This is the third in a series.

On the night of Oct. 30, 1890, two ships collided just east of Barnegat Lighthouse. The four-masted schooner Cornelius Hargraves, loaded with coal, had left Philadelphia when it rammed the iron-hulled Spanish steamship Vizcaya, out of New York City bound for Cuba, carrying a mixed cargo and passengers.

In the time before wireless communication, newspapers had to rely on survivors to tell the story. The first reports of what had happened were told by those taken to New York City, where The New…