THIS DAY IN HISTORY: APRIL 16, 1954
The message came in at 7: 19 p. m. on April 15, 1954. “I am sinking, and abandoning ship,” said the radio operator on the tugboat Chelan. “Dead silence followed,” The Vancouver Sun reported the next day. “No other word was heard from the ill- fated tug, rated one of the biggest and toughest on the West Coast.” The Chelan was based in Vancouver, but went down in stormy seas off the Alaska coast, between Prince Rupert and Juneau. There were 14 men on board at the time; they all perished. Still, the day after the shipwreck, relatives of the crew held out hope. “Prayers of mothers, wives, children and other relatives of the 14 Vancouver seamen missing off the icy Alaskan coast were solemnly spoken in many homes on Good Friday,” wrote Jim Hazelwood in The Sun. “Pretty Charmaine Sheddon, red eyed from weeping and worry, told how this voyage home was one of the most important in their short married life for her husband Bill, a quartermaster on the Chelan. ‘ After almost a year of saving we were able to buy a new home at 267 West 48th,’ she sobbed. ‘ I moved in a few days ago, but Bill has never lived here.’ ” The tug had been towing a barge from Skagway, Alaska, when a “raging blizzard” hit the ship off Cape Decision on Kuiu Island. A U. S. Coast Guard offi cer said the wreck of the Chelan and the barge was visible at low tide half a mile off the coast. The Chelan was probably thrown sideways by a gigantic backswell and speared on a rocky pinnacle. “It must have happened with an awful suddenness, judging by the short time the wireless operator had in getting away that one message,” the Coast Guard offi cer said. Captain Charles Cates of Cates Towing in Vancouver speculated the Chelan was caught in an Arctic gale called a “willawaw.” “They come without warning and sweep everything before them. The willawaw is bitter, biting cold,” said Cates. “They are just like icy cyclones.”