SS ''Escambia'' was an iron screw steamer built at

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is a port at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most p ...

in 1879, by the Sunderland Ship Building Company. She was classed 100A1, and was 2,154 tons gross. On 19 June 1882 she capsized with the loss of twenty lives having encountered heavy seas when crossing the bar of

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

.'Terrible Disaster at Sea', ''Liverpool Journal'', 24 June 1882. The ''Escambia'' was voyaging from San Francisco to

Cape Verde Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country and archipelagic state of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about . These islands ...

deeply laden with a cargo of

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

when she capsized some five miles offshore at about 7 pm. The pilot reported that the water in the ballast tanks had been pumped out in order to make the ship carry more cargo, and that the coal on deck was stowed as high as the bridge. She also had a list to port. In the rough seas she rolled enough to submerge her scuppers and shipped enough water to stop her engines. Unable to make way, the ship turned beam on to the breakers and was engulfed. The

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

naval court decided that the vessel was lost through the ordinary perils of the sea but the

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was not satisfied with this verdict and ordered its own inquiry. Of the crew of twenty four only four were saved.'The Wreck of the Escambia', ''Liverpool Journal'', 2 December 1882. The Wreck Commissioner reported that the inquiry determined that the Captain was to blame for taking the vessel to sea under that condition having acted simply through lack of judgement. Because the Captain had made every effort to save life after the vessel capsized, the court did not cancel his certificate and he was permitted to return to work. The wreck was the subject of a story called "Without Ballast" in a book entitled Stories Worth Re-reading, first published in 1919.

References

External links

Transcriptions of the Liverpool Journal Articles

{{DEFAULTSORT:Escambia Steamships Ships built on the River Wear Victorian-era merchant ships of the United Kingdom Merchant ships of the United States Shipwrecks of the California coast Maritime incidents in June 1882 1879 ships