A Seven-Day Ordeal at Sea: The City of Panama Limps into Port Townsend
A midnight collision with a lumber schooner, a hurricane off the Oregon coast, and a pointed comparison to the steamer Pacific — which went down with more than 200 souls aboard.
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.
On last Friday afternoon, at 4 o'clock, the steamer City of Panama arrived at this port from San Francisco via Victoria, having made the extraordinarily long passage of seven days from San Francisco wharf. We give a memorandum of her trip as follows:
"After passing out of San Francisco harbor, on Friday evening, June 30th, the City of Panama encountered thick fog, with light head winds. About midnight, when but a short distance from port, she struck the schooner Bill the Butcher, lumber laden, amidships, cutting nine feet into her side, through plank and carline. Taking her crew, they were delayed until after daylight trying to tow the disabled vessel, of which only a little of the stern rail was visible, her large deck-load making a bulky raft that in the heavy sea was too much for any hawser at hand. Two miles nearer, leaving the wreck of the Bill the Butcher, they passed a schooner bound to San Francisco, and, at their request, put the officers of the ill-fated vessel on board of her. During Saturday, July 1st, the wind increased to a gale, driving before it a heavy northeast swell. Sunday the gale further increased, and the vessel being very light it became a matter of difficulty to work her. Toward morning on Monday, Cape Blanco appearing, it was determined, as it was comparatively clear, though blowing a hurricane, to head her toward shore to take advantage of better water and less wind, and there we found a quieter anchorage off Port Orford.
"At Port Orford lay the steamer Ermine, bound for Coos Bay, which is but fifty miles north. The Ermine had been nearly a week at Port Orford trying to work up to her landing. The wind was still blowing heavy from the northwest, but the more violent of the gale seemed to have abated. Passing Cape Blanco, we made our way north, and passed a bark from the Sandwich Islands on Thursday morning off the mouth of the Columbia, and reached Victoria the following evening."
The collision of the City of Panama and the schooner Bill the Butcher reminds us of the loss of the Pacific and the Orpheus. The Pacific struck the Orpheus in a direction and with a blow just about such a stroke as this. The Pacific, unable to launch a boat, sank with a low, mournful, appalling wail — but two being saved out of over 200. The City of Panama gave a blow in the dead watches of the night, cutting a lumber-loaded vessel almost in two; she avoided all panic, had a boat launched in a moment, and the steamer, instead of sinking, escaped. We do not require, and never have required, any evidence to convince us that the Coroner's jury were not wrong in saying that the Pacific was unseaworthy, and the comparative facts given in the foregoing lines must be conclusive on this subject to anyone.
“The Pacific, unable to launch a boat, sank with a low, mournful, appalling wail — but two being saved out of over 200.”
In an era before radar and reliable forecasting, a fog-bound night collision could sink a ship within minutes — and this account uses one steamer's survival to indict another's seaworthiness. The Pacific's loss of more than 200 lives was the 1876 version of a maritime safety scandal, the sort of disaster that pushed insurers and lawmakers toward stricter standards. Puget Sound's ferries and freighters still thread the same fog and weather today, with far better equipment and the lessons of wrecks like these behind them.
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