nd disappeared quickly, making passage across the bar treacherous. It was thought that accurate charts made by the expedition would help ensure safe passage.
While bar conditions were favorable for the Peacock on July 18, 1841, its Captain, William L. Hudson, unknowingly had inaccurate charts that he had picked up in the Hawaiian Islands. He followed the charts closely while crossing the bar, but hit a sand spit. The crew was ordered to throw all excess cargo and cannons overboard in an effort to free the ship. And while it broke free for a moment, it was quickly pushed back into the sands by heavy breaker waves. After hours of trying to free the ship, the crew and captain decided to abandon the Peacock. Their lifeboat capsized during one trip ashore, forcing ten crewmen to swim for their lives, but the entire crew and captain eventually made it ashore safely.
Peacock Spit is still present today, even after the construction of jetties meant to eliminate the dangerous sand bars from the mouth of the river.
North Bend 1928
[caps]A[/caps] few ships that were stranded on the sands throughout the history of the Graveyard of the Pacific have been refloated or pulled from the sands and back into the open water. But only one ship, the North Bend, managed to save itself.
On January 5, 1928, after attempting to cross the bar without the help of a bar pilot, Captain Theodore Hansen stranded his ship on Peacock Spit near Washington. A tug was used to try to pull the ship free. While it seemed to help at first, the ship was quickly thrown back onto the sands. The entire crew was removed from the ship and taken to safety as rescuers attempted to salvage the ship. The ship was pushed far enough on land that it was untouched by the breaker waves that were the cause of many ships’ demises. After many days trying to free the vessel, the project was abandoned and the ship was left on the spit.
For a year, the ship withstood the weather and ocean waves and remained mostly undamaged. Over time, the waves around the ship began cutting a half-mile channel leading into Baker Bay. On February 11, 1929, with little human help, the ship floated down the channel and into the bay. The ship was sold and turned into a barge. Today, many know the North Bend as the ship that walked on land.
[caps]O[/caps]ne of the few shipwrecks that are still visible, even if only at very low tides, is that of the French ship, Alice. Part of the reason the Alice has remained so fast in the sand is because of its heavy load of three thousand tons of cement.
The ship hit the sands near Ocean Park, Washington, on the Long Beach Peninsula on January 15, 1909, after a long journey from London. The ship had been fighting bad weather and was pushed into the breaks, hitting land. The entire crew left the boat and made it safely ashore.
The weather eventually cleared and the captain was able to re-board his ship. There, he came to the disappointing realization that it had been sucked deep into the sand by the weight of its cement cargo. As writer of Pacific Graveyard, James A. Gibbs said, the Alice is “sealed in a coffin of cement.”
Admiral Benson 1930
[caps]T[/caps]ucked away in Cape Disappointment State Park, Benson Beach, Washington, is hidden by a towering cliff capped with a lighthouse. It’s a popular spot on the Long Beach Peninsula. The lighthouse has saved many ships over the years from getting too close to land, but there was no helping the Admiral Benson, the beach’s namesake, when it became stranded in heavy fog near Peacock Spit on February 15, 1930.
The ship was headed into the channel toward Portland, Oregon, when it got stuck on the sands. It was initially believed to be a very minor stranding. The steamship carried a cargo of citrus fruits, general freight, thirty-nine passengers, and sixty-five crewmembers.
Like many shipwreck rescue efforts at the time, a device called a breeches buoy was used to get a few passengers ashore, although the conditions were favorable enough that many were also taken in lifeboats. The breeches buoy device consisted of a line from t