When Death Rode the Waves

As I noted in a recent editorial, 147 years later treasure hunters think they’ve found the wreckage of the SS. Pacific which foundered off Cape Flattery in 1875.

The result of a collision with a sailing ship, it’s one of the worst marine disasters in Pacific Northwest history—two survived of an estimated 250 persons aboard.

It’s a fascinating story of tragedy, complete with a message from the grave—and, if one chooses to believe, of a ghost that tormented the Orpheus’s captain to his grave.

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PHOTO: The sidewheel passenger steamer Pacific was old and tired—one of the so-called ‘floating coffins’ of the west coast in the so-called good old days—and she went down in minutes after receiving a glancing blow from the sailing ship Orpheus.