City of Chester (ship, 1875)
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The City of Chester was a passenger ship put into service in 1875 by the US shipping company Pacific Coast Steamship Company, which was used for scheduled and freight services on the American Pacific coast . On August 22, 1888, shortly after leaving the port on the journey from San Francisco to Eureka (California) , she sank after a collision with the much larger British ocean liner Oceanic at the Golden Gate . 16 passengers and crew members died, making their sinking the second largest shipwreck to date in the San Francisco Bay Area after the sinking of the City of Rio de Janeiro in 1901.
The ship
The 1,106 GRT steamship City of Chester was built in 1875 at the John Roach & Son shipyard in Chester , Pennsylvania for the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (OR&N), which also operates regular steamboat services on the west coast of the United States entertained. However, the ship was operated by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, whose ships carried passengers and cargo from California to Alaska . The seat of the shipping company and home port of their ships was San Francisco .
Consisting of iron -made hull was 61.6 meters long and 9.8 meters wide, had a chimney, two masts and a propeller .
Downfall
On August 22, 1888 at around 9 a.m., the City of Chester with 106 passengers and 200 tons of cargo on board ran under the command of Captain Thomas Wallace in San Francisco for another crossing to Eureka. Less than an hour after departure, at 9.50 a.m., she collided in thick fog near Fort Point with the much larger Oceanic of the British White Star Line , which came from Hong Kong with 1,105 passengers under Captain John Metcalf .
Both ships could see each other, but according to a British naval court , the City of Chester was caught by a current and steered directly into the course of the Oceanic , which, according to an eyewitness on board the Oceanic, almost cut it in half. The City of Chester sank six minutes after the collision. Three crew members and 13 passengers, including two children and several women, were killed.
The wreck of the City of Chester was in May 2013 at position 37 ° 48 '50 " N , 122 ° 28' 0" W in 66 meters depth from the Office of Coast Survey Navigational Response Team 6 of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with the help of a sonar device .
