The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-06-07

this time. Perhaps some further investi-
CATION will shed some light on the point.
AT all events, the effects of those orders
were to turn the crew and subaltern officers
| into band of tyrants who acted as though
they sought to prevent anyone from escap-
ing the doom that yawned before them.
Steerage and cabin passengers say they
sought to obtain life-preservers and were
forcibly restrained from doing SO. Down
| IN the steerage guard was posted at the
companionway door and those who es-
capped to the deck in time to cast them
selves into the sea before the vessel went
down did so only by main force, by kick
ing and fighting their way past the guard.
Those who were saved are some of those
who were wiser than the captain, who
could see their peril more clearly, and had
wit enough TO throw themselves into the
foaming sea before the Colima gave her
last list to the starboard, AS she did this
the captains whistle sounded to cut loose
the deckload of spars. 1t was too late
then.
One of the rescued ones tells the scene
which followed very graphically. "I
stayed upon the ship until the last mo-
ment," he says, "and when 1 came to the
surface after my plunge in the seething
waves l looked back and the Colima was
| not in sight. AS quickly as that she went
down, and scores were drowned in the
steerage and cabin. I caught floating
piece of timber and held fast. All
| around me the sea was covered with wreck
age, and every now and then human
| body fioated by. Sometimes it was
woman, sometimes a man, but their faces
were all turned upward. All that day
those of US who found foothold on the
hurricane-deck raft saw bodies floating
past. They were all dead"
| Hand so the story goes. It is told in this
mornings papers from almost a score of
different eye-witnesses. ALI of them suf-
fered greatly, and there is no wild story of
the sea wherein the sufferings were greater
nor the escapes from watery grave more
miraculous. Here is at hand all the mate
rial that one needs for the most thrilling
narrative of ocean dangers that was ever
woven into the story-books. And no one
is responsible for it all. Under the laws of
the land it appears to have been a catas-
trophe against which no damages may lie
in law, although from the stories of the
survivors-and they are all of the same
tenor-it is plain that human skill and
foresight might have prevented it.
But this is not all. One of the rescued
passengers charges that Captain Pitts of
the San Juan was too hasty in leaving the
scene of the disaster on the morning of the
2Sth ult., after he had rescued a number of
the shipwrecked men; and this statement
is corroborated by Captain Long of the
steamer Willamette, who was passenger
on board the San Juan. The captain was
| not satisfied with the efforts that were
being made to search for the shipwrecked
people. He raised voluntary crew on
board and asked Captain Pitts to let him
take one of the San Jnan's boats and go
out to search. Captain Pitts refused.
Captain Long went to the purser of the
San Juan. After much pleading the pur-
ser told him to go ahead. Captain Long
then took it upon himself to have one of
the boats lowered. He and his crew came
back with sig more of the shipwrecked
men. These six in all PROBABILITY, from
the statements made by Mr.. Oriel and
Captain Long, would not have been saved
but for this disobedience to the orders of
Captain Pitts. 1t was o'clock Tuesday
morning when the first shipwrecked man
was picked up. AT 10:45 o'clock two
hours and three-quarters later, Captain
Pitts in his unseemly haste steamed away
from the scene. Perhaps there were others
to save; perhaps there were not.
The air was misty yesterday morning,
so that the San Juan's approach could not
be seen by the Point Lobos watchers until
she had crossed the bar and was headed
for the gate. Immediately the Pacific
Mail Company sent out the tug Millen
Griffith, which reached the steamships
side before the Government steamer from