SS Pacific

The Vessel

The SS Pacific was an American Pacific Coast Steamship Company sidewheel paddle steamer, commissioned at the John Englis yard in New York in 1850 as the SS Tennessee. She was 69 metres long, 875 gross tons, with wooden hull construction. Her initial career had been in the San Francisco-to-Panama trade during the California Gold Rush years; she had been acquired by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in 1858 and renamed Pacific for her subsequent service on the Pacific Coast passenger and mail trade.

By 1875 she was 25 years old and had been continuously operated in the Pacific Coast trade for 17 years. Her hull and machinery had deteriorated substantially; she had been subject to repeated minor groundings and repairs; her rated horsepower had fallen from her original 800 to approximately 500 by 1875. The Pacific Coast Steamship Company had been operating her on the San Francisco-Portland-Victoria-Tacoma route, the principal commercial transportation axis between California and the Pacific Northwest before the completion of the Pacific Northwest railroad network.

Her master in November 1875 was Captain J. Howell, 53, a career Pacific Mail officer.

The Voyage

On 4 November 1875 the SS Pacific departed Victoria, British Columbia, bound for San Francisco. Her complement for the voyage was approximately 330 people: a mix of Pacific Northwest miners returning from the Cassiar gold rush in northern British Columbia, family members accompanying the miners, commercial passengers, and the ship's crew. The specific casualty count of the voyage has never been determined with precision because the ship's passenger manifest was incomplete; approximately 330 is the consensus estimate from subsequent research.

The weather in the North Pacific on 4 November 1875 was moderate. Pacific proceeded southward from Victoria through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into the open Pacific, on the standard route that would take her approximately 60 kilometres offshore along the Washington and Oregon coasts before reaching San Francisco.

At approximately 22:00 on 4 November 1875, approximately 45 kilometres west of Cape Flattery, Washington Territory, the SS Pacific was struck on her starboard bow by the sailing ship Orpheus, a 1,024-ton American clipper that had been running downwind on a course from Nootka Sound toward San Francisco at approximately 8 knots. The collision was relatively light: the Orpheus had been attempting an evasive turn when she sighted Pacific's running lights, and her impact was a glancing blow rather than a direct bow-strike.

The Disaster

The damage to Pacific from the Orpheus collision was, by contemporary standards, relatively minor: her starboard hull plating was dented, her starboard sponson was damaged, and one of her side-wheel paddle boxes was compromised. The Orpheus herself had sustained minor bowsprit damage. Under normal circumstances, neither ship should have been at immediate risk from the collision.

The critical factor in the subsequent Pacific loss was the ship's deteriorated structural condition. Her hull and internal framing had been weakened substantially by 25 years of continuous Pacific Coast operations; the minor collision impact of 22:00 on 4 November 1875 exceeded her structural reserve and produced progressive structural failure across the following 30 minutes. Pacific's hull began to flex and open at the deck seams approximately 10 minutes after the collision.

Captain Howell ordered abandon-ship at approximately 22:30 on 4 November 1875. The evacuation was catastrophically inadequate: the ship carried only one lifeboat (capacity approximately 25 people) and two yawls (combined capacity approximately 15 people) for her 330 complement. Most of the passengers entered the water without any flotation support; the water temperature was approximately 9°C.

SS Pacific broke in half and sank at approximately 23:00 on 4 November 1875 at approximately 48°05′N 124°40′W, about 45 kilometres west of Cape Flattery, in approximately 500 metres of water. Of the approximately 330 aboard, only 2 survived: Quartermaster Neal Henley and passenger Henry F. Jelley, both of whom had managed to reach a floating piece of the ship's deck and had been rescued by a passing steamer the following day.

The Legacy

The SS Pacific disaster was the worst single loss of life in the history of Pacific Coast maritime navigation and, in absolute terms, one of the worst American peacetime maritime disasters of the nineteenth century. The 328 dead (approximately) represented the complete complement of the ship minus the two survivors; the specific casualty-to-aboard ratio of approximately 99 per cent was the highest for any major American maritime disaster until the Sultana boiler explosion of 1865.

The subsequent investigations (conducted by the U.S. Steamboat Inspection Service and by the British Columbia colonial government) identified the Pacific Coast Steamship Company as having been negligent in the continuing operation of the Pacific beyond her structural service life. The company's insurance claims for the Pacific were denied on the grounds of structural inadequacy; the company's liability to the families of the dead was settled by approximately $1.8 million in compensation (a substantial sum in 1876 dollars), which produced the financial collapse of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company in 1877.

The specific regulatory response to the Pacific disaster was the American Merchant Steamer Act of 1877, which required all U.S.-registered passenger steamers to submit to annual hull inspection at dry-dock facilities, to maintain lifeboat capacity for every person aboard, and to maintain watertight subdivision between compartments. The Act was one of the principal pieces of nineteenth-century American maritime safety legislation and was the direct antecedent of the more comprehensive Merchant Marine Act of 1936.

The wreck of SS Pacific has never been located. Her position is known approximately from the 1875 collision reports and from the two survivors' testimony; she lies at approximately 500 metres depth in the North Pacific, approximately 45 kilometres west of Cape Flattery. The specific location and the depth have made her recovery commercially unattractive; no modern search expedition has been conducted.

The 328 dead of SS Pacific are commemorated at the Pacific Memorial at Neah Bay, Washington, and at the Pacific Memorial Garden at San Francisco's Maritime Museum. The Pacific disaster was one of the foundational events of Pacific Northwest maritime history and contributed substantially to the public awareness of the "Graveyard of the Pacific" designation of the Washington and British Columbia coastal waters.