Pacific (1850)

On November 4, 1875, she boarded passengers and freight in Victoria for her regular run to San Francisco. There were 52 crew aboard, led by Captain Jefferson Davis Howell. Thirty-five through passengers from Puget Sound ports were aboard and another 132 passengers bought tickets and embarked at Victoria. In addition to these ticketed passengers, an unknown number of persons rushed aboard without tickets as she left the dock. Children sailed for free and thus were also likely undercounted. Among the notables aboard were lumberman Sewell "Sue" Moody, founder of Moodyville, Captain Otis Parsons, who had just sold off his fleet of Fraser River steamers, and J.H. Sullivan, who had been Gold Commissioner of the Cassiar mining district.[55] At the other end of the social spectrum were gold miners going home before the snows hit their diggings in northern British Columbia, and 41 nameless "Chinamen". While the official estimate was that there were 275 people aboard, there is no way to be sure, and the number of passengers may have been higher.[41]

Her cargo on this voyage included 300 bales of hops, 2,000 sacks of oats, 250 hides, eleven casks of furs, 31 barrels of cranberries, two cases of opium, six horses, two buggies, 280 tons of coal from Puget Sound, $79,220 in gold, and about 30 tons of miscellaneous goods.[41]

Pacific got underway from Victoria at 9:30 A.M. and sailed west, down the Strait of Juan de Fuca. She had a rough passage and had difficulty remaining on an even keel. The crew took the strange step of filling lifeboats with water to correct her list. The steamer passed Tatoosh Island at about 4 P.M and turned south along the coast. At this point she was steaming into the wind which slowed her progress. The 1,067-ton sailing ship Orpheus[3] was headed in the opposite direction. She was sailing under the command of Captain Charles Sawyer from San Francisco to pick up a load of coal at Nanaimo.[41] The two ships met about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Cape Flattery at approximately 10 P.M. on November 4, 1875.

All of Pacific's officers and most of her crew were killed in the event, and Captain Sawyer of Orpheus was below at the beginning of the incident so details of the meeting are necessarily incomplete. Nonetheless, the surviving accounts and the results of the inquests into the sinking present a fairly clear picture of the collision. Orpheus was sailing north in a fine rain. A fresh wind out of the south sped her on her way at 12 knots. It was dark and Sawyer was uncertain just how far his ship was from the coast off to his east. Thus, he trimmed his sails so he could fall off to the west at a moments notice. Sawyer went below at 9:30 P.M. to consult his charts, leaving the ship under the command of the second mate with instructions fall off to the west if he spotted anything. Indeed, that is exactly what the mate did when he spotted a light on his port bow that he thought was the Cape Flattery lighthouse. Had he been correct, his action would have saved the ship from wrecking on the rocky shore. Instead, the light turned out to be Pacific and by turning to the west, Orpheus ran directly in front of the approaching steamer.[41]

Pacific hit Orpheus near her bow on her starboard side. The two ships hit at an angle, and the bow of Pacific scraped along Orpheus' side until she passed astern. The collision was judged "light" by Sawyer. He speculated that Pacific had reversed her engines, reducing her speed and thus the force of the collision. Much of Orpheus' starboard rigging was ripped away by Pacific's bow, and she was immobilized. Unsure of the extent of the damage, Captain Sawyer ordered the ship's boats readied in case the crew had to abandon ship. A frantic 15 minutes revealed that the hull was sound and that there was no water in the hold. He ordered his men to make temporary repairs to the rigging in order to regain control over the drifting ship. Once the initial emergency had subsided, there was no sign of the steamer that had hit Orpheus. The crew began to grumble that the steamer should have stood by to help them or rescue them if they had sunk. They had no idea the steamer had been damaged, much less sunk. They assumed that the steamer had just sailed away. In a few hours Orpheus was underway again, still headed to Nanaimo.[41]

Meanwhile, on board Pacific, a disaster was taking place. Information on these events is limited as there were only two people who survived the wreck, neither of whom was on the bridge when the collision took place. Neil Henley was the ship's quartermaster. Henry F. Jelly of Port Stanley, Ontario was a passenger. He was in British Columbia to survey possible routes for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Both men were in their bunks at the time of the accident, so there is no way to know when Pacific's officers noticed Orpheus and what if anything they did to avoid the collision. Henley did note that the ship's running lights were on as he retired to his cabin prior to the collision.[41]

Both men felt and heard the crash as Pacific scraped along Orpheus' side. Jelly ran on deck where he was told that they had hit another vessel and "it's all right". He went back to his cabin, but by then the ship had begun to list to port. He went back on deck and found a chaotic situation. No one was steering the vessel, although the engines were still running.[56] In consultation with Captain Howell, he fired five blue flares, a distress signal. At that point his attention turned to the lifeboats.[57] Henley, too, raced up on deck to find all in confusion. Passengers were scrambling into lifeboats, without order. The crew threw one man overboard who refused to leave a lifeboat. Many boats were without oars; some still had water in them from the attempt to trim the ship, and the crew was unable to launch most of them. Henley and the chief engineer managed to launch one boat, but it immediately capsized.[57] Jelly was in the only other boat that either man saw launched. Pacific had listed so far to port that this boat was set down on the water without having been lowered from its davits. As soon as it was cut loose from the ship, it filled with water and capsized. At this point - Jelly estimated an hour after the collision - Pacific broke in two and the ship's smokestack fell on the capsized boat. The pieces of the ship promptly sank.[58]

After Pacific went under, Henley reported that the water was filled with "a floating mass of human beings, whose screams for help were fearful, but which soon ceased". Most succumbed to hypothermia or drowning. Some small number, including Jelly and Henley, managed to climb up out of the water onto broken parts of the ship. Women in fashionable dresses with yards of material were at a disadvantage as they were weighed down by their water-logged clothes.[56] Jelly survived by clinging to a piece of the wheelhouse with a miner from Maine who had been in the Cariboo goldfields and, like Jelly, was on his way home to the eastern part of the continent via the transcontinental railway from San Francisco. Jelly's companion succumbed to exposure as the wreckage drifted closer to Vancouver Island. Only three miles from shore, Jelly was rescued by the American bark Messenger at 10 A.M. on November 6, 1875. He was brought ashore at Port Townsend, Washington, weak from exposure.[58] His rescue was the first indication the rest of the world had that Pacific had sunk. A number of vessels, including USRC Wolcott were dispatched to look for survivors.[59]

Henley's impromptu raft also hosted Captain Howell, the second mate, a cook, and four passengers including a young lady. Waves washed some off the raft, and others died of exposure, leaving Henley alone. He was finally rescued by the Wolcott at 3 A.M. on November 8, 1875.[60]

Orpheus continued her voyage north after the collision, intending to turn east into the Strait of Juan de Fuca once she passed the Cape Flattery lighthouse. Somehow she missed that light. Instead, the mate on watch saw the Cape Beale Light further to the north. This lighthouse had only operated for a few months and none of the officers on board knew about it. They assumed it was Cape Flattery, turned east, and wrecked their ship In Barclay Sound, near Copper (Tzartus) Island, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Her crew made it ashore and were also rescued by Wolcott, which was still looking for survivors from Pacific. Wolcott's officers examined the wreck of Orpheus and confirmed Sawyer's story that Pacific had hit her near the bow and scraped along her starboard side.[59]

A coroner's inquest on some of the bodies recovered took place in Victoria in late November 1875. Henley and Jelly testified as did Captain Sawyer and some of Orpheus' crew.[56]

The various inquests agreed that the proximate cause of the sinking was Orpheus crossing in front of Pacific.[61] This simple and obvious conclusion left many questions unanswered and in the wake of the disaster, and rumors created new ones.

Orpheus clearly steered into the collision, but many speculated that Pacific could have avoided it.[62] While no one from Pacific's bridge survived to tell what the ship did to avoid the collision, several facts illuminate the issue. First, crew members of both vessels reported seeing the lights of the other. The ships had their running lights on, and visibility was adequate for them to be seen. Second, Jelly reported hearing the bells for the engine telegraph go to "stop" after the collision. This throws doubt onto Sawyer's speculation that Pacific slowed prior to the collision.[58] Third, Sawyer claimed that he saw no lookouts on Pacific's deck[41] and Jelly claimed the crew were all asleep below.[56] Indeed the Victoria inquest faulted Pacific for inadequate lookouts.[61] A lack of lookouts may have delayed the recognition of the approaching collision until it was too late for Pacific to take action. Finally, Sawyer reported that Pacific blew its whistle, presumably as a warning, 30 seconds before the collision, but appeared not to take evasive action even though it had announced its understanding of the immediate danger.[56]

There was much sentiment that a glancing blow that did no damage to Orpheus' hull should not have sunk a well-found ship, much less cause her to break into pieces. The New York Times was particularly strident, commenting, "The sinking of the steamer Pacific by collision with a sailing vessel was a fair example of the worthlessness of some of the hulls now afloat. That collision might have been avoided is very true; but there is no possible excuse for the breaking up of a vessel by such a blow as that given by the Orpheus. The steamer's bow was crushed in like glass, on receiving a blow delivered obliquely. It is a perversion of language to call such a ship 'seaworthy."[62] There were calls for greater steamboat regulation, criticism of the Steamboat Inspection Service, and even some questions raised about the lack of maintenance on ships caused by the relentless fare wars.[63]

The use of water-filled life rafts to trim Pacific, as reported by Jelly,[58] indicates that she had stability problems well before the collision. If she already had water in her hold, was overloaded, or if the cargo was mis-stowed, this could have caused the ship to capsize more quickly once flooding began after the collision.

Captain Howell was only 34 years old at the time of the sinking, and there were questions raised about his competence and experience. The fact that he was the brother-in-law of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis, no doubt created a cloud of ill-feeling around him, but his experience as a mariner was comparable to other steamboat captains at the time. He studied at the US Naval Academy prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War and commanded a gunboat for the Confederate Navy for two years. He came to California in 1869 and began a commercial steamboat career.[64] He commanded ships for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and the Oregon Steamship Company. Immediately prior to joining Goodall, Nelson, and Perkins, Howell had been captain of the North Pacific Transportation Company's steamers Idaho, Montana, Pelican and others.[65]

By the time that Captain Sawyer embarked for California, the world had discovered that Pacific was sunk with huge loss of life, and that Orpheus had sailed away without attempting a rescue. He was vilified in the press.[66] It was speculated that Captain Sawyer had wrecked his ship on purpose either to "eliminate the evidence" or to collect on his insurance, since his normal profits would not be sufficient to repair the damages from the collision.[67] He was arrested, but an inquest in San Francisco exonerated him. Sawyer died at Port Townsend in 1894.[68]

The wreck of Orpheus was sold for $385 to J. J. Hunt, who hired a crew to salvage what he could.[55] In January 1893 her anchors and chain were salvaged.[41]