History is full of mystery. Long-ago events fade from living memory, and records are often lost or incomplete.

According to Silver Creek historian Louis Pelletter, the nearby waters of Lake Erie hosted such a mysterious event in 1838. A steamship tragedy, the sinking of the George Washington, took dozens of lives — but the information that survives is fragmented. Pelletter described trying to piece the story together during a Sept. 22 talk at the Sheridan Historical Society.

He is trying to do a historical plaque for the Washington, like the one he oversaw for a similar shipwreck in the area from that era, the Erie. However, the Washington proved harder to suss out.

“The Erie has tons of information about it, there’s books… but there isn’t a lot about the Washington,” Pelletter said. Then he discovered, while doing his research, “everything we’ve ever talked about with the Washington is wrong.”

For example, he had heard the ship was going from Buffalo to Cleveland and was captained by a man named Boyd on June 16, 1838, when it burned close to Silver Creek. However, “I’m going to be telling you a lot of misinformation at the same time I’m telling you information.”

Pelletter found it was really going from Cleveland to Buffalo. It was also apparently helmed by a man named Brown — his name was crossed out in a record and replaced with Boyd, for reasons unknown. “Boyd did die on the ship, or on shore anyway, he was on the ship and he died, so you would say the captain went down with the ship. Where Captain Brown actually survived,” Pelletter theorized.

Boyd “tried to rescue some people, he was tearing doors off. He did whatever he could while the ship was on fire. When it came to the point he couldn’t do anymore, he jumped in and then he swam to shore. The Washington was out about two or three miles off Silver Creek shore… he apparently went in there and they said because the water was cold, he was overheated, even though it was summer, that led to probably a stroke or something and he died on shore.”

Continuing his research, Pelletter found the shipwreck listed as happening on four different dates. A late 19th century local historian, who was apparently at the scene when survivors made it to shore, had it as June 30, 1838. However, Pelletter is pretty sure it was June 16.

“It’s hard for modern day people to think about 1838 and what life was like. I always tell people, being a former policeman, there’s no emergency services at all. No hospitals, no medical other than maybe a country doctor with limited knowledge… and there’s no light, we’re still based on candle,” he said.

An unknown person at the lakeside saw the ship on fire between 2 and 3 a.m. and rode around on his horse to alert the nearby settlers. “They said that the fire probably started in the boiler, which they normally did at that time because the floors were all wood. There’s no real known reason why it happened. The Erie was easy, they had painters… they put all their turpentine near the boilers, they blew up, that had the whole ship in flames.”

Another ship, the North American, saw the fire and rushed to the scene — but didn’t get there until about 6 a.m. “By the time they get there, the ship is burned to the waterline,” Pelletter said.

As the fire worsened, the Washington was unable to move, with just one rescue boat that proved unusable. Everyone left alive on the ship had to jump off.

The local residents who responded to the onlooker’s warning “look out and because of the flames, can see all the passengers in the water, all the debris from the ship… and there is mass panic because they are two or three miles out and they are all drowning. Some of them are burned very badly.”

The locals took boats from the harbor area to rescue some people. The North American also picked a few people up. However, quoting from an old account, Pelletter said, “Mr. Shields is the only survivor of his family of seven. A lady lost three children. Mr. Michael Parker lost his wife, his parents, his sister and her child. A husband and his wife threw their children overboard and then jumped in, the wife was the only one that survived. Several passengers went into convulsions with terror and then they died in the flame.”

The boat’s owners said only 18 people died, but there were perhaps 80 to 100 people aboard. Even that’s unclear, as the ship’s passenger log burned in the fire.

Throughout the summer of 1838, a local newspaper tracked bodies that washed ashore near Hamburg. “We generally believe there was about 50 people (who died). The newspaper, they were counting them. Twenty, then it became 30, then it became 40, as they kept on finding them,” Pelletter said.

The historian ended his talk by noting that Congress passed an act to protect steamship passengers’ safety just a month after the Washington went down.