When Everything Was Gone, He Still Sang

On November 22, 1873, Horatio Spafford stood at a telegraph office in New York and read a message from his wife that began with two words: "Saved alone." Four of their daughters — Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta — had drowned when the French ocean liner Ville du Havre sank after colliding with a sailing vessel in the Atlantic. His wife Anna had been pulled from the water unconscious.…