It is well with my soul

with VILLE DU HAVRE

I. Background

Horatio Spafford (1828–1888) was a successful businessman, a native of Troy, New York, who had moved to Chicago in 1856. By trade, he was a prominent lawyer specializing in national and international law, including work as Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at Lind University, but he also had extensive real estate holdings, was a Sunday School teacher in his Presbyterian church, was an ardent supporter of the Chicago YMCA, and was a trustee and benefactor of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest (now McCormick Theological Seminary). Spafford’s circle of influence included the evangelist Dwight L. Moody and his musical associate Ira Sankey.

Over the course of a decade, from 1871 to 1880, Spafford experienced a string of disasters, comparable to the biblical Job. Early in 1871, Spafford had joined a group of investors in purchasing large swaths of territory in Chicago, especially in Lincoln Park and the northern lake shore. But in October 1871, an enormous fire tore through three square miles of Chicago, destroying Spafford’s real estate investments and his law office.

In November of 1873, in spite of being mired in debt, Spafford arranged a lengthy vacation for his family in Europe, intending to spend time in France and Switzerland. The travelling party included Horatio and his wife Anna, their four daughters (Annie, 11; Margaret, 9; Elizabeth, 5; and Tanetta, 2), Mademoiselle Nicolet, who was a friend of Anna’s and was a governess for the young girls, Willie Culver, a young boy of age 12 who was being sent to visit his grandparents in Germany, and Mrs. Daniel Goodwin, friend and neighbor to the family, with her three children.[1] They would be sailing aboard the Ville du Havre, a luxurious ship favored for these Atlantic voyages.

The Ville du Havre was formerly the Napoleon III. She was altered and enlarged last winter, and came here [to Chicago] for the first time as the Ville du Havre on the 9th of April, making the passage from Brest [France] in nine days and twenty three hours. With the exception of the Great Eastern, she was the largest steamer that ever entered this port. Her dimensions were 430 feet by 48 feet. Her carrying capacity was 3,500 tons, freight and measurement. Her main saloon was fitted up with marble wainscoting of three varieties, the upholstery was velvet, and the wood-work was carved in the most unique designs. Her engines were compound direct-acting, of 3,200 horse-power, and made in England.[2]

Shortly before leaving, Horatio was contacted by a man who was interested in buying some of the land from among the fire-damaged properties, so he opted to stay behind to facilitate the sale. Among the other passengers on the ship was a group of French pastors who had been attending a conference and were returning home, so Horatio asked Pastor Lorriaux to watch over his family. The ship set sail on 15 November 1873, carrying 313 passengers and crew.

In the early morning hours of 22 November 1873, at 2 a.m., the Ville du Havre was inexplicably struck squarely by the Loch Earn, a Scottish iron ship sailing from London to New York, killing some of the sleeping passengers instantly. A news report from the time described the horrifying scene:

Men, women, and children, clad only in their night dresses, rushed frantically from the saloons and cabins on to the deck, where their frenzied cries mingled with the rushing of the water as it poured into the sides of the steamer. So severe was the force of the collision, which, as stated above, was caused by the Loch Earn, that a hole 12 feet deep was cut in the deck of the Ville du Havre, and her iron plates for 25 or 30 feet were completely smashed and broken in. . . .

The scene on deck was of the most heartrending description. The majority of the passengers were utterly unnerved by the frightful calamity, and were hardly able to stretch a finger even to save themselves. Groups of friends were huddled together, trying from their mutual presence to gather fortitude, others fell on their knees in silent and audible prayer, while not a few gave themselves up to the wildest demonstrations of hopeless despair. The water still kept pouring in at the fearful opening which had been made in the vessel’s side, and the feeling soon took possession of almost every one in the ship that the time for safety was short indeed.

While the deck was thus covered with the thinly-clad passengers the mainmast gave way, and with a crashing noise it fell bringing with it the mizenmast down on two of the [life]boats, smashing them to pieces, and falling among the miserable occupants of the deck killed a number of them outright, while others received frightful injuries. . . . 

In the midst of all this excitement and dull-eyed despair, the crew wrought vigorously under the orders of the Captain, who had hurried on deck immediately after the first shock of the collision, and the whale boat was cleared away and lowered under the command of the second lieutenant, and seven of the crew got into the captain’s gig. These boats had hardly got clear of the ill-fated vessel, which was fast settling down, when she gave a lurch ahead, and went down like a shot, at a time when there were upwards of 300 persons on board. The captain stuck by the vessel till the last, and was heard to order the boats to stand clear, just as the vessel made its last fatal plunge. Only twelve minutes had elapsed from the time of the collision until the Ville du Havre went down.[3]

Mrs. Spafford afterward wrote of her perspective in a letter to her friend Mary Miller, 24 December 1873:

The dear children were so brave. They died praying. Annie said to Maggie and me just before we were swept off the steamer, “Don’t be frightened, Maggie, God will take care of us, we can trust Him; and you know, Mama, ‘The sea is His and He made it.’” These were her last words. Maggie and Bessie prayed very sweetly.[4]

Bertha Spafford Vester, a daughter born to the Spaffords a few years later, described what happened next, according to what she learned from her mother:

As mother was pulled down she felt her baby torn violently from her arms. She reached out through the water and caught Tanetta’s little gown. For a moment she held her again, then the cloth wrenched from her hand. She reached out again and touched a man’s leg in corduroy trousers. . . . She had been rolled under and down, and as she rose unconscious to the surface a plank floated under her, saving her life. . . . The splash of an oar brought her to consciousness. She was lying in a boat, bruised from head to foot and sick with sea water, her hair heavy with salt and her thick dressing gown in ribbons. She knew, with no need of being told, that her children were gone.[5]

Ira Sankey, who had been with D.L. Moody conducting revival services in Edinburgh when the disaster happened, claimed he later met the man who saved Mrs. Spafford:

One of the sailors of the vessel, named [Loch Earn]—whom I afterward met in Scotland—while rowing over the spot where the vessel disappeared, discovered Mrs. Spafford floating in the water.[6]

The survivors of the disaster—87 in total, from the earliest accounts—took refuge aboard the Loch Earn, but with that ship also being badly damaged, they were forced to hail another passing vessel, the Trimountain, which carried most of the survivors to Cardiff, Wales. The Loch Earn attempted to continue on its journey, only to be abandoned later by its crew, who were rescued by the British Queen. The survivors aboard the Trimountain reached Cardiff on 1 December 1873 and brought with them the news about the wreck. The following morning, 2 December 1873, Mrs. Spafford managed to send a brief telegram to her husband, saying “Saved alone,” mentioning the loss of the children, the Goodwins, and Willie Culver, and saying she would go with Rev. Lorriaux to Paris. This telegram was preserved by Mr. Spafford and is now held by the Library of Congress (Fig. 1).

Horatio Spafford immediately set out to find Anna. In a letter he wrote to his sister Rachel, he described the experience of passing over the spot:

On Thursday last we passed over the spot where she went down, in mid-ocean, the water three miles deep. But I do not think of our dear ones there. They are safe, folded, the dear lambs, and there, before very long, shall we be too. In the meantime, thanks to God, we have an opportunity to serve and praise Him for His love and mercy to us and ours. “I will praise Him while I have my being.” May we each one arise, leave all, and follow Him.[7]

Likewise, Mrs. Spafford was able to find peace in what had happened, writing:

How thankful I am that their little lives were so early dedicated to their Master. Now he has called them to Himself. . . . If I never believed in religion before, I have had strong proof of it now. We have been so sustained, so comforted. God has sent peace in our hearts. He has answered our prayers. His will be done.[8]

Sadly, the Spaffords lost their next child, Horatio, who was born two years later on 16 November 1875 but died of scarlet fever at age 4 on 11 February 1880. Ultimately, as one historian described it, “The unsympathetic attitudes of Christian friends in the midst of their sorrow caused the Spaffords to decide to leave Chicago,”[9] settling in Jerusalem and establishing what was called the American Colony.

The Spaffords had two more children, Bertha (1878–1968), who married Frederick Vester, and Grace (1881–1964), who married John Whiting. By some accounts, the sinking of the Ville du Havre was regarded as the most tragic maritime disaster until the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

II. The Hymn

According to Ira Sankey, the writing of the song came a couple of years after the shipwreck (not while Mr. Spafford was on the ocean, as is sometimes reported):

In 1876, when we returned to Chicago to work, I was entertained at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Spafford for a number of weeks. During that time Mr. Spafford wrote the hymn “It is well with my soul” in commemoration of the death of his children. P.P. Bliss composed the music and sang it for the first time at a meeting in Farwell Hall. The comforting fact in connection with this incident was that in one of our small meetings in North Chicago, a short time prior to their sailing for Europe, the children had been converted.[10]

An undated manuscript copy of the hymn is held by the Library of Congress (Fig. 2), written on stationary for the Brevoort House on Madison Street, Chicago. In the first stanza, the original third line said “thou hast taught me to know,” a near-rhyme with roll. The backside of the manuscript contains two additional stanzas in pencil, one being an early attempt at what would become the fourth:

Now Lord, make it Thee for thy servant to live,
If I die, when the summons shall toll,
It will bring me no pang—for in death as in life—
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.

But Lord, ’tis for Thee, not the grave that I want,
For the clouds to roll back as a scroll,
For the trump to resound + Thyself to descend,
Naught but that be thy hope, oh my soul.

The reverent tune composed by Sankey’s colleague Philip Bliss (1838–1876), VILLE DU HAVRE, was named after the sunken ship. The hymn was first published in Gospel Hymns No. 2 (1876 | Fig. 3).

In the corresponding hymnal series in England, Sacred Songs and Solos, this song was first included in the supplement edition Later Songs and Solos, then in the combined edition, Enlarged Songs and Solos (ca. 1877 | Fig. 4). In the English printing, the song had five stanzas, closer in content to his pencilled version in the manuscript (Fig. 2).

The text of the hymn was also published in Spafford’s collection Waiting for the Morning and Other Poems (Chicago: F.H. Revell, 1878 | Fig. 5), in four stanzas.

III. Analysis

The first line of the text evokes Isaiah 66:12 (“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream”), and the first stanza in general is rich with seafaring language. The second stanza broadens the scope to include spiritual warfare (as in 2 Corinthians 12:7), and the third offers the solution to all spiritual failures, found in the cross (especially Colossians 2:14). The fourth looks forward to eternal deliverance and borrows images from passages such as the coming of the Lord in Revelation 19, or especially the description in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.” The phrase “Even so” is an allusion to Revelation 1:7 and/or 22:20 (especially in the KJV).

Bliss’s tune has a gravitas and compositional prowess not often found in gospel tunes of the era. One distinctive feature of the partwriting is the frequent use of contrary motion between the melody and bass line. This skillful setting has probably helped the hymn achieve its endurance and public devotion.

by CHRIS FENNER
with CHUCK BUMGARDNER
for Hymnology Archive
5 July 2018
rev. 15 July 2021

Footnotes:

1. Bertha Spafford Vester, Our Jerusalem (1951), p. 36.

2. “Run Down: Midnight Collision Between the Ville du Havre and the Loch Erne,” The Chicago Daily Tribune (2 Dec. 1873), front page: JPG

3. “Awful Collision in the Atlantic,” The Dundee Courier and Argus (Scotland, 2 Dec. 1873), p. 3: JPG

4. Bertha Spafford Vester, Our Jerusalem (1951), p. 56.

5. Bertha Spafford Vester, Our Jerusalem (1951), pp. 41–42.

6. Ira Sankey, My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns (Philadelphia: Sunday School Times, 1906), pp. 168–169: Archive.org

7. Bertha Spafford Vester, Our Jerusalem (1951), p. 53.

8. Bertha Spafford Vester, Our Jerusalem (1951), pp. 55–56.

9. William J. Reynolds, “Horatio Gates Spafford,” Hymns of Our Faith (Nashville: Broadman, 1964), p. 411.

10. Ira Sankey, My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns (Philadelphia: Sunday School Times, 1906), p. 169: Archive.org; curiously, Bertha Spafford Vester is the one who reported Horatio writing the hymn on the ocean, in Our Jerusalem (1951), p. 53, but this seems to be a romanticization or misconception on her part. Bertha was born three years after the hymn was first published. See also D.W. Whittle, Memoirs of Philip P. Bliss (1877), pp. 49, 83.

Related Resources:

“Run Down: Midnight Collision Between the Ville du Havre and the Loch Erne,” The Chicago Daily Tribune (2 Dec. 1873), front page: JPG

“Awful Collision in the Atlantic,” The Dundee Courier and Argus (Scotland, 2 Dec. 1873), p. 3: JPG

“Terrible Disaster! Loss of the steamer Ville du Havre,” The Daily Freeman (Kingston, NY: 2 Dec. 1873): JPG

Ira Sankey, “It is well with my soul,” My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns (Philadelphia: Sunday School Times, 1906), pp. 168–170: Archive.org

Bertha Spafford Vester, Our Jerusalem (London: Evans Brothers, 1951).

Leland Ryken, “It Is Well with My Soul,” 40 Favorite Hymns on the Christian Life (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2019), pp. 78–80: Amazon

“When peace, like a river,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/when_peace_like_a_river_attendeth_my_way

J.R. Watson, “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
https://hymnology.hymnsam.co.uk/w/when-peace,-like-a-river,-attendeth-my-way

“It is well with my soul,” Spafford Hymn, Kosinski Studio:
https://www.spaffordhymn.com/

“The American Colony in Jerusalem: Family Tragedy,” Library of Congress:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/americancolony/amcolony-family.html

Robert Cottrill, “It is well with my soul,” Wordwise Hymns (26 Feb. 2018):
https://wordwisehymns.com/2018/02/26/it-is-well-with-my-soul-2/

P. Munson & J.F. Drake, “It is well with my soul,” Congregational Singing:
http://www.congsing.org/it_is_well.html