A little-known Modjeska sea tale
This post has been corrected, as noted below.
There can be no doubt that Helena Modjeska, the fabled Polish-born Shakespearean actress who died 106 years ago at age 68, will forever be immortalized in the harbor area and Southern California.
Her name, for example, was given to Modjeska Circle, a street south of Fairview Park in Costa Mesa, and nearly a dozen streets in Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties.
And following her passing at her home in Newport Beach’s Bay Island, the tiny community of 23 houses was known for many years as Modjeska Island in recognition of the heralded performer who played such roles as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet,” Ophelia in “Hamlet” and Desdemona in “Othello.”
Her earlier home in Santiago Canyon is now called the Modjeska Historical House and Garden, and a 5,495-foot peak in the Saddleback Mountain Range, a village, a reservoir, a canyon, a park, a community theater, an amphitheater, a fire department and a statue of the actress all bearing the name “Modjeska” can be found throughout the county.
As well, there is a Modjeska Bar & Grill in Mission Viejo, a Modjeska Falls near Lake Tahoe, Modjeska theaters in Milwaukee and Seattle and a “Modjeska Marshmallow Treat” sold by a chain of candy shops in Louisville, Ky.
In fact, Madame Modjeska, as she was called, reached such national and international acclaim that 35 years following her death on April 8, 1909, the U.S. government named a World War II Liberty ship in her honor.
But the Navy’s 441-foot cargo vessel Helena Modjeska was not destined to achieve the fame and fortune accorded the actress. Even the fact that the ship ever existed and suffered an intriguing, dramatic disaster at sea is known to only a handful of military historians.
Madame Modjeska, along with her husband, Count Karol Bozenta Chiopowski, and her son, Ralph, by a prior marriage, moved permanently to Orange County in 1876 after her successful stage career across Europe and the U.S. to join a group of fellow Poles in establishing a utopian agrarian commune in Anaheim.
But the commune failed financially, and Modjeska, following further appearances across America, retired from the stage and moved with her husband and son to the large house she named “Arden” -- now open to the public -- in Santiago Canyon. It was designed for them by Stanford White, the famous architect who built Madison Square Garden in New York City.
After several years there, she sold Arden and in 1907 paid $2,400 for the small cottage at 3 Bay Island that previously was the summer home of Sam Tustin.
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For the record: “A little-known Modjeska sea tale,” (Sept. 6), incorrectly referred to architect Stanford White as Sanford White. The same article also incorrectly stated that the city of Tustin is named for Sam Tustin. In fact, the city is named for Columbus Tustin.
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She died in this house from kidney disease after living there for only two years, and her body was transported by a private car of the Pacific Electric Railway to Los Angeles, where her funeral was held at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral. She is buried in the family plot at Krakow, Poland, which also contains the remains of her parents and 11 brothers and sisters.
Her son, Ralph, remained in the Bay Island house and became an internationally known designer of suspension bridges that included the original San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Ralph’s son, Felix, continued on in Newport Beach and was a local electrical contractor.
The Modjeskas’ Bay Island home was demolished in the mid-1940s to make way for a second house that remains there today.
As for the fate of the ill-starred ship the Helena Modjeska:
Commissioned on Nov. 6, 1944, it was operated by the Merchant Marine and had a civilian crew of 60 and a 20-man Naval Armed Guard that operated its deck guns and anti-aircraft batteries. It plied the world’s oceans without ever encountering combat while delivering and receiving U.S. troops and heavy cargoes such as tanks, trucks, aircraft and railroad stock.
On Nov. 16, 1946, some 13 months after the end of World War II, the Helena Modjeska’s life was to end just two years after its commissioning.
Carrying a full cargo and bound for ports in post-war Germany to deliver military equipment to U.S. Army installations, the ship struck an underwater reef on the treacherous Goodwin Sands in the English Channel during a ferocious storm and became dead in the water, listing badly.
The East Kent Mercury newspaper the following day described the scene:
“Driven by a howling wind, the rain fell in blinding sheets as darkness fell. It was seen that the Helena Modjeska was suffering immobility from the buffeting. The scene at sea was one of savage grandeur.”
Soon, the ship broke in two, and the sections floated away from one another. The crewmembers on each section, as well as a half-dozen German stowaways who had escaped from a British prisoner-of-war camp, were rescued by fishing boats and a large tugboat carrying reporters and photographers chartered by the Manchester Guardian and London Evening News.
All were taken ashore and accounted for except the ship’s captain, 56-year-old William H. Curran of Los Angeles. He was declared missing following his rescue by the newspaper boat.
The next morning, Curran, a master mariner who had spent many years in commands at sea, was discovered dead in his locked hotel room in the nearby town of Ramsgate.
It was learned that he had slipped away to the hotel undetected after the rescue, and while paying for his room told the hotel staff, “I fought to save my ship ... but it was hopeless ... I am going to my room and do not want to be disturbed, even by the police.”
An autopsy determined that he died not by his own hand, but from a heart attack.
Most of the cargo from the Helena Modjeska’s two sections was transferred to barges, and both sections were towed to British ports, where they were broken up and sold for scrap.
Newport Beach resident DAVID C. HENLEY is a longtime foreign correspondent and a member of the Board of Trustees of Chapman University.
Editor’s note: This article originally was posted as a Reader Report on dailypilot.com on Jan. 22, 2015.