The Farallon Steamship Disaster was the shipwreck of a wooden Alaskan Steamship Company liner, the S.S. Farallon, that hit Black Reef in the Cook Inlet of the Farallon Islands, Alaska, on January 5, 1910.
The ship was named after the Farallon Islands, located 26 miles (42 km) from the coast of San Francisco. The ship was 171 feet (52 m) long with a 34 feet (10 m) beam and a cargo hold more than 10 feet (3.0 m) deep.
Caught in a blinding snow storm, with extremely high gales, the steamer ran aground on the reef 1 mile (1.6 km) from shore. The ship struck the reef around 5 a.m. when the tides were very high. Within a matter of hours, however, the waters receded and the damage of the ship was deemed irreparable and evacuation essential.
The passengers and crew took off from the disaster site in lifeboats, but not without difficulty. All on board, thirty-eight men, eventually evacuated to the shore of Iliamna Bay, however the extremely high surf and frequent ice cakes caused the men to look pessimistically on their docking probabilities.
The men would then face the relentless cold, snow and lack of adequate nutrition for twenty-nine days, before being rescued by the SS Victoria.
Source: Wikipedia
