COMING SOON: 

The Wreck of the Steamship Pacific

On the night of November 4th, 1875, off the coast of Cape Flattery, Washington, the paddlewheel steamship Pacific struck the sailing vessel Orpheus. Minutes later, the steamship was on the bottom of the sea, 1,000 feet down in the cold, stormy water, while the other vessel sailed away, having suffered little damage. The captain of the sailing vessel should have stuck around—it is the law of the sea and has been for a thousand years, that when there is an accident such as this, the undamaged vessel must stay at the scene and do what it can to save the lives of those aboard the other ship. This Captain Sawyer did not do; instead he fled north, an action for which he would be roundly criticized and which would result in a charge of manslaughter.

The reality, though, is that the Pacific should have never set sail in the first place. Having been sunk years before, raised and resurrected, and eventually left to rot on the salt flats of San Francisco, she was—after a hurried and haphazard refit—profoundly unseaworthy. She was on the water simply because of greed: There was money to be made in hauling supplies, gold, and people to and from the Cassiar gold rush in northern British Columbia. And where there is money to be made, shortcuts will be taken. The shortcuts ended up costing many hundreds of lives—no one really knows how many, because no one kept an accurate count of how many people, including dozens of children, actually boarded the doomed vessel.

Greed and graft played their parts in the tragedy of the Pacific. All but two of the 300+ souls on board died that night, pulled under the freezing water by the sodden weight of their woolen clothes, or dashed against the ship by wind and waves. It was a true tragedy and, like most tragedies, was made worse by the fact that it was completely unnecessary. No one had to die that night, but the greed of banks, shipbuilders, city officials, shippers, and miners assured that they would.

The Wreck of the Steamship Pacific should be on your favorite bookseller’s (real or virtual) bookshelves by late summer/early fall of 2026.