According to the "Cradle of the Deep", Lowell's mother was hailing from the Boston's Lowell family, and her father was the son of a landowner from Montenegro and a Turkish woman. Lowell feared that her father, Captain Nicholas Wagner (Preacher Nick), had died on December 24, 1924. Newspapers reported his ship, the "Oceanic Vance", sank off the coast of Mexico. Two weeks overdue in Los Angeles, California, the schooner was sighted in January 1925, fifteen miles (24 km) northwest of San Diego. The "Oceanic Vance" had lost her convoy, the schooner "Westerner", on Christmas Eve, 1924.