The Sinking of the Alaska
A coal-laden ship goes down off Cape Flattery, leaving a captain and crew to fend for themselves in the open sea.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The American ship Alaska, which had been looked for at San Francisco for the past few days, went to the bottom on April 22. The vessel was bound for port from Whatcom, with 1,900 tons of coal. When off Cape Flattery, the ship sprung a leak and all efforts of the crew to save her proved futile. The crew was rescued by the schooner Melancthon and the ship was abandoned with no hope of her floating. Capt. Brennan, when seen, said the leak occurred the first day they were out. It was not long before they were taking five inches of water an hour. For three days they were leaking, attempting to make Trinidad. It was about noon on Saturday that they sighted the Melancthon coming in their wake. Capt. Brennan signaled for distress, and by 9 o'clock Saturday night, the last boat reached the schooner.
“I saw that in her lay our salvation and I put up signals of distress.”
The treacherous waters off Cape Flattery remain a graveyard for vessels to this day, though modern satellite tracking and weather reporting have largely replaced the desperate 'signals of distress' of the 19th-century maritime era. The loss of the Alaska highlights the constant danger posed by the coal trade that fueled the early industrial development of the Puget Sound region.
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