Chicago, 1873. Horatio Spafford had already buried a son and lost everything he owned in the Great Fire. He put his wife and four daughters on a ship to England, the Ville du Havre, planning to follow in a few days.
Mid-Atlantic, the ship collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes. Two hundred twenty-six people drowned. Anna Spafford was pulled unconscious from the water. From Wales she sent her husband a telegram of two words: SAVED ALONE.
Spafford took the next ship. Mid-ocean, the captain called him to the bridge: "We are now passing the place where the Ville du Havre went down." He went to his cabin and wrote: When peace, like a river, attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea billows roll...
But here's what most tellings skip: Spafford wasn't inventing comfort. He was quoting it. Every line of that hymn has Scripture under it, words he'd carried long before he needed them.