As immortalized in movies like “Titanic,” large ships once crisscrossed oceans ferrying passengers such as tourists, businessmen, and immigrants. Today passenger ships are largely limited to short-distance ferries or vacation-oriented cruise ships.
However, back in late 1800s and early 1900s, the Pacific Coast Steamship Company (PCSC) ran a vibrant business moving people and freight up and down the west coast from San Diego to Sitka. PCSC was a subsidiary of the Pacific Coast Company, which also operated coal mines and railroads. Some ships carried coal while others hosted passengers, all plying waters along the Pacific Ocean. Shown here is the burned hull of the S.S. Congress in mid-September 1916, 101 years ago this week. Two years after being built in 1914, the passenger ship Congress caught fire Sept. 14th near Crescent City, California.
With passengers and crew all saved, a skeleton crew remained on board to extinguish remaining flames while operating the ship’s engines as it was towed to Coos Bay, Oregon. The superstructure where passengers were housed was destroyed, yet the hull, engines, and cargo holds were remarkably undamaged. A tug boat later steered it to a dry dock in Seattle, where it was rebuilt at a cost of $2 million by the China Mail Steamship Company, who renamed it the Nanking.
For six years she operated on the trans-Pacific line before being seized in San Francisco by the U.S. Government for carrying $1.5 million of opium narcotics. It was later sold at auction. In late 1916, all the passenger ships owned by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company were merged with Pacific-Alaska Navigation Company to become the Pacific Steamship Company, which lasted until 1936. This photo comes courtesy of JoAnne Matsumura who also provided research for this caption.
