Farallon Steamship Disaster

The survivors collecting provisions from the wreck

The survivors collecting firewood

The Farallon Steamship Disaster was the shipwreck of a wooden Alaskan Steamship Company liner, the S.S. Farallon, that hit Black Reef in the Cook Inlet of the Farallon Islands, Alaska, on January 5, 1910.^[1] Caught in a blinding snow storm, with extremely high gales, the steamer ran aground on the reef 1 mile (1.6 km) from shore. The ship struck the reef around 5 a.m. when the tides were very high. Within a matter of hours, however, the waters receded and the damage of the ship was deemed irreparable and evacuation essential.^[2] All on board evacuated to a nearby island and had to survive for a month in a mid-winter climate before they were rescued. Steve K. Lloyd wrote a book on the story.

Survival

The passengers and crew took off from the disaster site in lifeboats, but not without difficulty. All on board, thirty-eight men, eventually evacuated to the shore of Iliamna Bay, however the extremely high surf and frequent ice cakes caused the men to look pessimistically on their docking probabilities.^[3] The men would then face the relentless cold, snow, and lack of adequate nutrition for twenty-nine days, before being rescued by the S.S Victoria.^[4] They lived off the few provisions that had been saved from the accident, including sails, tarpaulins, passenger baggage and mattresses. They had no artificial source of light, and water had to be acquired by melting snow. The typical meal included raw bacon and frozen bread. Throughout the subsequent days men travelled back to the shipwreck to scavenge for any materials that may prove useful. Consequently several convenience items were haphazardly constructed, including makeshift stoves.^[5] As temperatures plummeted to −40 °F (−40 °C), fuel for warmth was generated by driftwood found in the snowy banks of the shore.^[6]

History of S.S. Farallon

On January 27, 1902 the S.S. Farallon became the fourth ship in the Alaska Steamship Company fleet. It was a wooden steam schooner. A schooner is a two-masted fore-and-aft rigged vessel with both a fore and main mast.^[7] The boat was named after the Farallon Islands, located 26 miles (42 km) from the coast of San Francisco. These islands were named after the Spanish word "farallones", meaning rock or cliff in the sea. Quite a coincidence, seeing as the ship would eventually meet its end from the damage of the very mass it was named after. The boat was 171 feet (52 m) long with a 34 feet (10 m) beam and a cargo hold more than 10 feet (3.0 m) deep. This deep hold allowed the ship to transport over 400,000 board feet of lumber, including Pacific Coast fir, pine, redwood and cedar.^[8]

J.E. Thwaites and his documentation

John Edward Thwaites was one of the men on board the S.S. Farallon when it ran aground in the Cook Inlet. He worked in the ship service as a mail clerk, on the route from Valdez, Alaska to Unalaska, Alaska. His office was in the “mail closet” of the schooners, a stateroom located often on the port side of the boats.

Thwaites mainly worked on the S.S. Dora, a boat that was part of the Northwestern Steamship Company fleet, but was also assigned to other schooners travelling in the Alaskan region. Essentially, he held the responsibility of delivering mail, monthly, to the people of Southwestern Alaska, living in areas unaccessible by any other means.^[9]

Thwaites recorded the survival and events of the disaster through photography. J.E. Thwaites was an amateur photographer who owned a Kodak 3-A Special, popular in the postcard industry. While Thwaites had no professional training or schooling in photography, he was able to take advantage of the expanding postcard industry and sell his images for a profit.^[10] While stranded on the shore of Iliamna Bay Thwaites took over one hundred photographs, depiciting the desolate and harsh environment the men were victim to and documenting the tasks of primitive survival the men had to execute to stay alive.

The brave six

Of the thirty-eight men aboard, six did not stay at Iliamna Bay. They instead, attempted to reach Kodiak Island in hopes of arranging a rescue. They set out on January 7, 1910 from the wreck in a 12-foot (3.7 m) lifeboat across one of the most dangerous regions of water in the western hemisphere, the Shelikof Strait.^[11] The six men were Gus Swanson, the second mate of the Farallon, Charles Peterson, a seaman, Ottoe Nelson, a seamen, Albert Bailey, a passenger, Charles Bourne, a resident of Afognak, and Captain Weiding.

When the men left the site the wind was blowing north by northwest, however, during the night, the wind increased and the group was forced to beach their rowboat at Ursus Cove and remain there until morning. The following morning, January 8, when the men returned to the water, there was a new northeast wind and a heavy snowstorm. Suddenly, mid-morning, the wind changed course and began blowing extremely strongly towards the northwest. The small rowboat stood no chance against the heavy seas and the men and boat soon became completely ice-coated. The ice weighed down the boat to the point where it could hardly stay above water and the group was once again forced to find a place to dock. That evening the defenceless lifeboat ran into a heavy pack of ice, completely crushing what was left of the already poorly functioning structure. The men were luckily not far from shore. However, their boat had sunk with almost all their provisions and they were forced to walk shoulder-high through the ice-cold water. They eventually reached the shore at Cape Douglas.

The following morning, January 9, the party trekked to the top of the cliff above the beach for protection from the vicious seas and wind, and there they constructed a makeshift tent and fire. The physical state of the men, however, was quickly deteriorating. All of them were frostbitten and some were showing the early signs of hypothermia. For the next 38 hours the men would stay on the cliff in desperation to regain strength. Once the high gales, strong winds, eventually were repressed, the men walked two miles from the cliff and found the camp of Michael Pablow, a fur trapper, who owned his own small schooner. While Pablow refused to cross the strait, he supplied the ravenous men with provisions and deprived himself of food in efforts to aid the weary travellers. The group did not leave Pablow’s camp until February 7 because of the intense storms. Albert Bailey and Otto Nelson then led the way to Kaguak on foot with, while Swanson, Peterson, Bourne, and Weiding followed in a bidarka because they had lost their capability to walk. The men found an old skiff and dug it out of the snow at Kaguak, and began making their way across the strait to Kafliar Bay on February 22. Charles Bourne was forced to stay with the natives at Kaguak because of the severe physical impairment the harsh conditions had induced upon him. The men were able to reach Cape Ugat before fierce wind once again destroyed their vessel. Fortunately, the party was able to travel on land to the Ugansk village, but would again remain stormbound until March 5. On March 5, the people of Ugansk provided the men with a dory, a small flat-bottomed boat. In this, the men would reach Afognak. Finally on March 11, 1910, just before midnight, four of the six men were brought into Seward, Alaska on the Tahoma, a revenue cutter that had been searching for the men for almost three weeks. Gus Swanson, Charles Peterson, Otto Nelson and Albert Bailey were all rescued. The Tahoma then retrieved Charles Bourne from Kaguak and Captain Weiding at Kodiak, where he had been forced to stay after suffering from hypothermia.^[12]

References

External links

• University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – John E. Thwaites Photographs Images of Southeastern Alaska from 1905–1912, including the Farallon shipwreck

Coordinates: 60°22′05″N 152°13′55″W / 60.368°N 152.232°W / 60.368; -152.232

History of Alaska Timeline Prehistory Russian America (1733–1867) Department of Alaska (1867–1884) District of Alaska (1884–1912) Territory of Alaska (1912–1959) Recent history (1959–present) Topics and events Russian-American Company Alaska Purchase Gold Rush era Klondike Nome Fairbanks Alaska boundary dispute 1925 serum run to Nome World War II Aleutian Islands Campaign Project Hula Alaska Statehood Act 1964 earthquake Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act Exxon Valdez oil spill History of Anchorage timeline History of Fairbanks Other topics