He lost four daughters at sea, then wrote “It Is Well With My Soul” near the place they drowned

The telegram Anna Spafford sent her husband from Wales in December 1873 had two words that mattered: “Saved alone.”

The French steamer Ville du Havre, carrying Anna and the couple’s four daughters from New York to Europe, had collided with another ship, the Loch Earn, in the Atlantic on 22 November 1873 and sunk within minutes. Their daughters, Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta, drowned. Anna was found floating unconscious and was rescued.

A family already in grief

Horatio Spafford was a successful lawyer and property investor in Chicago and a devout Presbyterian, a friend and supporter of the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. Two years earlier, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had destroyed much of the city and hit his investments hard.

The European trip in 1873 was meant to be a rest for the family. Spafford stayed behind to deal with business and planned to follow. After the telegram, he sailed to join his wife.

Writing on the water

According to the account passed down by the family, during the crossing the ship’s captain told Spafford when they were passing close to the place where the Ville du Havre had gone down. Spafford went to his cabin and wrote the words that became the hymn:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

The lines do not deny the loss. “Sorrows like sea billows” is a direct reference to what happened. The hymn’s claim is that peace with God can sit alongside grief rather than replace it.

The tune

The music was written by Philip Bliss, a gospel songwriter who worked with Moody. He named the tune “Ville du Havre” after the ship. The hymn was published in 1876 and spread quickly through churches in America and Britain. Bliss himself died later that same year in a railway accident in Ohio.

Jerusalem

The Spaffords had more children after the shipwreck. In 1880 their son Horatio died of scarlet fever at the age of four. In 1881 they moved to Jerusalem with a small group of followers and founded what became known as the American Colony, which ran charitable work, including care for the poor and sick, through wars and the end of the Ottoman Empire. Horatio Spafford died in Jerusalem in 1888.

Why the hymn still carries weight

“It Is Well With My Soul” is sung at funerals, in hospitals and in churches around the world, including across Ghana and Nigeria, often translated into local languages. Many people sing it without knowing the story. Those who do know it tend to sing the first verse more slowly.

The hymn does not ask anyone to pretend loss is small. It was written by a man sailing over the grave of his four children, and it says what he chose to believe while he was there.