Hundreds Died When This Steamship Sank in the Pacific Northwest in 1875 With Gold Worth Millions On Board

Pelican Press · January 30, 2025

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Hundreds Died When This Steamship Sank in the Pacific Northwest in 1875 With Gold Worth Millions On Board

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View of the S.S. Pacific anchored near Fort Tongass in Alaska in 1868
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The loss of the steamship

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on November 4, 1875, left the community of Victoria, British Columbia, in shock. Laden with at least 250 passengers and crew, along with 600 tons of cargo and gold worth millions of dollars, the ship struck another vessel about 20 miles off the coast of Washington State. As water flooded the Pacific’s hull, the crew struggled in vain to launch the lifeboats. Soon after the collision, the ship split in half and sank. Of the hundreds on board, only two survived.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the wreck, which was one of the deadliest

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in the Pacific Northwest’s history. In 2022, Rockfish, a Seattle-based salvage company,

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what it believes to be the wreck’s location, bringing

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to the Pacific and its gold cargo. A century and a half after its sinking, the story of the Pacific remains a wrenching drama—and a witness to the perils of 19th-century sea travel.

A late departure, insufficient lifeboats and poorly loaded cargo plagued the final voyage of the Pacific, which departed for San Francisco on November 4.

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, editor of the local

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newspaper, boarded the ship for a bit that morning in Victoria’s Esquimalt Harbor to speak with a business acquaintance. He later

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that at least 500 people were on board the vessel, which was equipped with just five lifeboats designed to carry 160 passengers. The true number of passengers is unknown due to poor record-keeping and a rush of last-minute ticket sales, but experts

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the disaster’s death toll between 250 and 300.

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An illustration of the S.S. Pacific, circa 1870

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When the Pacific finally departed, nearly an hour late, “the multitude on the wharf gave three rousing cheers to speed departing friends on their way,” Higgins wrote in his 1904 memoir. But the voyage was still not smoothly underway. Civil engineer Henry F. Jelly, a passenger aboard the Pacific, noticed that the ship was tilting to its starboard (right) side. Workers on a nearby dredger said the vessel was steering so badly that “something must be wrong with her,” according to the

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. To correct the list, the crew filled the port (left) side lifeboats with water. Later, when the ship tilted the other way, the crew emptied the port lifeboats and filled the starboard boats instead.

The crew’s struggle to right the ship might have been due to the sheer weight on board. In addition to passengers, the Pacific carried 600 tons of freight. By

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, this included $79,220 in gold rush treasure from Victoria, along with hops, oats, animal hides, coal, cranberries, sundries and merchandise, six horses, two buggies, and two cases of opium.

The Colonist, meanwhile, calculated the value of the treasure to be far higher than $79,220. “Shipped was as follows,” the newspaper reported. “Mr. F. Garesche, $29,220; Bank British North America, $28,336; Bank British Columbia, $21,245; and about $100,000 in private hands.” Today, the gold entombed within the Pacific is estimated to be worth upward of

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.

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Jefferson Davis Howell, captain of the Pacific

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The Pacific’s captain was

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, a Civil War veteran named for his much older brother-in-law, Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The ship’s passengers came from all rungs of Victoria society, including bankers, entrepreneurs, socialites, entertainers, miners and immigrant laborers.

Among the passengers featured in Higgins’ recollection were Francis Garesche, a banker and agent for Wells Fargo, who accompanied a shipment of treasure, along with his own private money, and

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, the principal owner of a sawmill and lumber export business, as well as the founder of a company town still known as Moodyville. Fanny Palmer, the 18-year-old daughter of a Victoria professor, planned to visit her brother in San Francisco but told friends before departing that she “felt she would never see them again in this world,” the

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reported.

Palmer’s mother shared a sense of foreboding, too. After Higgins had said his final farewells, he disembarked and passed her on the street. She stood facing the harbor with tears in her eyes. The ship had passed behind a grove of trees and was no longer visible, but a plume of ****** smoke billowed skyward.

“I’m seeing the last of Fanny!” she

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.

The Pacific’s sinking “rings to me as a very 19th-century tale,” says

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, a maritime archaeologist, historian and former director of the

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. “Shipwrecks were the most common cause of mass fatality in peacetime, other than major earthquakes or things like that. Globally, you could have more than a shipwreck a day.”

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Newspaper articles about the wreck of the Pacific

Newspapers.com and the Internet Archive

The risks of sea travel were known and accepted at the time, Delgado says. But passengers on the Pacific likely had no idea how dangerous this particular ship had become.

Built in New York in 1850, the Pacific ferried Gold Rush traffic from the East Coast to the West Coast via the Isthmus of Panama. In 1861, the

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the ominously named Coffin Rock in Washington’s Columbia River and sank en route to Astoria, Oregon, with no lives lost. The ship was raised, repaired and returned to service for ten years, then retired in 1871. Past the useful life span of a wooden-hulled steamer, the vessel might have rotted away on the mud flats near San Francisco if not for a new gold rush in the British Columbian

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, which spiked shipping demand.

“Suddenly, all sorts of ships, steamships in regular service, get swept up in this and sent out,” Delgado says. “It’s all part of that gold mania.”

Shipping entrepreneurs Charles Goodall, Christopher Nelson and

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purchased the Pacific in 1874. They

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to have refurbished the ship at an expense of $75,000, but these repairs were likely little more than cosmetic. In his memoir, Higgins wrote that the Pacific was “innately rotten, but the paint and putty thickly daubed on covered much of the rottenness … and scarcely anyone was aware of the ship’s real condition, although she was regarded as unsafe.”

According to the

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, one witness told a Victoria coroner’s jury that the ship’s “timbers could be shoveled out of her,” while another claimed that “when it was said she was overhauled and repaired, it meant from the water’s edge up and that the lower timbers were not touched.”

“There’s a good chance” the Pacific was rotten, Delgado says. “Given the longevity of the vessel, it’s possible. And bear in mind that ships are being inspected, but not to the same standard that we would do today.”

On the day of the shipwreck, the Pacific made slow progress through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, laboring against a strong headwind toward the open sea. Finally, around 4 p.m., the ship passed the

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on Washington’s Tatoosh Island and headed south into the Pacific Ocean.

Quartermaster Neil Henley was asleep in his bunk around 10 p.m. when he heard a ****** and

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water rushing into the ship “at a furious rate.” He threw on a jacket and rushed up the companionway. “On reaching the deck, all was confusion,” he said.

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Neil Henley, one of two survivors of the Pacific disaster

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Jelly, the civil engineer, had also been asleep at the time of the collision. Awakened by the noise and commotion, he went on deck, where the crew told him an accident had occurred, but that the ship had sustained no damage. Reassured, Jelly went below again, but just as he climbed into bed, the vessel shuddered under his feet, and he heard the roar of water.

The Pacific had struck the

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, a 1,100-ton square-******* that was traveling north along the Washington coast to load a shipment of coal at Nanaimo in British Columbia.

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, the captain of the Orpheus, later said he’d gone below at 9:30 p.m., leaving the

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with orders to keep the ship directed northwest, off shore, if he saw anything. Sawyer had just sat down at the table in his cabin to look at his chart when the ship rapidly turned to port. He hurried on deck, where the officer told him the beam of the Cape Flattery Lighthouse had appeared on the port bow, so he’d turned the ship northwest, as instructed.

“I told him it was impossible to have Flattery light on that bow, and just then I saw the light on the starboard bow,” Sawyer

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. The captain brought the ship to a relative standstill and looked at the light through his glasses, soon realizing the beam was coming from an oncoming ship. Sawyer believed the Pacific would see the Orpheus and change course—but the steamer showed no sign of slowing down.

“I made up my mind that she would hit us, and shortly afterward, she blew her whistle and immediately struck us,” Sawyer said. “The blow was a light one. She had evidently stopped her engines and was backing [up] and gave us a glancing blow.”

Though

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would later

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as a villain for not coming to the aid of the Pacific, Sawyer claimed not to have heard calls for help or seen distress lights. He said he was busy inspecting the damage to his own ship, which was substantial but luckily above the water line.

“When, after I found I was not seriously damaged,” the captain added, “I looked for the steamer. I just saw a light on our starboard quarter, and when I looked again, it was gone.”

The collision threw the Pacific into chaos. After Jelly returned to the deck, he found that the lifeboats had not been lowered. Searching for

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to burn as distress signals, he discovered that the pilot house was empty, with “the wheel deserted and the ship steering wildly,” he later told the

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. The engine was still running.

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Sewell P. Moody, a passenger on board the Pacific

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Jelly found a lifeboat and decided to make his stand there. He recognized one of the women being helped into the boat as

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. She was weeping and clutching the body of her 18-month-old son, who had just been crushed to death by a man who fell on him in the confusion. Jelly also helped a girl into the boat who was later identified by description as Palmer.

Members of the ship’s crew crowded into Jelly’s lifeboat, claiming they were required to help the women, and a scuffle broke out between them and other men already in the boat, who refused to give up their places. By now, the Pacific was sinking fast. The

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holding the lifeboat would not release, but as the ship rolled, the smaller vessel touched the water. Someone on deck cut the fastenings with an ax, freeing the lifeboat.

But the craft, overloaded with people and still half-full of water from the earlier attempt to balance the Pacific, capsized. The women sank immediately, burdened by their heavy clothing.

Jelly clung to the overturned boat, watching as the steamer settled onto its side, broke in half and plummeted into the depths, dragging down at least 150 people still on the deck. He swam to a piece of wreckage, a remnant of the empty pilot house, which he clung onto for another day and a half, until he was picked up by the bark Messenger on the morning of November 6.

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The Oliver Wolcott, the ship that rescued survivor Neil Henley

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The Pacific’s quartermaster, Henley, was the wreck’s only other survivor. His lifeboat had struck the ship and capsized instantly. He caught hold of a fragment of the ship’s deck, joining the captain, second mate, cook and four other passengers.

“When I looked around, the steamer had disappeared, leaving a floating mass of human beings, whose cries and screams were awful to hear and the sight of which can never be effaced from my memory,” he

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. “In a little while, it was all over: The cries had ceased.”

The sea grew rougher, and as the hours passed, Henley’s companions fell away, one by one. He survived on the makeshift raft for nearly 80 hours and was rescued on the morning of November 8 by the revenue cutter

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.

“Scarcely a household in Victoria but has lost one or more of its members, or must strike from its list of living friends a face,” the

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reported on November 9. “A bolt out of the blue could not have caused more widespread consternation.”

18 year-old Fanny Palmer of Victoria, BC perished on the steamer Pacific when it sank 11/4/1875, 12 miles off Cape Flattery, WA.

Most victims were never found, yet in a twist of fate Fanny’s body drifted nearly 100 miles to wash ashore less than a mile from her parents’ home.

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Palmer’s body

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on Washington’s San Juan Island on November 25. The Victoria police chief found her near the United States Garrison, noting her “light brown hair [and] medium size.” Her

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she had been in bed when the ship’s alarm sounded. It included a nightdress, a waterproof cloak, striped hose, unlaced No. 3 kid boots and a life preserver marked Pacific.

After 21 days at sea,

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had retraced the ship’s 100-plus-mile journey, coming to rest almost within sight of her home.

The Pacific “was the worst shipwreck disaster in the region,” says

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, a federal preservation officer and former executive director of the

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.

Williams, who has also investigated the wreck of a Manila galleon in Oregon, hopes renewed interest in the Pacific will raise “awareness of the maritime history of the Pacific Northwest.” If artifacts are recovered, they could shed new light on that history, not only clarifying the circumstances of the wreck but also expanding what historians know about the people on board.

“The most amazing thing to find would be someone’s personal diary or something like that,” says

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, president of the salvage company Rockfish. “And that’s not out of the question. … Who knows what can be found there?”

Seattle-based salvage company preparing to recover pieces of maritime history off Washington coast

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The gold is important, Hummel says—the investors funding his recovery operation expect a payout—but he maintains that his primary interest is the ship’s history, which has fascinated him since he started researching it in 1989.

“The gold is interesting, but it’s really the artifacts,” he says. “It’s the personal contact. And to me, it’s like a way of time travel. You’re really touching something from the past, and the last person to touch it was the person who owned it.”

Delgado agrees that, if recovered, artifacts could clarify enduring mysteries about the wreck. “One of the things [archeologists] start with early on … is the forensics of the accident,” he says. “Where was it? How did it sink? How did it break apart?”

Depending on their state of preservation, artifacts might even answer questions about the Pacific’s condition prior to the collision—for example, whether the ship’s hull was dangerously rotten.

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A sonar image of the Pacific‘s suspected paddle wheels lying in silt

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It’s also possible that artifacts could paint a more personal picture.

“What we’ve seen with other wrecks, like the work done by salvors with the

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, there are trunks that are sitting there that are intact, and with contents intact,” Delgado says. “[There are] daguerreotypes that still have their images preserved in the deeper ocean.”

Six weeks after the Pacific disaster, a portion of railing or stateroom stanchion washed ashore. Scratched onto it was the signature of lumberman Moody, along with a message: “All lost.”

“I’ve held that piece of wood from Pacific in my hands more than once,” says Delgado, who worked with

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in his previous role as director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. “I can only imagine Sewell Moody with a pencil stub, writing that note, hoping that it would wash ashore, and then sinking, most likely. … In your mind’s eye, you could put yourself in that situation. And that’s the power of the artifact in a museum for everybody.”

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Filed Under:

American History,

Archaeology,

Canada,

Death,

Gold,

Gold Rush,

Pacific Ocean,

Ships,

Shipwrecks,

Transportation,

Water Transportation

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Hundreds Died When This Steamship Sank in the Pacific Northwest in 1875 With Gold Worth Millions On Board

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Hundreds Died When This Steamship Sank in the Pacific Northwest in 1875 With Gold Worth Millions On Board

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