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The Wreck of the Steamer Mariechen
by John MacFarlane 2017
The Mariechen stranded in False Bay, Near Sitka AK. (Postcard photo from the John MacFarlane collection.)
On January 19, 1906 the German tramp steamer Mariechen under Captain Rudolph Heldt sailed from Puget Sound bound for Vladivostok where she was planning to run the Japanese Naval blockade. She had a crew of 50. She was carrying a cargo of 5,000 tons of general merchandise worth $100,000 under charter to Barneson, Hibbard & Co. The vessel herself was worth $250,000.
Off Cape Flattery she encountered a series of strong winter gales. A battering waves damaged a deadlight and the engineroom became flooded. The boiler fire was extinguished and the vessel was left without power.She drifted north while the crew bailed with buckets to keep her afloat.
Eventually she stranded and struck a rock in a snow storm January 25, 1906 in False Bay, south of Funter on Chichagof Island, Alaska near Sitka. The cargo was a total loss. The vessel was refloated by the B.C. Salvage Company and towed to Esquimalt BC.
The Mariechen at the Drydock at Esquimalt BC. (Postcard photo from the John MacFarlane collection.)
She was salvaged by the big salvage tug Salvor (owned by the B.C. Salvage Co.) and put in drydock for inspection and emergency repairs at Esquimlat BC.
The damage suffered by the Mariechen Resulting From Her Stranding (Postcard photo from the John MacFarlane collection.)
From Esquimalt she was moved on to Seattle where she sank in Elliott Bay on April 27, 1907. Her owners raised her and sent her immediately for scrapping.
The Mariechen was built in 1883 in Liverpool UK by Napier Shanks & Bell Yoker as the Clan Matheson. 289.6’ x 44.3’ x 25.2’ Steel hull 3917gt 2521rt In 1905 she was owned by Diederichsen, Jebson & Co , Hamburg Germany. In 1907 she was owned by William Piggott and W.D. Hoffus, Seattle WA USA who scrapped her after her sinking.
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John M. (2017) The Wreck of the Steamer Mariechen. Nauticapedia.ca 2017. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Mariechen.php
Site News: April 15, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,123 vessel histories (with 15,628 images and 13,098 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).
In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!
My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.