Not crossing the Bar on New Years Eve night, (The doings of the Dirty D) Desdemona 1857 One of the few sand bars that did not erode after the jetties were built, the Desdemona Sands got its name from a ship that grounded there on New Year’s Day in 1857. Classified as a bark, which refers to the way the ship is rigged, the Desdemona was built in 1847 and called San Francisco, California, its home port. According to Pacific Graveyard by James A. Gibbs, the ship was one of the most dependable and familiar in coastal trading. Before leaving for Astoria, Oregon, the ship’s captain, Francis Williams, made a bet with the ship’s owner, Thomas Smith: If Williams could get the ship’s cargo to the Columbia River by New Year’s Day, Smith would buy him a new Sunday suit. Williams arrived around midnight on New Year’s Eve but decided to wait until dawn to cross the bar. At daybreak, the crew signaled for a bar pilot to guide the ship across the bar, but none ever arrived. Williams, a skilled captain with decent knowledge of the bar, decided to make the crossing without a pilot. But the ship was heavy with cargo and Williams’s charts of the bar’s ever-shifting channels were incorrect. The ship hit a shoal. Williams, the ship’s crew, and men from Astoria worked for three days to remove cargo from the stranded ship before a storm hit and the work had to stop. After the storm, the crew returned to the ship for the last bits of cargo. In the frenzy, the scow carrying cargo and the crew, and being pulled by a tugboat was overloaded. It capsized, taking the cargo and several crew members with it. All but one of the crew members was saved. The wreck of the Desdemona was visible for many years until one especially hard winter when it sank out of sight into the sands that now bear its name. Gibbs mentions that it is unknown whether Williams ever received his new Sunday suit. ************************************************************************************ 1857 Bark, three masts, 104x 25x 12.7, built at Jonesboro, Maine in 1847. Carrying a general cargo under Captain Francis Williams, she attempted to cross the bar with a fair wind on a flood tide without a pilot. The lower buoy was adrift and when the captain stood for Astoria, the ship struck. The bark lay easy for a full 24 hours while a tug attempted to tow her off the Chinook Sands, as they were then known; try as she might, the Joe Lane met with failure. Eventually the ship bilged and the crew was forced to salvage her cargo via barges. By January 5, they were down to the last load when the unfortunate ship capsized, drowning seaman George Cartland. Moses Rogers offered $215 for whatever was left and it was accepted. He stripped much of her gear; the hull remained visible, stark and alone, on sentry duty for many years to warn others to beware her fate ... thus the name Desdemona Sands. (photo: Bark Desdemona SF History Center, SF Public Library.)
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 20:44:36 +0000
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