raveyard of the Pacific’s heyday of shipwrecks throughout the mid-1800s to early 1900s, locals became expert salvagers. When a shipwreck occurred, it was a huge event with people coming far and wide to help, watch, and reap the free floating cargo from the ships. Many times, people were hired to guard wrecked ships from locals until their owners or professional salvagers could arrive to collect anything valuable. One particular wreck, that of the Vazlov Verovsky on April 3, 1941, was especially bountiful for those who flocked to the beach to collect its cargo. An estimated forty thousand cases of lard washed ashore from the stranded ship.
The Vazlov was a 374-foot steamship and was the only Russian ship ever wrecked at the bar. After the steering mechanism jammed, the ship lost control and became stranded on Peacock Spit, Washington. The entire crew of thirty-seven was saved, but Captain J. Tokareff refused to leave his ship until twenty-four hours later when it started to break apart. The cargo of lard, heavy machinery, and tools began to drift ashore on the Long Beach Peninsula, Washington.
One local, Harry Smith, remembers working around the clock with a group of friends to transport and store around two thousand cases of lard, which they later sold to an Astoria bakery for four dollars a case. To this day, a number of Long Beach Peninsula locals have memories of eating pies and pastries made with shortening from the doomed Vazlov Verovsky.
[caps]1[/caps]853 was a bad year for ships traveling near the mouth of the Columbia River. In that year, four ships were lost, including the Oriole, Mindora, and J. Merithew. But perhaps the worst and most mysterious wreck to occur that year was that of the Vandalia.
On January 9, 1853, the Vandalia was sighted by another ship’s captain who reported that it was laboring, but didn’t seem in need of assistance. A week later, the ship washed ashore, bottom up, near McKenzie Head, south of the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington. Among four bodies that came ashore near the wreck, one was that of Captain E. N. Beard. The rocky cove where his remains were found is now named Beard’s Hollow. A small neighborhood near Ilwaco, Washington bears the name of the lost ship, Vandalia.
The reasons for the wreck were never fully determined and the bodies of the eight other crewmembers were never found.
On March 18, 1896 the Glenmorag, en route to Astoria, Oregon, from Chile, got caught in heavy fog and lost its course. The ship ran aground on the Long Beach Peninsula north of Ocean Park, Washington. Captain Archibald Currie, who was unaware of the ship’s position, was afraid that they were in danger of running into a rocky coast and thus demanded all hands abandon ship. As the lifeboats were being lowered, one was lifted by a large wave and smashed against the ship, crushing to death two of the crewmen and badly injuring another, William Begg. Once safely ashore, the captain sadly realized that abandoning ship was unnecessary and that they could have simply waited and walked ashore once the tide went out.
Injured crewman Begg was taken to the Taylor Hotel in Ocean Park and was cared for by the daughter of the hotel owner, Maude Taylor. After a number of months, Begg recovered. He then decided to remain in the community and eventually married Maude. According to local historian Barbara Minard, Begg, who was British, introduced soccer to his new community and started the first soccer league in Pacific County, Washington.
After numerous unsuccessful attempts to refloat the ship, it was sold to a wrecking company who blew it into pieces and sold the pieces of scrap iron as junk.
[caps]O[/caps]ne of the most treacherous sand spits at the mouth of the Columbia River, Peacock Spit was named after the gun laden US Naval brig Peacock that was one of many ships to run aground there.
The ship was part of Lieutenant Charles Wilkes’s expedition that was working to conduct the first official American survey of the river. The channels at the mouth of the river were constantly shifting and new sand spits appeared a