Storm-tossed ships shared a double date with destiny

Good morning, Oregon, and happy Friday!

I'm Finn J.D. John, if J. at offbeatorgan.com, and this is the Daily Offbeat Oregon History

podcast.

Thanks for joining me, and I hope you enjoy the show today.

This story was first published on May 10th of 2015, under the headline, Stormtost Ships

shared a double date with Destiny.

Here we go.

December of 1852 was a rough month on the Oregon coast in more ways than one.

It was one of those years when storm systems chased each other across the sky one right

after another for weeks on end, lashing the surf into towering foamy lather and filling

the Columbia River Bar with 40-foot tall walls of green water.

Outside the bar's entrance, being tossed about mercilessly by the cereal storms, a small

cluster of sailing ships tacked back and forth or roaded anchor.

They'd come from San Francisco working the new and profitable run back and forth to Portland

to fetch supplies for the hordes of eager miners still working the gold rush diggers.

Of all the waiting vessels, the Bark Mendora had been there the longest, four solid weeks.

Its crew had spent Christmas being tossed around on the sea, wet and cold, thinking longingly

of the warmth and seasonal cheer being enjoyed a few miles away in Astoria.

By January 12th, 1853, the cupboards in the ship's galley were almost bare, and the captain

was rationing the hard tack and beans.

Water too was running short, as were tempers among the crew members.

The Mendora's skipper, George Staples, was getting desperate, but the day had dawned and

it was finally calm.

The worst weather of the year had, it seemed, blown itself out.

Captain Staples lost no time in giving the order to trim up the sails for the crossing

and then fall off the wind and head inland.

At least one other ship waiting there on the seaword side of the bar soon followed suit.

That would be the Bark Eye Marithu, also out of San Francisco.

In fact, the Mendora and the Eye Marithu had been docked side by side in San Francisco

the month before, being loaded for their respective journeys to Portland.

The Marithu had left a few days after the Mendora so it had not been stuck waiting quite

as long, but its crew's Christmas experience had been similar, and its stocks of food

stuffs were also running out.

Unfortunately, those would not be the only things the crews of these two ships would share.

The Mendora and the Marithu had a double date with Destiny.

They would follow almost the exact same path on the exact same day with the same results

and lay their bones within a few miles of one another on the same shores of what's

now Washington State.

The trouble started with the Mendora, which was beating across the usual southwest wind

making about four knots when she suddenly slipped into one of the elusive unpredictable

wind shadows with which the bar was plagued.

Instantly a drift with drooping canvas and at the mercy of the river's current, the ship

started drifting to port with alarming rapidity, making for the middle sands.

Desperately the crew dropped anchor, but the current was so fast and the bottom's so

sandy that the Mendora was merely slowed down by this.

Slowly, inexorably, dragging her anchor behind her, she drifted toward the middle sands

and slammed onto the shoals.

Like a swordsman delivering the coup de gras, the ocean now struck with full force.

A series of giant, foam-topped breakers thundered down on the Mendora's deck, sweeping

them clear of everything movable, smashing deck houses, flooding the fossil.

With remarkable discipline, the crew members stuck to their stations until Captain Staples

gave the order to abandon ship.

Chances are he was waiting for the tide to turn so that the seas would be more manageable.

When the time was right, they quickly got the lifeboat ready.

Somehow it had been spared the ravages of the boarding seas and launched it.

The boat was badly overloaded, the weather was freshening and the bar was still rough.

Wave after waves sloshed over the gunnels of the little open boat, eager hands bailed

it out, barely keeping up as the darkness closed in on them.

At the ores, sailors took turns pulling dotally, driving the little boat upriver all the

way to Astoria.

Hours later, backs aching and muscles taxed to the limit, they finally arrived.

Soon they were stretched out on the floor of the town hall around a glowing wood stove,

drinking in the warmth and sleeping like man in a coma.

They couldn't know it yet, but they weren't alone.

Even as they rode desperately toward Astoria, the crew of the Marithew was scrambling for

its own lifeboats.

The Marithew hadn't even made it as far as the Mendoora when it had run aground, unclats

up spit.

The next day, Captain Staples got the bar pilot to bring them out to survey the wreckage

and perhaps consider any salvage possibilities.

To their astonishment, the Mariners found only an empty stretch of sand where the wreck

had stood.

Over the evening, the tide had come in and worked the vessel free and abandoned and unmanned

and derelicted it had floated with the river's current out into the ocean again.

Nor was there any remaining sign of the Marithew.

It too had relaunched itself, abandoning all hands on the beach.

A few days later, the wreckage of the Marithew was found.

It had drifted back into shore and been dashed against the rocks near North Head on the

Washington side of the river's mouth.

The Mendoora drifted farther, a day or two later it arrived through the surf just a few

miles to the North near Shoalwater Bay and stranded itself on the beach there.

No one was killed in either shipwreck.

Both were total losses.

It was an odd coincidence this double date with Destiny which these two ships had embarked

on when they sailed through the Golden Gate a month before, but its conclusion certainly

could have been a whole lot worse.

Key sources in this story have included works by James Gibbs Jr. and Don Marshall.

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