Whitehead's Son Spared from the Governor Fenner Shipwreck by Joining the Saints' Company (1841)

An aged man named Whitehead from Oldham reported that his son had originally planned to emigrate to America with a group of friends who had paid a sovereign to secure their passage. However, after the son embraced the doctrine of the Latter-day Saints, he changed his plans to travel instead with a company of Saints led by Elder Clark, departing a week earlier. The ship Governor Fenner, which carried his former companions, subsequently struck another vessel in the Irish Channel, resulting in the loss of all 122 passengers, including those the son was originally intended to join.

Contemporary reports from the 'Morning Chronicle' corroborate the disaster, noting the collision occurred at 2:20 a.m. on February 20, 1841, off Holyhead, involving the steamer Nottingham. The vessel, described by the captain as being constructed of deal and 'rotten as a pear' after fourteen years at sea, sank rapidly, resulting in the confirmed loss of 122 souls.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 2, No. 2 (June 1841), p. 31):

During Whitsun Week, an aged man from Oldham, by the name of Whitehead, came to the Star office, expressing his gratitude to a kind providence that through the instrumentality of the Latter-day Saints his son had been saved from inevitable destruction. The case was this: Several young men in Oldham (previous to hearing the Saints) had made it up in their minds to emigrate to America. The time was set for them to start, and each one paid in a sovereign, which they were to forfeit to the company in case they did not go at the time. After this arrangement, the son of our Oldham friend who related it to us, happened to hear and embrace the doctrine of the Latter-Day Saints. He then changed his purpose as to the time of going, and forfeited his sovereign to the former company, for the purpose of going a week sooner, and in company with the Saints under the protection of Brother Clark. By this movement he now finds himself safe in America, while every soul of the company he was to have gone with was on board the Governor Fenner, and perished in the flood.