Ship of Lost Souls: The Tragic Wreck of the Steamship Valencia

by Rod Scher, Molly Dumas (illustrator)

Of all the stories of ships lost in what has come to be called the “Graveyard of the Pacific,” that of the steamship Valencia is among the saddest. In January 1906, the Valencia set out from San Francisco, bound for Seattle with 108 passengers and some sixty-five crew members aboard. Owing to bad weather and the captain’s mistakes, the ship struck a reef eleven miles off Cape Beale on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. Rocks gashed open the ship’s hull, and a series of further missteps soon compounded the tragedy a hundredfold. Only thirty-seven people survived, largely because of a lack of lifesaving infrastructure in the rugged area where the Valencia ran aground.

The wreck of the Valencia was an especially tragic one. To begin with, most on board perished, including every woman and child, many of whom had been lashed to the rigging high above the deck in an attempt to save them from the crashing waves. Additionally, the wreck itself was almost certainly avoidable, due almost entirely to navigational errors the captain made. Finally, rescue efforts—such as they were—were hampered by not just the sea and weather but by the mistakes (and some say the cowardice) of the would-be rescuers.

This book pieces together the story of the Valencia and her tragic end, weaving together not just the threads of the ill-fated voyage itself but also relevant contextual history, including the development of radio technologies and lifesaving equipment and services that simply came too late to help the doomed voyagers.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published November 5, 2024

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes all the ingredients are all there, but the recipe just doesn't come together. I thought about this with Rod Scher's Ship of Lost Souls. It is the story of the shipwreck Valencia in 1906 on Vancouver Island. It is a little known wreck and a story of extreme bad luck and even worse incompetence.

Scher certainly has a good story to tell and his prose is easy to read. The way he tells the story takes away much of the drama, though. He tells you right away who will live and die and how they might be remembered. He also talks about technology, like wireless, which would have helped the Valencia but doesn't have anything to do with the story because Valencia didn't have it.

With a bit of rearranging and rewriting, this could be a very good book. Unfortunately, its current form leaves a bit to be desired.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by the publisher.)

[Jodi C · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The lack of such aids to navigation on both the Canadian and American coasts and the absence of life-saving infrastructure together helped guarantee that 136 passengers and crew on the vessel-including every woman and child on board-would perish in the wreck.”

Ship of Lost Souls: The Tragic Wreck of the Steamship Valencia by Rod Scher is a detailed account of the sinking of the SS Valencia in 1906 off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. It isn’t a well-known event for many reasons. One of the most obvious is that the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and the subsequent fire that ravaged the city for days, took over the headlines.

A grave error in calculation during thick fog led Valencia to hit a reef in water shallower than the captain, Oscar Johnson, was aware they were heading into. What happened next is the thing nightmares are made of. Namely, the freezing turbulent water, a steep rocky shoreline on an island with few inhabitants, and the eventual rescue ships that decided they could not approach closely enough to rescue the poor souls who were clinging to a disintegrating ship. 130+ people would die during this tragedy, including every woman and child aboard, even though they were within sight of the shore.

There were no John Jacob Astor’s, Guggenheim’s, or Molly Brown’s on board this ship. The Valencia was neither a luxury liner nor the passengers fabulously wealthy. Unlike the people on better-known sinkings, there was no time for poignant goodbyes, or bands playing final melodies. From the second Valencia ran into the reef off of Vancouver Island, it was doomed, and chaos reigned.

We know some of what happened to those still on board the ship, but the personal stories are scarce. There was a young bride-to-be who was traveling with her fiancé and mother to Seattle to be married and start a new life. Instead, all three would die on the Valencia. They could have been among the poor souls who strapped themselves into the rigging to try and stay afloat with the ship as long as possible.

This book is impressive in its scope and depth of research. Extensively investigated and cited, it provides a treasure trove of information about this event compiled in one place. Even the quantity and quality of the pictures used were extremely engaging.

As a lover of history, one of the things that means the most to me personally are those stories told that would otherwise be forgotten by the world because they were left untold. This book allows all of us to learn about this tragedy, and to give a voice to those who would have otherwise just disappeared into the sea to be forgotten by our history books.

I would have left out many of the parentheticals because they became distracting and conflicted with the flow of information, but that is a small gripe.

Thanks to NetGalley and Globe Pequot/Lyons Press for allowing me to read this book for an unbiased review.

4.5 stars rounded up.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is truly a tragedy in that everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong on that voyage of the Steamship Valencia, and the people who boarded the ship in San Francisco, heading for Seattle in 1906, were doomed from the very beginning. But it is a fascinating tale of all the details that led to this tragedy — human error first and foremost, the lack of technology that could have averted the shipwreck altogether and that could have helped save more lives, and the changes that followed in the aftermath, but too late to save those lost souls.

A book that’s hard to put down!

[Lydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The forward and reviews of this book describe it as riveting and action-filled, but it's anything but. The story is told in fits and starts, with frequent sidetracks for sometimes interesting but not always relevant bits of information. I feel like I learned more about what COULDN'T help the Valencia than what might have made a real difference. There were also just frequently little parenthetical asides that disrupted the flow of the story for inconsequential facts. Altogether, this book could have been better with a heavier editorial hand to rein in these distractions and streamline the overall story.

[Andrea Sachs · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tragedy that unfolds with so many 'what ifs.' Through telling of the wreck of the steamship Valencia, Sher takes us on that fateful journey, and also brings the things that might have saved the ship - the technology and life-saving measures. This is such a good book!

[Logan Kedzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a history of the SS Vallencia, a ship that sank in the early 20th Century in the "Graveyard of the Pacific" a range of the Pacific Ocean at the U.S. Canada border where the problems start at where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean in Washington State and continue northward to Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The story is not one that I encountered previously in my marine disaster tourism (shout out to BrickImmortar). I think that the reason for this is, as the author points out, the Valencia represents at least two different modalities of disasters happening simultaneously, making it harder to align its narrative with stated or unstated theses of this brand of edutainment.

The Valencia was transporting cargo and passengers from San Fransisco to Seattle. The ship went off course, due to bad weather in general and errors of the captain in particular. It hit a reef and grounded. Despite how close it was to shore (less than an Olympic-sized pool. Not lengthwise, but widthwise), and despite a variety of rescue attempts from different parties, most everyone on the Valencia died. Then come the inquiries.

The author approaches the material in a relaxed tone, without becoming unserious. He is conspicuously even-handed in assessing fault, avoiding the accusatory hot-take by providing the most favorable evidence for the frustrated rescuers.

The book fixates on odd counterfactuals in a if-wishes-were-horses sort of way. Would things have been different if maritime safety standards...existed then? Yes. In the same way that Aquaman would too have helped. I think that the attempt is to compose a broader intellectual history about life-saving technologies in a marine context. It comes off as unfocused.

The point where wide-angle lens works well is in the study of the different investigations into the disaster, how they happened and what their results were. The author explains the people involved in each, and while biography is not destiny it is a useful frame, particularly in this case where it is possible to compare the different results from the different bodies.

The book is a great read, albeit of circumspect interest, but ideally crafted for the subject that it is.

My thanks to the author, Rod Scher, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Lyons Press, for making the ARC available to me.

[Gayle (OutsmartYourShelf) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An account of the 1906 sinking of the 'Valencia', a ship sailing between San Francisco & Seattle with 108 passengers and 65 crew members aboard. Bad weather & human error combined to cause the 'Valencia' to strike a reef off the coast of Vancouver Island which lead to the deaths of 136 people, including all the women & children onboard.

This is about a disaster that took place 6 years before the Titanic sinking, on a stretch of coastline notorious for wrecks due to the harsh topography of the coast. The author argues well that it seems to have been a mixture of bad luck (weather) & ill judgment on the part of several people that led to the loss of so many lives. My one criticism is that the book spends a lot of time talking about innovations & safety features that simply hadn't been invented yet & I'm not quite sure what the point was. Yes, if they had been available but weren't used, that would have been one thing, but for safety features that hadn't yet been invented? I would have preferred more concentration on those aboard & what happened to those who survived. 3.5 stars (rounded down)

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Globe Pequot/Lyons Press, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

[Tavia · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1906, the Valencia set out with cargo and passengers from San Francisco to destination Seattle. Due to a combination of incompetent navigation and poor weather, 139 people died in the shipwreck off of Vancouver Island. Many photos and illustrations are contained in this book.

The author goes into detail about the overall failures of the captain, as well as lack of technical equipment (which either didn’t exist or was in its infancy), as well as foggy and stormy seas. Every woman and child on the ship died, along with a large number of men. Only 37 people total survived. I did feel the book was scant on details about the actual shipwreck and the people who survived. There was a lot of extra information that didn’t pertain to the Valencia disaster, as well.

Thank you to NetGalley & Lyons Press for a copy of this book.

[Ashley Rae · Rating 1 out of 5]

Holy moly, this reads like I tried to write a book. And I’m not an author for a reason. You know that meme about how you try to tell a story and some people tell it in a straight line while others take a million detours and forget the point? The second one perfectly describes this book. I read another book a few years ago about the Valencia and it was such an intense drama, there was points I had to put it down for mental health breaks lol. So when I saw this book, I was excited to read another take on the wreck with a similar drama level. This ended up being a DNF for me, I made it a little over halfway through before I finally gave up. This book was too all over the place and couldn’t stick to one idea for more than a paragraph.

[evered · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sure there is an interesting story here, but between the author's tangential lectures on unrelated topics, his tendency to repeat himself, and his numbing (and sometimes grammatically poor) prose, I did not find it. Somehow, Scher manages to talk his way around all the interesting bits, and gives us the events without ever falling into any sortmof narrative flow - there are facts here, but there lacks narrative, context, investigation, analysis... In the hands of a better author or more aggressive editor, this might have been good.

TLDR: This felt disappointingly similar to reading the extended essay of an eager but not terribly skillful undergrad.

[Ron Baumer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read. the story is intriguing and tragic. The author did a great job of interweaving individual stories of the people involved into the overall story. The fact that this tragedy had to happen at all is extremely sad and disappointing. The loss of lives that did not need to happen is horrifying. A good nautical read.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

[Becki D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is well researched and goes not into why the ship sunk but how it could have been saved if only life saving equipment was used such as radio, lighthouses in more places, better life jackets, and of course if humans made different and better choices. I really appreciate the care given to explaining Vancouver Island and its people.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly interesting subject and obviously well researched, but the writing is really uneven. Occasionally it reads like a tragic adventure story, but most of the time it feels like a dense forensics report. I wish the entire book was more humanized, it could have been a real page-turner.