The Farallon Steamship Disaster was the wreck of a wooden Alaska Steamship Company passenger liner, SS Farallon, that hit Black Reef in Cook Inlet in the Territory of Alaska on 5 January 1910. All on board evacuated to a nearby island, where most had to survive for a month in a mid-winter climate before they were rescued. Six other survivors survived an attempt to row across Shelikof Strait in search of rescue for the stranded men.
Construction and design of SS Farallon
On 27 January 1902, SS Farallon entered service as the fourth ship in the Alaska Steamship Company fleet. She was a wooden steamer rigged as a schooner, having a two-masted fore-and-aft rig with both a foremast and mainmast. She was named after the Farallon Islands – from the Spanish word farallones, meaning rock or cliff in the sea – located in the Pacific Ocean off San Francisco, California. She was long with a beam, a gross register tonnage of 749, a net register tonnage of 565, and a cargo hold more than deep. This deep hold allowed the ship to transport over 400,000 board feet of lumber at a time, including Pacific Coast fir, pine, redwood, and cedar.
Wreck
Farallon departed Valdez bound for Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands and way ports with eight passengers, a crew of 30, and a cargo of 30 tons of general merchandise aboard on 2 January 1910. Caught in a blinding snowstorm with extremely high winds on 5 January, Farallon ran aground on Black Reef in Cook Inlet from shore. The ship struck the reef around 5:00 a.m. when the tides were very high. Within a matter of hours, however, the waters receded. Farallon′s crew deemed the damage to the ship irreparable and evacuation essential.
Survival
The passengers and crew of Farallon took to the lifeboats, but not without difficulty. All on board, 38 men, eventually evacuated to the shore of Iliamna Bay, but the extremely high surf and a large amount of ice made landing on the coast dangerous. Once ashore, the men faced relentless cold, snow, and a lack of adequate food supplies. They lived off the few provisions and supplies that they had been able to save from the wreck, including sails, tarpaulins, passenger baggage, and mattresses. They had no artificial source of light, and had to acquire water by melting snow. A typical meal included raw bacon and frozen bread. Throughout their ordeal, the men travelled back to the shipwreck to scavenge any useful materials they could find. Consequently, they haphazardly constructed several convenience items, including makeshift stoves. As temperatures plummeted to , they built fires using driftwood found along the shore. The steamer SS Victoria finally rescued them on 3 February 1910, 29 days after they were stranded.
J.E. Thwaites and his documentation
John Edward Thwaites worked as a shipboard mail clerk on the route from Valdez to Unalaska, Alaska. He held the responsibility of making monthly mail deliveries to the people of southwestern Alaska living in areas inaccessible by any other means. His office was in the "mail closet," a stateroom often located on the port side of the schooners operating on the route.
Thwaites mainly served aboard SS Dora, a ship that was part of the Northwestern Steamship Company fleet, but also was assigned to other schooners travelling in the Alaskan region and was one of the men on board Farallon when she was wrecked. Thwaites was an amateur photographer who owned a Kodak 3-A Special camera, popular in the postcard industry. He used photography to document the events of the wreck of Farallon and the subsequent efforts of the shipwrecked men to survive while stranded on the shore of Iliamna Bay, depicting the desolate and harsh environment the men and documenting the survival efforts the men made to stay alive. While Thwaites had no professional training or schooling in photography, he was able to take advantage of the expanding postcard industry and sell his images for a profit.
The brave six
Of the 38 men aboard Farallon, six – Gus Swanson, the second mate of Farallon; Charles Peterson, a seaman; Ottoe Nelson, a seamen; Albert Bailey, a passenger; Charles Bourne, a resident of Afognak, Alaska, and Farallon′s Captain Weidingdid – did not stay at Iliamna Bay. They instead attempted to reach Kodiak Island in the hope of arranging a rescue. They set out on 7 January 1910 from the wreck in a lifeboat to row across the Shelikof Strait, one of the most dangerous bodies of water in the Western Hemisphere.