The Wreck of the Steamship Pacific: The Worst Maritime Disaster of the West Coast - Paperback

by Brian K. Crawford (Author)

On the evening of Thursday, November 4, 1875, the steamship Pacific collided with the clipper ship Orpheus off Cape Flattery in Washington. The Orpheus resumed her journey but the Pacific - old, unsafe, and dangerously overcrowded - broke up in minutes and went down, scattering hundreds of men, women, and children into the sea. Exactly how many died will never be known, but the names we know are enough to make this still the worst maritime disaster in the history of the West Coast. Only two men survived, and their first-hand accounts are here. The passengers included many wealthy and famous people, along with gold miners, singers, actors, and an equestrian troupe. One passenger had already survived three other shipwrecks on the same passage. Several were carrying large amounts of gold. The stories of how they came to be aboard that night are as interesting as the disaster itself. In period newspaper articles, letters, diaries, and mysterious notes in bottles, the tales are told.The Captains - Jefferson Davis Howell (brother-in-law of President Jefferson Davis) of the Pacific, and Charles Sawyer of the Orpheus - were both young but very experienced. Who was at fault? Were they drunk? Could the collision have been averted, or more lives saved? Were the ships safe? Were the officers and crews and owners competent? Was there an official cover-up? Was the "last will in a bottle" genuine? We will examine the evidence.Illustrated with photographs and drawings of the ships and participants, this volume examines all aspects of a singular disaster. The poignancy of the deaths, and the devastation felt by so many left behind, made a mark on a generation that they remembered the rest of their lives. In the impact it had on people's lives and imaginations, the sinking of the Pacific was the Titanic of its era.

Author Biography

Brian K. Crawford is a retired computer programmer living in Marin County, California, with his wife Linda. In addition to several collections of short fiction and a series of memoirs about his hippie days (Peyote, Pirates, and Warana), he has also written Toki, a historical novel about a true adventure in the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga. He has also reprinted a number of out-of-print books about Pacific exploration. His fiction has been published in the print magazines Bust-Out Stories and Paradox Historical Fiction, and the online journals Slow Trains, e-clips, Clean Sheets, Sedona's Attic, and Oysters and Chocolate, where his story The Heat won a Grand Prize. His short-short story Heart to Heart won Honorable Mention in the Whim's Place 2006 Flash Fiction contest, and The Find won Second Prize. His collections of short stories, Desert Moon, Tight Shorts, and Ten Stories Straight Up are available on Amazon and Lulu. Born in Ohio in 1947, Crawford attended Antioch College but dropped out and went to Haight-Ashbury for the Summer of Love. After several years and many adventures on the road, he joined a group that bought a schooner in Nova Scotia and Crawford served as Second Officer, sailing it down the East Coast. Later he went to Tonga in the South Pacific, where he met his future wife Linda. He joined an Australian nuclear protest yacht bound to French Polynesia to anchor at ground zero. The mission was aborted, and Crawford helped sail the yacht through Fiji, Tuvalu, New Caledonia, and down the coast of Australia, where he served as navigator in the Sydney-Hobart yacht race. He returned to the US in 1974, married Linda, and became a computer programmer in San Diego and later San Francisco, where they had their son Nathan in 1988. He enjoys sailing, hiking, kayaking, geocaching, genealogy, and early music. He is a volunteer with the San Anselmo Open Space Committee, the Friends of Faudé Park, the Friends of Sorich Park, and is chairman of the Sorich Park Area Residents and the San Anselmo Trails Subcommittee.