North Head Lighthouse by Charles Fitzpatrick – courtesy CPHM

Our weekend visitors spent one of their days here on the Discovery Trail, or at least on a little part of it. They became distracted right off the bat at the Interpretive Center and then couldn’t resist going up to visit the North Head Lighthouse. It happened that it was a beautiful day and they had one of the most gorgeous views in all of southwest Washington!

It happened that while they were enjoying one of our major tourist attractions, I was working on a ghost story about an early Lightkeeper’s wife. (The publisher says the book is coming out in October, so you’ll have to wait for the details…) My research took me back to the 1850s and the history of maritime safety here at the beach.

It was during those early years of settlement and increasing maritime traffic that the area around the mouth of the Columbia gained its reputation as ‘The Graveyard of the Pacific.’ According to James A. Gibbs who has written several definitive books on the subject: The number of vessels which have sustained damage or been lost in this graveyard of the Pacific – including deep-sea vessels, harbor craft, and fishing boats – would likely exceed two thousand, with more than fifteen hundred lives claimed.

The Solano, February 5, 1907

Before radar and other modern aids to navigation, the lighthouses at Cape Disappointment and North Head were the best early warning system available for ships coming into the river. Even with two beacons within two miles of one another though, sailing a ship along our coast could be treacherous. When there were wrecks, it was the Wreckmaster who took charge.

The Wreckmaster was a county official — an elective office created by the first Territorial Legislature in 1854 for all counties of Washington Territory that bordered on the Pacific Ocean. It was the Wreckmaster’s duty to assume charge of any marine wreck after it had been abandoned and to save all of it that was possible for the benefit of the owners. He was charged with protecting wrecks and their cargoes from the “seagulls,” a local term that referred to people who helped themselves to treasures that littered the beach after a shipwreck. The Wreckmaster was allowed a salvage of 10 per cent and he was required to file a bond of $2,000. This office no longer appeared on the ballot after 1914.

Judging from the number of locals who have shown me treasures that their forebears “rescued” from ships that wrecked on our beach – to say nothing of entire houses that were built from lost lumber cargoes – I’m not sure all those County Wreckmasters were paying attention to business. But no doubt there were many extenuating circumstances. Some things don’t change…