COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • JANUARY 2, 2019 •
9A
Off beat Oregon: Youngesters’ summer shipwreck couldn’t happen today
By Finn J.D. John
For The Sentinel
T
he fi rst day of summer
vacation in 1930 was a
real red-letter day for
Washington High School stu-
dents Stan Allyn and Wally Sten-
lake.
Of course, every high-school
kid looks forward to that fi rst
day of freedom. But Stan and
Wally had a special reason: Th ey
had a little excursion planned.
Th ey were going to take their
bicycles and ride from their
homes in the Mount Tabor
neighborhood of Portland out
to Astoria, cross the river to the
Washington side, go out on Pea-
cock Spit at low tide, and spend
the night on a shipwrecked pas-
senger steamer, with breakers
crashing around them when the
tide came in.
Th e S.S. Admiral Benson was,
in 1930, a fairly new and modern
passenger steamer, built during
the First World War at Bethle-
hem Steel back east. Since 1927
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she had been on the San Francis-
co-Portland run.
On Feb. 15, 1930, the big
steamer was on her way to Port-
land with a cargo of citrus fruit
and other general cargo, along
with 39 passengers; the crew (in-
cluding stateroom stewards, din-
ing-room staff , and an orchestra)
numbered 65.
For a February day, the seas
were fairly calm, and it was a
routine run. Th e only problem
was, it was extremely foggy. Th is
was, of course, before GPS made
it possible to really navigate
blind. So Captain Charles Gra-
ham and his offi cers were peer-
ing into the cottony darkness,
looking for the telltale fl ares of
light from the Tillamook Rock
Lighthouse and Columbia River
Lightship that would tell them
where to steer.
Soon, the big steamer was
rounding the turn into the Co-
lumbia River, and lookouts were
peering into the darkness look-
ing for the channel buoys.
Shortly aft er, one loomed up
in the distance, visible through
a break in the fog — black with
a stripe across the middle. Th ey
were off course, it appeared; the
buoy was farther to the north
than they’d expected. Th e ship
changed course, steering toward
it.
Th en the lookout saw some-
thing else:
Breakers.
Th e engineer slammed the
drive screws into reverse. But
by the time you can see breakers
from the bridge of a 3,000-ton
steamship that’s heading straight
for them at 10 knots, there’s not
much you can do other than
brace for impact. So, a few sec-
onds later, still lumbering along
at a good clip, the Admiral Ben-
son fetched up on the sands of
Peacock Spit.
Th e “buoy” they’d been steer-
ing for now revealed itself. It
was not, in fact, a buoy; it was
the smokestack of the steamship
Laurel, which had wrecked there
the previous June.
ore
We Fetch You M yo
ur door!
…and deliver it all to
Unlike what had happened to
the Laurel, though, the Admiral
Benson’s was a relatively gentle
grounding, and there was no
reason to think they wouldn’t
be off the beach and back under
way in a few days. Capt. Gra-
ham ordered the ballast tanks
pumped full of seawater, trying
to pin the big ship to the sea-
fl oor so that the waves wouldn’t
be easily able to pick her up and
slam her against the bottom.
Th en the ship’s radio operator
got on the air to request a little
help from the Coast Guard, to
get the passengers on their way
to Portland and then try to re-
fl oat the ship.
Th e passengers and nonessen-
tial crew were soon off the ship;
the Coast Guard’s new motor
lifeboats made such rescues al-
most routine. Many of the pas-
sengers had to slide down wet
ropes to get to the rescue boats,
to the dismay of the women,
who of course were all wearing
dresses and skirts. A line was
also made fast to land, so that the
remaining crew members could
be easily evacuated via breeches
buoy (basically a zipline) if nec-
essary.
Unfortunately, the February
weather declined to cooperate
with the plans to salvage the ship,
and soon a mammoth gale blew
up out of the southwest. Huge
breakers hammered the Admi-
ral Benson, wedging her farther
up onto the sand and fl exing her
hull enough to pop rivets. Finally
the captain admitted defeat, and
he and the remaining crew rode
the breeches buoy to shore.
Th e breeches buoy was
strengthened and turned into a
sort of platform tram, and over
the next month or two it was
used to take all the cargo off
along with the more manageable
bits of personal property. By late
spring, the wreck was wholly
abandoned, and it sat there on
the spit, slowly being worked
into the sand — which would
eventually envelop it.
Th is, then, was Stan and Wal-
ly’s destination. Th ey had lashed
bedrolls and some food — cans
of beans and loaves of bread —
to their bicycles. Th ey’d checked
the tide tables and confi rmed
that a minus tide was scheduled
— a clamming tide. And so off
they went.
T
he two boys made it to As-
toria in one day of pedaling
along Highway 30 — just over
100 miles. When they arrived,
they were naturally exhausted;
they found an abandoned street-
car to roll out their bedrolls in,
and the next day boarded the
ferry to cross the Columbia River
to Ilwaco. Th e crossing was long
enough for them to enjoy a hot
breakfast of ham and eggs, with
hot coff ee, in the ferry’s café.
Once on the Washington side,
they worked their way down to
Peacock Spit. Th ere was the Ad-
miral Benson, looking as if she
were sinking by the stern into
a sea of sand. Th e boys stashed
their bikes, collected their bed-
rolls and food, and hustled down
onto the beach. Th ey intended to
spend the night on the wreck.
When they got there, they
found it wasn’t entirely high and
dry. Th e ship sat in the middle of
a great pool of tidewater, sever-
al hundred yards across. So the
two of them hastily lashed to-
gether a makeshift raft made of
drift wood, and made their way
across to the hulk.
Th e breakers had torn a hole
in the stern of the ship, and they
were able to paddle right into
this, as if driving a car into a ga-
rage. Th ey carefully worked their
way around a huge sheet of steel
that hung from the overhead by
a dangerously frail-looking sort
of hinge made of thin metal — it
had been an engine-room bulk-
head — and tied their raft off to
a metal grate. Th en they climbed
into the engine room and pulled
their raft up high, out of reach of
the incoming tide.
Th en they set about exploring
the derelict.
T
hey poked around the pas-
senger rooms a bit, climbed
to the bridge, stood on the peak
of the bow nearly 100 feet above
the sand. Th ey found payroll re-
cords in the captain’s desk, and
learned that he was paid $300
a month for his services. Stan
found a dollar pocket watch in
working order. And of course
they nicked a few souvenirs —
bits of easily removable ship trim
and so forth.
Th ey weren’t nearly done ex-
ploring, though, when the entire
ship trembled and a deafening
crash was heard. Th e fi rst break-
er of the incoming high tide had
slammed into that loose bulk-
head, pounding it forward like a
pendulum to smash into the next
bulkhead.
Th en it happened again, and
the boys realized that that piece
of steel was going to repeat the
performance every time a wave
hit the ship … all the rest of the
day, and all night. Although it
was early summer, the seas were
running high.
Th e boys were, of course, now
stuck on the wreck until the mi-
nus tide returned the following
day. Th ey would be on board the
ship, listening to that constant
racket, for a full 24 hours.
Th ey wouldn’t get much sleep
that night, up there on the tilt-
ed fl oor of the bridge. And aft er
night fell they wouldn’t be able to
see the great combers pounding
down on the wrecked hulk. But
between the impacts of the great
walls of water, and the hammer
blows of that huge sheet of steel
below, the two of them were
more than a little afraid the ship
would break up under their feet
that very night and they’d drown
on Peacock Spit.
It didn’t, of course, and they
didn’t, and the next day, their raft
was still there and ready to take
them back to shore. Th ey stashed
all the souvenirs they’d taken,
planning to come back for them
sometime when they had use of a
car; climbed on their wheels; and
pedaled on back home.
It was the kind of summer ad-
venture that kids used to be able
to have in Oregon, 75 years ago.
Such a lark would be unthink-
able today. Shipwrecks on the
Oregon Coast are almost un-
heard-of; when they do happen,
as with the New Carissa incident
in 1999, state bureaucrats get
very excited and start fi ling law-
suits, demanding instant remov-
al. And any parent who allowed
their teenage kids to pedal 100
miles to strand themselves on a
wrecked ship like this would be
in danger of losing custody.
Modern teenagers can only
wish they could undertake an
adventure like this. In almost ev-
ery way, the world is a far better
place today than it was in 1930.
In this one way, though … argu-
ably, it’s not.
(Sources: Th e Day the Sun
Didn’t Rise!, a book by Stan Al-
lyn published in 1991 by Bin-
ford & Mort of Portland; Pacifi c
Graveyard, a book published in
1950, also by Binford & Mort;
“SS Admiral Benson grounds
on Peacock Spit…,” an article
by Daryl C. McClary in Histo-
ryLink.org Online Encyclopedia
of Washington State History at
historylink.org.)
Finn J.D. John teaches at Ore-
gon State University and writes
about odd tidbits of Oregon
history. For details, visit www.
fi nnjohn.com.
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