeling the pressure very much. Had feelings of wanting to be at home. Provisions low.” That night, they prayed all night and voted again on what to do. The decision was to proceed north on Wednesday, August 9, first sending the longboat over to the “lightship for provisions.”
Meantime, the launch had landed safely, but was unable to rendezvous with the Coronet again. As Whittom later explained to the jury: “Hardly had I left the boat than I began to see things in an entirely different light, and I could not understand how we could allow the man to dominate us so.” Whittom and the two men who remained with him took the launch back to Portland. It was never clear whether or not he notified authorities about the Coronet’s whereabouts, but one story has it that two federal ships put out to search for the yacht.
John Adamson’s diary goes on without a grumble. He cites cases of fever; the elderly taxidermist dies, cause not reported; they were catching and eating cod and dolphin, but “food rather short . . . feel hungry some of the time.” Two days later: “Feeling very weak. Had to go aloft on the square sail . . . didn’t have much strength. Praise the Lord.”
Thank God for adversity, he was saying. He was not going to complain even though there was incessant pumping to do, and sleep was scant and irregular. More and more things were going wrong: the steering gear came apart, the mainsail ripped again, the binnacle loosened from the deck, a bad leak developed in the sleeve of the rudder post.
They passed Portland, close to home, but no effort was made to go in. On August 25, off Sable Island, east of Nova Scotia, Mr. Sandford talked to the crew about being “perfect.”
Now, it began to get cold. The big pump went out of commission, forcing them to use a small one which required constant pumping. Though they fished, food was short. On the 29th, they lost their fishing trawl. The weather was miserable and it was hard to dry wet clothing. On the 30th, John’s diary mentions getting hard biscuit from a “French fisherman steamer.” It was at this time that one of the men, who was later to die of scurvy, requested to be put ashore, “but nothing was done.” On September 2, they sighted Cape Pine, Newfoundland, where, according to various testimonies, there would have been no difficulty in putting in for food. It was at this time, too, that a crew member, George McKay, asked to be put ashore on some passing vessel. Sandford refused, calling McKay a shipwrecked sailor who had no rights. He said, McKay recalled in court, “that he had the right to carry me around the globe, and that the vessel was run by God.” So the vessel continued on its course toward Greenland, 600 miles north.
Now, the exact chronology of events is not clear. McKay again objected to Sandford’s plan of continuing to Greenland. Sandford later spoke of pressure from two of his passengers until at last he was forced to “disobey God” and turn south. The hardships that followed in the next six weeks were due to this disobedience, he said. Almost immediately, they encountered contrary winds, which retarded their progress to Maine. In a matter of days, a 42-year-old emaciated sailor died. Rations were reduced to hardtack, and at night the crew was provided with an eggcupful of popcorn at a time. After a midnight watch, each man on duty would go down, one at a time, to Sandford’s room to pray. Then, back at the pumps, they wept in their weakness and fainted from sheer exhaustion.
On September 20, they signaled the steamer Lapland for provisions. Over a choppy sea and at a risk to themselves, the Lapland sailors brought them milk, flour, and salt pork, which those aboard the Coronet could not keep in their stomachs. These supplies might have been enough under ordinary circumstances to last them to Portland, normally a run of three days, but gales of frightening force — four in a row — sent them out to sea. Though the Lapland radioed their position, it would be a month before anyone would see them again.
On October 16, two more men died. They were described as being in great pain and covered with sores, reduced to half their weight. On the 18th, a young man of 23 also succumbed and was buried at sea.
Five or six other men were in serious condition, including John Adamson. In the forecastle, men lay in their bunks, sleeping in their wet clothes. One toilet was inoperative, and pumps had to be manned continuously, for seams in the hull were opening under the racking strain, and water was swishing in the hold. It was under these conditions, with the larger sails ripped to shreds, that the Coronet limped into Portland Harbor on October 21.
One more entry was made in John Adamson’s diary, probably by his father: “October 28: Was taken from the Coronet . . . and removed to the Marine Hospital against his will. . . . Died there, 6:00 a.m., November 1, 1911.” John’s death was the ninth. On the morning of December 8, 1911, the manslaughter trial began in the federal court.
Sandford was sentenced to 10 years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, claiming to the end that the Coronet was directed by God in all its movements. Released in six years and eight months, he lived in partial retirement, dying at the age of 85, in 1948.
The Shiloh movement, while altered and dispersed, has continued to survive and grow throughout the country, with a membership of quiet, high-principled people. Today, the restored Coronet, her rig reduced and with auxiliary power, is berthed in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and occasionally makes summer cruises to Maine. Her homeport is listed as Portland, although she is registered to the Kingdom Yacht Club of Dublin, New Hampshire, headquarters of The Kingdom. Still rising and falling with the tide, the gallant yacht apparently has better withstood the hardships of her desperate voyage than did the devoted people she once carried under the direction of their leader, Frank Weston Sandford.
Fast Forward
Built in 1885, the 133-foot Coronet quickly garnered acclaim for its swiftness, dependability, and luxuriousness. It won a trans-Atlantic race to Ireland, earning front-page coverage in the New York Times, and made several circumnavigations of the globe. Along the way, it hosted political dignitaries, wealthy industrialists, and scientific researchers. Frank Sandford bought Coronet for The Kingdom in 1905, and following the disastrous prayer voyage, the schooner spent most of the rest of the century in harbor. Rhode Island’s International Yacht Restoration School acquired it in the 1990s and commenced major repairs. In 2004, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Relaunched in 2022, Coronet now resides at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport Museum, where it can be viewed while restoration continues. The current ownership group is Crew, a New York–based restaurant operator whose locations include historic ships docked in the city. Those boats are stationary, but the group says it wants to race Coronet across the Atlantic again once the rebuild is complete.
The Shiloh congregation went through something of a rebuild too in the years since Arnold L. White’s 1974 story (and his 1979 book, The Almighty and Us). In 1990, a Down East feature by longtime contributor Jeff Clark took in the fuller sweep of Shiloh’s history and checked in on the remaining worshippers. Clark described a service, led by then-pastor Ron Parker (pictured here), who was descended from some of Sandford’s original followers, as relatively mainstream — “practically indistinguishable from a Baptist service.” The pastor told Clark, “I certainly don’t preach the doctrine according to Frank Sandford. Membership is not based on believing in him. It is based on believing in Scripture. . . . Nobody gets to Heaven believing only in Mr. Sandford.”
Later, in 1998, the Shiloh congregation split from The Kingdom. Services are still held every Sunday in the chapel that Sandford built. The Kingdom, too, still operates today, with five churches scattered across the eastern U.S. — Will Grunewald
