The San Mateo Blown Apart in Semiahmoo Bay
A coal-hauling steamer is rendered a floating wreck by a sudden gas explosion, leaving the crew battered but alive.
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.
While the steamer San Mateo, Captain Fletcher, was awaiting repairs in Esquimalt, she encountered a disaster similar to the Barracoota. Having loaded coal at Comox and proceeding to San Francisco, the vessel was overtaken by fog and forced to drop anchor in Semiahmoo Bay. At 10 o'clock, as the crew prepared to weigh anchor, a tremendous explosion occurred. A column of smoke, coal dust, and timbers tore through the decks, wrecking the forward part of the ship. The sides of the ship were drawn in five inches, and the heavy windlass was snapped from its rivets and thrown twenty feet away. Captain Fletcher acted as surgeon to four wounded crewmen—Oscar and James Anderson, Caleb Johnson, and S. Golden—before the vessel limped to Esquimalt. The disaster is believed to have been caused by an accumulation of coal gas in the hold, ignited by a lantern.
“The sides of the ship are drawn in fully five inches, and the steel strong-back was thrown so high that when it fell back the flange was cut for six inches.”
Semiahmoo Bay, near the Canadian border, was a critical transit point for the coal trade fueling the Pacific coast at the turn of the century. The danger of coal gas explosions, often exacerbated by primitive lighting, was a frequent and terrifying occupational hazard for merchant sailors of the era.
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