“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 souls 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. Instead, they were partially frozen as the rigging pulled them under at the end.

One survivor is covered because he was involved in a controversy about the few people who made it to shore. A man named Bunker, who lost his wife and two children in the wreck, was with a group of men who rode a lifeboat to the rocky shoreline. They set off in search of help, but it was later determined that they could have potentially helped more if they had stayed put. Hindsight is always 20/20.

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 for so long they were lost among dying generations. 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.

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.

I was nearly put off to even start reading this book by the introduction written by a retired coastguard that was mostly about himself and full of self-praise. Luckily the author's work was much more interesting and well worth the effort. A very interesting read for those interested in marine disasters.
My thanks to NetGalley and Lyons Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

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. 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.