Perhaps as many as 300-400 ships annually “would be no more” per the Bill Gaither lyrics (below), were it not for the Cape Disappointment lighthouse – and the United States Coast Guard Station nearby – that marks the entrance to the Columbia River “reputed to be one of the most dangerous in the world.”
“There’s a Lighthouse on the hillside
That overlooks life’s sea
And when I’m tossed it sends out a light
That I might see
And the light that shines in darkness now
Will safely lead us o’er
If it wasn’t for the Lighthouse
My ship would be no more.”
More than 2000 vessels and 700 lives have been lost near the Columbia Bar alone earning the treacherous coastline the title: “the graveyard of the Pacific.”
Even the ship Oriole, carrying the construction materials to build the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse, sank two miles off shore in 1853.
Completed in 1856, the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse – one of 750 guarding the shores of the United States – guides sailors into the mouth of the Columbia River from the south, it’s light visible 17 miles out to sea.
Perhaps it was a storm such as we had this past weekend – 87 mph gusts throwing sea-green breakers into white, foaming spray so high as if to overtake the lighthouse itself, perched on the cliff 220 feet above – that caused British fur trader John Meares in 1788 to turn away from the very shelter he sought from the wild, turbulent seas: the Columbia River.
Disappointed, Meares declared in his diary that no such river existed, hence the name “Cape Disappointment.”
He was 16 years old and the brother of our (David Anderson and myself) grandmother, Alice Ada Locke, thereby our great uncle. But, young as he was, the sea was calling his name and his parents reluctantly took him to the Tacoma docks where he boarded the Valencia in January 1906. The ship was headed to Victoria/Vancouver, and loaded with men, women and children, all happily headed for B.C.
Ben was hired as a deckhand. The boat never made it. And very few were able to swim to shore due to exceptionally high seas. A nearby rescue ship couldn’t even approach the sinking vessel due to the storm and watched helplessly as the ship broke apart.
In a subsequent book recording the tragedy, this quote stands out: “If the casting away of the Valencia on the “deadly West Coast” of Vancouver Island, a stretch of rocks that has, during the past thirty-nine years, been responsible for the loss of sixteen vessels and the throwing away of seven hundred and sixty-three lives, will result in some governmental action being taken that will safe-guard the people of two countries traveling on the seas, then the wrecking of the ‘Valencia, horrible though it was, will not be an entirely useless thing.”
I seriously doubt if our great-grandparents, Hulda and Frank Locke, would agree. Nor our grandmother and her siblings who mourned the loss of their brother, Ben.
A few years later, Ben’s older brother, Ernest, also lost his life in a boating mishap. He was working at the Tacoma waterfront and died in an electrical accident.
A cemetery in Oysterville on the Long Beach Peninsula has a plaque that is dedicated to seafaring men and women who were lost and never found. So as to be buried. But found? Now that’s a question all of us must answer, sooner rather than later. I will leave this earth and will set foot on a different shore. I will never suffer any fear of being “lost.”
David,
Very good – great history – and there is a museum near the lighthouse where you can walk inside one of the lense assemblies: impressive. While I was in the USNR, my broher was in the Coarst Guard (do some of the first computerizing of CG Ship controls in the 1960’s); and, my grandfather was on the HMS Triumph (a sailing vessel that was also steam powered) and went around South America on many occasions and was on board when electricity was introduced to the King of Hawaii…my son is reprising my Grandfather’s sea log – most interesting…thanks.