Salvage Company Finds Location of Sunken Ship From 1875 Carrying Gold Cargo Worth Millions and Around 250 Passengers

2025 marked the 150th anniversary of one of the worst maritime disasters ever recorded. On November 4, 1875, a steamship, S.S. Pacific, from the coast of San Francisco, carrying about 250 passengers and some crew members, along with 600 tons of cargo and gold met with an accident, according to Smithsonian Magazine. With the efforts of a Seattle-based salvage company, the wreck's location was finally about to be explored in 2022. The salvage company, Rockfish, was looking into the S.S. Pacific's wreckage and revealed how the ship was carrying loads of gold in cargo. 

However, due to poor record-keeping and last-minute ticket sales, there was no concrete evidence of the actual number of passengers that boarded their last voyage. However, experts believed that the death toll was around 250 to 300 people. The ship had ended up colliding with another vessel about 20 miles off the coast of Washington State. The crew couldn't prepare the lifeboats on time and the ship broke in half and sank, taking the lives of everyone except two survivors. According to one account, the ship carried $79,220 in gold rush treasure from Victoria along with loads of oats, animal hides, coal, six horses, two buggies, two cases of opium, and much more.

"Shipped was as follows," the Colonist reported. "Mr. F. Garesche, $29,220; Bank British North America, $28,336; Bank British Columbia, $21,245; and about $100,000 in private hands." The newspaper calculated the value of the treasure trove to be higher than $79,220. It was also believed the remaining gold deep under the wreckage of the Pacific is estimated to be worth more than $5 million. The captain of the doomed steamer ship, Jefferson Davis Howell, was a veteran of the Civil War. The passengers on board came from different societal classes. There were bankers, businessmen, socialites, entertainers miners, and immigrant workers. 

Some of the notable passengers were, Francis Garesche, a banker and Wells Fargo agent, accompanying the cargo of treasure. There was a principal owner of a sawmill, a lumber export businessman, and the founder of the Moodyville town, Sewell P. Moddy. An 18-year-old daughter of a professor from Victoria named Fanny Palmer was also on board. Per the newspaper's report, she was visiting her brother in San Francisco. "The Pacific’s sinking rings to me as a very 19th-century tale," James Delgado, a maritime archaeologist, historian, and former director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, said per the paper. "Shipwrecks were the most common cause of mass fatality in peacetime, other than major earthquakes or things like that. Globally, you could have more than a shipwreck a day."

Delgado mentioned that traveling through oceans had risks during those days but people accepted it. However, the passengers of the S.S. Pacific likely had no idea about the ship's fate. The ship was built in New York in 1850 and used to ferry the people wrapped up in the Gold Rush mania from East to West Coast through the Isthmus of Panama. "Suddenly, all sorts of ships, steamships in regular service, get swept up in this and sent out," Delgado says. "It’s all part of that gold mania." When it set sail for its final voyage, the S.S. Pacific was way past its prime and useful life span.

The steamship had previously collided with the Coffin Rock, located in the Columbia River in 1861. The ship was pulled out of the water after it sank and was repaired and returned to work for 10 more years. The ship was retired in 1871 and it was likely that the materials used to build the vessel were damaged. However, the ship was put back to business after the demand for shipping spiked during the Gold Rush. On the day it sank towards the evening, the ship had passed the Cape Flattery Lighthouse on Washington’s Tatoosh Island and was headed south into the Pacific Ocean.