San Juan (ship, 1882)
 Drawing from the San Francisco Call (1895)
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The San Juan was a passenger ship put into service in 1882 for the US shipping company Los Angeles San Francisco Navigation Company. On August 29, 1929, the ship sank after a collision with the oil tanker SCT Dodd off the California coast near Pigeon Point Beach . 73 people were killed.
The ship
The 2,152 GRT steamship San Juan was built at the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester , Pennsylvania for the Los Angeles San Francisco Navigation Company and was launched on May 27, 1882. It was completed two months later. The 86.3 meter long and 11.3 meter wide ship was powered by a compound steam engine that developed 235 PSi and could accelerate the ship to 10 knots. The hull was made of iron . The San Juan had two masts , two decks, and a single propeller . She served as a passenger and cargo ship on the California coast. Her sister ship was the Humboldt .
Downfall
On August 29, 1929, the San Juan was with 65 passengers and 45 crew members on another crossing from San Francisco to Los Angeles . The command was held by the 65-year-old captain Adolph F. Asplund, who was actually already retired and only replaced the regular captain during his vacation .
Around midnight, in thick fog, there was a collision with the tanker SCT Dodd (7,054 GRT) of the Standard Oil Company , which was under the command of Captain Hugo C. Bleumchen on the way to San Francisco. The collision happened just moments after the first visual contact. The San Juan went under in three to five minutes. Not a single lifeboat could be launched in the short time . Numerous passengers and crew jumped into the sea. The Dodd launched lifeboats to pull the castaways of the San Juan out of the water. The schooner Munami and the motor ship Frank Lynch helped her . Leaking oil reduced the swimmers' chances of survival.
Together, the two ships saved 37 people. 53 passengers and 20 crew members were killed, including Captain Asplund and Emma Granstedt, the mother of the Swedish film and television actress Greta Granstedt . Of the children on board, only one survived, 6-year-old Hollis Pifer (his mother Marjorie drowned after she was able to hoist him onto the Dodd's forecastle ). Of the 23 women on board, three survived. Dozens of ships searched the area for more survivors, but no one was found. It was the worst shipping accident in the region since the sinking of the City of Rio de Janeiro in 1901 with 128 deaths. Captain Bleumchen of SCT Dodd blamed the San Juan for the accident because of his maneuvers after the sighting.
Web links
- Entry in the wreck database
- Overview of technical and historical data as well as the course of the accident
- Report of the sinking in The Reading Eagle newspaper , August 31, 1929
- Full report of the sinking in The Mail newspaper on August 31, 1929
- Report with passenger list in the Oakland Tribune dated August 30, 1929
- List of survivors, dead and missing from the Sheboygan Press, August 30, 1929