SS Pacific (1851)

SS Pacific, from a drawing commissioned early in its career.
History
United States
Name:	Pacific
Builder:	William H. Brown, New York
Launched:	September 24, 1850
Fate:	Sunk after collision, November 4, 1875
General characteristics
Class and type:	Steamship
Tonnage:	876 tons
Length:	223 ft (68 m)
Beam:	33 ft 6 in (10.21 m)
Propulsion:	Vertical-beam steam engine Side paddle-wheels

SS Pacific was an 876-ton sidewheel steamer built in 1851 most notable for its sinking in 1875 as a result of a collision southwest of Cape Flattery, Washington.Pacific had an estimated 275 passengers and crew aboard when she sank. Only two survived. Among the casualties were several notable figures, including the vessel's captain at the time of the disaster, Jefferson Davis Howell (1846–1875), the brother-in-law of ex-Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Originally in service on passenger runs between Panama and San Francisco, Pacific was among the many vessels who ferried miners from California to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in 1858. She was damaged from a grounding in the 1860s and was repaired but was retired from service. The onset of the Cassiar Gold Rush in far northern British Columbia saw her returned to service in the period 1872 to 1875, by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, on a regular run from San Francisco to and from Victoria, British Columbia and the American cities of Puget Sound.

On 4 November, 1875, she boarded passengers and freight in Victoria for the regular run to San Francisco in the climate of an unregulated and highly competitive market where passage was often offered free just to hurt the competing shipping line's business (the regular Victoria-San Francisco fare was $5 - about $200 in modern currency). Loaded to the gunwales and listing badly, efforts to right the ship included filling lifeboats with water to bring her to trim, and then doing the same with the lifeboats on the other side to re-compensate when the vessel began to list too heavily in the opposite direction. No lifeboat drills were held, and at a subsequent inquest it was revealed that even if the lifeboats had been available for use, only 145 passengers could have been saved, with at least another 155 left on board to go down with the ship (the official estimate of the number of passengers was 275, but as children paid no fare the death toll is believed to have been much higher).