On September 8, 1923, seven US Navy destroyers rammed into jagged rocks on the California coast. Twenty-three sailors died that night. Five years earlier, the Canadian Pacific passenger ship Princess Sophia steamed into Vanderbilt Reef in Alaska's Lynn Canal. When she sank, she took 353 people to their deaths. From San Francisco's fog-bound Golden Gate to the stormy Inside Passage of British Columbia and Alaska, the magnificent west coast of North America has taken a deadly toll. Here are the dramatic tales of ships that met their end on this treacherous coastline—including Princess Sophia, Benevolence, Queen of the North and others.
This title in the Amazing Stories series describes the tragic fates of 14 vessels lost in the waters of North America's west coast between 1853 and 2006 . . . Each catastrophe is concisely but evocatively described. Vintage photographs capture the flavour—and sometimes the terror—of those terrible incidents. —BC Books for BC Schools