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HISTORY
(source http://southwhidbeyhistory.com)
The Calista, at 117 feet
long and 105 tons, was constructed in Washington State in
1911. She was one of the small, wooden, passenger ferries
common among the early Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet. A large
number of private transportation companies ran small
passenger and freight boats on Puget Sound, nearby waterways
as well as local rivers. They were a varied group
of steamers and sternwheelers that plied the waters of Puget
Sound on an actual schedule and generally stopped at every
waterfront dock.
On July 27, 1922, the
ferry Calista departed Oak Harbor on her scheduled run,
pulled into Coupeville, again at Langley, Clinton, and
finally Glendale before heading to market in Seattle. One
particular South Whidbey passenger onboard that fateful day
was Mrs. Margaret McLeod, mayor of Langley. She was
accompanied by her coop full of chickens.
With a final total of 70
souls onboard, Calista became enveloped in a thick fog as
she approached West Point to enter Elliot Bay. It was then,
at approximately 10:40 AM, the steamship Hawaiian Maru
rammed the Calista which sank to the bottom 28 minutes
later. Directly after the moment of collision, the Mayor of
Langley fainted. Due to the noble efforts of Captain Bert
Lovejoy, Purser R. McGinnis, Ships Mate Ole Swenson and
Chief Engineer R. H. Kimmel of the Calista, no lives were
lost and all passengers and crew were evacuated to Seattle.
The postal mail from all 4 towns, and the chickens, however,
were lost.
Early Navigation
The two greatest fears
for any sailor are either a shipboard fire or flooding. For
the Mosquito Fleet, if a fire broke out they could try to
buy themselves time, by beaching the boat and removing all
passengers in a relatively safe manner. Flooding, however,
can be caused by an engineering casualty, but more commonly
by a collision at sea.
Collisions were not
uncommon when steamboats had to operate in fog or night. Up
until 1945, when the LORAN (Long Range Aid to Navigation)
system was established, navigation was a high-risk affair.
Seamanship was an art forged from experience and sound
decision making. In today’s navigational environment with
instrumentation as sophisticated as radar, depth-sonar and
GPS (global positioning system), risks are exponentially
less.
Collisions in the 19th
and early 20th century came suddenly, and
destruction could be quick. This is especially the case when
there is a difference in size between vessels, or wooden
versus steel hull construction. Traffic, fog and geography
is, to this day, a hazard for any helmsman.
The steamboats could not
stop running at night or in bad weather. Heavy fog was
particularly hazardous, and could come up any time of year.
While there was no radar, Captains became expert at
rudimentary sonar. They could fix their position using the
echo of the steamboat whistle. Since sound travels at 1,080
feet per second, and if an echo was heard one second after
the whistle blast, the Captain could calculate the steamboat
was conservatively 500 feet from shore. The maritime
historian Jim Faber summarized how pilots on the Bridge
could roughly measure echo location:
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“Experienced navigators not only could estimate how
far they were from shore, but also could determine
their position by the sound of the echo. This was in
spite of the fact that a low shoreline, a high bank,
or even a gravel beach can all return a different
sound. Another determinant was the length of the
echo. A short echo denoted a narrow island or
headland, for most of the energy of the whistle
continued by on both sides. In only a few seconds,
the navigator had to also decide whether the echo
was bouncing from floating logs, buoys — or even a
solid fog bank.” |
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This is why it took a
Captain years of navigational experience on a particular
route to safely pilot the boat through a fog bank, or into a
dark rainy night.
Puget Sound
Collisions
Elliot Bay off Seattle
was the site of a number of maritime disasters. On the night
of November 18, 1906, the passenger steamer Dix (102 feet
long at 130 ton), had been designed specifically for very
short runs such as its unscheduled transit across Elliott
Bay. In steaming from Seattle to Alki Point, it collided
with the much larger, 4 masted steam schooner, Jeanie (186
feet long at 1,000 ton). The collision, on a clear night
full of stars, may have been due to the error of Dix’s
unlicensed mate who was at the wheel. Even though the
collision speed was slow, Dix was top-heavy. She heeled
over, filled with water, and sank 103 fathoms to the bottom.
Forty-five people, including the mate and the Chief Engineer
went down with her. The wreck was so deep that no bodies
could be practically recovered.
A similar collision,
again in Elliot Bay, occurred on October 28, 1911.
Fortuitously, there was no loss of life, however, this
collision is significant because of the obvious standoff
between a heavy, steel hulled vessel and a light, wooden
hulled sternwheeler. Multnomah was rammed by the much larger
steel-hulled express passenger Iroquois on October 28, 1911,
resulting in the sinking of Multnomah in 240 feet of water.
The Multinomah was built in Portland, Oregon in 1885, and
was 143 feet long at 313 tons. The 214 foot long Iroquois,
on the other hand, was built in Toledo, Ohio in 1901 and sat
in the water at 1,169 tons. |
