"Jumped out of my bunk, the water rushing through the bow saw all hands rush on the hurricane deck. "I woke up with the crash," said Neil Henly, 21, the Pacific's quartermaster and one of the two survivors. Because the Orpheus had only been slightly damaged its crew surmised the Pacific also had sustained light damage. The ships continued in their general directions. The ships collided, with the Pacific's bow striking the hull of the Orpheus in three locations. The Orpheus turned in front of the Pacific. While that ship's captain was below checking maps, its crew spotted the Pacific's masthead light but mistook it for the Cape Flattery lighthouse. Meanwhile, the clipper SV Orpheus was headed north. It set out for the ocean via the Strait of Juan de Fuca and turned south about 12 miles off Cape Flattery. The Pacific had been designed for the California Gold Rush of 1849 and was equipped with a strong room. The ship was carrying millions in gold in the form of coins, bars and gold dust. In Victoria, several miners returning from northern gold fields boarded. "He was somebody that was liked at every port at which the vessel stopped, so (his death) was a big blow to the folks in Tacoma," he said. It was captained by Jeff Howell, a well-known skipper in Tacoma, according to McCauley. 3, 1875, the Pacific left Tacoma filled with hops and bound for Seattle and other stops before making its last port of call at Victoria on Nov. In 1875, the ship was purchased by its final owner and put on the Puget Sound-San Francisco run. The ship was soon raised, repaired and put back to work. In 1861, the ship was pushed off course by strong winds and sank in the Columbia River on its way from San Francisco to Astoria, Oregon - an area called the graveyard of the Pacific due to its numerous shipwrecks. In 1855, 45 passengers died from cholera they picked up while transiting across Nicaragua. In an era before the construction of the Panama Canal, the Pacific served both the Chagres (Panama)-New Orleans and Nicaragua-San Francisco routes. It set a speed record on its inaugural run and was soon purchased by New York business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. The steam-powered ship had two side wheels that provided propulsion.Ĭarrying both cargo and passengers, the ship had a storied history. The 225-foot-long Pacific was launched in 1850 in New York, where it was built for $100,000. The pair, both 58, began salvaging underwater wrecks while they were still in high school. The nonprofit organization was founded by McCauley and Hummel. Recently, the wreck was found by The Northwest Shipwreck Alliance. Sailing from Victoria, B.C., to San Francisco, the Pacific sank with at least 325 passengers and crew. On Thursday, Matt McCauley and Jeff Hummel will present their research, findings and plans during a talk at the Foss Waterway Seaport in Tacoma. 5, 1875, are planning to salvage the ship and display its artifacts in a proposed museum. Now, two men who claim to have found the remains of the SS Pacific, a steamship that sank on Nov. Some 20 miles off the farthest reaches of Washington's coast lies a shipwreck that killed hundreds of people and sent millions of dollars of gold to the cold depths of the Pacific Ocean.
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