Arizona republican., 1910-10-02

l He speedily realizes his error With | in few hours his vessel has begun | digging her grave in the yielding ! quicksands and the chances are one to
 hundred that his ship has found her last resting place.
 The inhabitants hereabout have saying that no vessel ever floats again after striking the North Beach and Clatsop sands, and while there have 1 been some few exceptions to this
 broad statement fortunate indeed is
 the craft that figures in this latter class.
 1 Probably the first vessel to strike
 these sands was the famous "beeswax ship" so called on account of the beeswaX candles and tapes that have been found buried in the sand near
 the mouth of the Nehalem river. This ship is believed to have been the Spanish vessel San Jose which left La PaZ, Lower California, in the summer of 1769 with a quantity of mission supplies for the Catholic mission at
 San Diego
 The vessel was probably driven far north of her destination by a storm and met her fate in the Oregon sands as she was never heard of after leav- ing port. The fact that some of the beeswaX recovered from the beach is l stamped with Latin inscriptions strengthens the belief that the Neha-
 lem wreck and the ship San Jose were one and the same. According to the
 Indian accounts the entire crew
 reached shore in safety, but were afterward massacred by the natives.
 The founding of Astoria in 1911 by
 John Jacob Astor had a tendency to
 attract shipping to the northwest, and before many years a large fleet of
 vessels was engaged in the carrying | trade in and out of the Columbia
 river From this felet the treacher-
 ous sands early began to levy tribute,
 which has continued to the present
 time without diminution in spite of
 the installation of many safeguards | for the prevention of shipwreck. ] Seldom has a year passed without
 a wreck occurring along this stretch of 1 ocean beach. As many as four ships
 have met disaster within a single
 month. Yet, owing to the peculiar
 conditions prevailing already noted,
 but few of these wrecks have resulted
 in loss of life.
 | As many be surmised the wreckers
 have made use of every device known l to the profession, such as cofferdams,
 centrifugal pumps, winches and tug | boats, in their efforts to effect the re- | lease of the numerous vessels that have become imprisoned in these | clinging quicksands, but up to the present time much of their work has ! gone for nothing.
 | The tides rush in far enough to wash back the sand as fast as it can
 be removed, but are not of sufficient rise to permit the use of pontoOns or
 other devices for the floating of the \ great unwieldy hulls. Frequently
 when success has been all but at
 tained some unforeseen contingency
 has risen to rob the wreckers of their
 well earned reward.
 In the majority of cases the best
 that can be done is to strip the
 stranded vessel of everything remova-
 ble and to tear the hull in pieces for the sake of the metal. Often the
 wrecks are battered to pieces by the surf or become so deeply buried that even this dismemberment is not pos sible.
 The latest additions to this ships graveyard were the Galena and Peter freddie, fine four-masted barks which came to grief within the last year and which, although practically unin- jured at the time of taking the sands were fated never to return to their proper element.
 Both of these vessels are being salved piecemeal by the wreckers. The Peter freddie was bought as she stood for $500 and the Galena brought but a trfle more
 Not more than half a mile from where the Peter freddie occupies hel
 last resting place is to be seen an ob- ject which at a distance appears to bt cross. A closer inspection proves il
 to be a yard swung horizontall, across the iron foreinast of the shir Cairnsmore, which went ashore ir
 1883 while endeavoring to enter thu Columbia river. after having. success fully fouht her way around Cap