Ship of Lost Souls: The Tragic Wreck of the Steamship Valencia

Of all the ships lost in what has come to be called the "Graveyard of the Pacific," the story of the steamship Valencia is among the saddest. In January 1906, the Valencia set out from San Francisco, bound for Seattle with 108 passengers and some 65 crew aboard. Owing to bad weather and mistakes made by the captain, she struck a reef 11 miles off Cape Beale on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. The ship's hull was gashed open by the rocks. The tragedy was soon multiplied a hundredfold by a series of further mistakes and missteps. Ultimately, due in large part to the lack of lifesaving infrastructure in the rugged area where she ran aground, only thirty-seven survived.

The wreck of the Valencia was an especially tragic one for a number of reasons. To begin with, most on board perished, including every woman and child, many of whom had been lashed to the rigging high above the deck in an attempt to save them from the crashing waves. Additionally, the wreck itself was almost certainly avoidable, due almost entirely to navigational errors made by the captain. Finally, rescue efforts--such as they were--were hampered not just by the sea and the weather, but due to mistakes made by (and some say the cowardice of) the would-be rescuers.

This book pieces together the story of the Valencia and her tragic end, weaving together not just the threads of the ill-fated voyage itself, but also relevant contextual history, including the development of radio technologies and lifesaving equipment and services that simply came too late to help the doomed voyagers.

Rod Scher received his MEd from the University of Oregon. He is a longtime boating enthusiast and former English teacher, as well as an experienced writer and editor with multiple books and dozens of magazine articles to his credit. The former editor of Smart Computing magazine, he is also the author of Sailing by Starlight: The Remarkable Voyage of Globe Star and Leveling the Playing Field: The Democratization of Technology, and the editor/annotator of editions of Joshua Slocum's classic nautical memoir Sailing Alone Around the World and Richard Henry Dana's classic Two Years Before the Mast.

Rod began his career teaching high school English and journalism in Oregon and California. After several years in the classroom, he left teaching to become an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in San Diego, California, where he edited a variety of humanities texts and participated in the development of computerized test preparation and textbook management products. Now semi-retired, Rod travels the country in a small motorhome with his wife, Lesley, writing and editing as the opportunity arises. When not on the road, Rod lives in Depoe Bay, Oregon.