THE LOSS OF THE PACIFIC.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 466, 11 December 1875, Page 3

THE LOSS OF THE PACIFIC.

The San Francisco correspondent of the New Zealand Herald gives the following ac count of the loss of this vessel with 167 passengers on board : The intelligence was flashed over the wires of the northern coast yesterday afternoon that the steamer Pacific had foundered off 1 .'ape Flattery, and that all on board had been engnlphed in the ocean waste, save one solitary passenger, who, buffeted by the waves, had clung for three days to the pilot house, and had finally been rescued by a passing vessel. A disaster of this appalling calamity dwaifs the calamity of a few days ago. A city was burned, but no lives, beyond one or two, were lost The steamer whose loss we to day report, carried with her to the bottom probably not fewer than 150 persons—passengers and crew. Her destine tion is one of the saddest occurrences on our coast for many years Better and more valuable vessels have been stiar.ded and broken up on our coast within recent times, but it requires an (effort of memory to recall a disaster at sea so fatal to the lives of those on board. The survivor’s narrative runs thus — Between eight and nine o’clock that evening, and while I was in the cabin in bed, I heard a crash, anl felt a shock as if we had struck a rock or something of the kind, and heard something fall as if a lot of rocks had broken into us, and had fallen in by her starboard bow ; and immediately I heard the bell strike to stop her, and then to back her, and then strike to go ahead. I went on deck, and there I heard voices say, “ it is all right,; we have struck a vessel ; ” and looking round I saw several lights some distance off, on our starboard beam. 1 think there were three lights. I do not think they were coloured lights, but did not pay mnch attention to them. I went back into the ca v in, and was about to turn in, when I noticed her taking a heavy list to port, and thou thought she was going down, and went on deck. 1 heard some one sny, “ She is making water very fast forward ! ” I then went on deck to the starboard side, forward of the paddle-box, where a number of men were trying to get the long boat out, but they could not do it. I then went to see about the port boat forward, and helped five or six ladies iuto it, and tried to get the boat off, but we could not budge the boat. There were about twenty ladies in the boat. I then heard it said that the two boats abaft the wheels had gotten off, but did not see them. The boat I was rear was partly full of water, and we could not get her off at all. I think it was about an hour from the time the steamer struck up to the time she listed to port so much that the port boat was let into the water and cut loose from the davits. 1 was in the boat which, when it touched the water began to fill and turned over. I crawled upon the bottom of the boat and helped several others up with me. Immediately after the steamer seemed to break in two, fore and aft, and one half of the smoke stack fell to port, and the stack struck our boat and pushed it away, and the steamship Pacific sank. I think about all the ladies were in our boat, and when she upset they all fell into the water, and I fear they were drowned. This was about \ ten o’clock in the evening. The night was

not dark, nor was tlie sea very rough, but there was a fresh breeze. I afterwards left the bottom of our boat, and with another man climbed on the top of the pilot house, which was floating near, and we held on to the upper wire that came out of the top. Next morning I got some life-preservers floating near the house, and with their ropes lashed myself and my companion to the house. I saw three rafts. The first had one man on, the next had three men and a woman, and the other I could not make out, owing to the distance, except that there were human beings on it. I think we were thirty or forty miles south of the Cape when the vessel sunk. We passed the light on Tattoosh Island between 4 and 5 o’clock on the evening of the 4 th. I and my comrade were on the top of the pilot-house all of the sth, until 4 o’clock, when he died. I then cut him loose. The sea was running very high all day, and I think my comrade was drowned by the waves washing over him, he not being strong enough to hold his head up, and the waves constantly washing over us. Soon after he died I sighted a vessel, and called, and also heard the people on the other rafts calling. I did not see the other rafts after that, and that vessel did not come near me. I spent Friday night on my raft. There was little wind until morning, when it came on to blow again, and the sea became very rough. I was then within a mile from the Vancouver shore.