Image: The Glenmorag wrecked at Oysterville, Washington State. Photo Credit: State Library of South Australia.
And how Ceres the goddess ended up in a garden
March 19th, 1896. Fog enveloped the figurehead of the pale lady guiding the ship, Glenmorag. She was Ceres, goddess of the harvest. A sheave of wheat was clutched to her breast and her other hand held a scythe as she rode slowly over the swells. Ceres’ scythe could not cut the haze, and the crew could not see much more than the figurehead’s unseeing eyes. Shrouds, spars, and well over 100 lines running from blocks to belay pins creaked with each large, smooth swell that rolled under the hull. Without the white nose of a strong breeze filling her canvas, the normal movements of a fully rigged ship sounded ominous in the gloom.
They were 50 days out of Callao, Peru, and heading to Astoria, Oregon, in ballast. Captain Archibald Currie had been the master of this ship for nine years and mate before that. His crew liked him, but more so they trusted his judgment. It was early afternoon and, in mid-March, still a long way from dark at this latitude. Yet the sun had not shone for two days and Currie had not been able to take a confident sight. By dead reckoning, he put himself off of Tillamook, Oregon. He’d ordered the lead to be dropped for a sounding at seven bells—1300 hours. Nothing indicated the need to check it every half hour, nor the need to drop anchor.
His reckoning was 50 miles off. The ship was just off Long Beach, a few miles from Ocean Park on the Washington coast, just north of the Columbia River mouth.
Two hours later came a gut-wrenching cry from the lookout.
“Breakers on port bow!”
Captain Currie ordered to ware ship. Without a breeze to fill her sails, Glenmorag, even with the swiftest execution of commands, could only respond sluggishly. Amid the holler of commands, the sound of the waves continued to grow. There was a thud and the iron hull shivered as she hit the beach. With steering gone, Glenmorag turned on her beam, bow pointing south. Swell began to batter the starboard side.
The fog was so thick no one on shore had even seen the ship approach. Now foundering in the surf, the shore still remained invisible to the crew. Currie ordered the port and starboard lifeboats launched. Six men entered the starboard lifeboat. They managed to free it from the davits and began to row the beam to the swell to get around the stern towards shore. A wave loomed, scooping the small lifeboat and flinging it against Glenmorag‘s iron stern. An oarlock drove into able seaman James Adams’ head, killing him instantly. Ordinary seaman William Readdie’s skull was “mashed to jelly” in full view of the ship’s cook, Readdie’s brother. Another man broke his leg and the three others escaped with internal injuries as they clung to the battered lifeboat that washed toward shore.
The port lifeboat was launched in the ship’s lee and made it ashore. In an hour, the tragedy was compounded as they realized the tide was receding and the ship was wedged comfortably upright. Had they waited a while longer they could have just walked off the ship. The battered crew was taken to the Taylor Hotel on Long Beach in Ocean Park. There, an injured ordinary seaman named William Begg got his feet washed by the landlord’s daughter, Maude.
That Sunday, three days later, Readdie and Adams were buried in the town of Ilwaco, Washington. A few weeks later, Captain Currie was cleared in an investigation by the local Lloyds of London surveyor. Glenmorag joined three other wrecks stretched out along 12 miles of Long Beach: Harvest Home, Point Loma, and Strathblane. A few months later she would be joined by the Potrimpos. Local opinion of the Glemorag’s master was mixed, but all agreed the government needed to invest more in whistling buoys along the forlorn shore.
Several crew stayed with the ship over the next two years to help with salvage, including William Begg and ship’s mate, William Turnbull. Local tourists bicycled up the beach and Begg charged them 25 cents a tour. When the time came to try and save her, the effort was heroic. At least twice they had her floating, but never when a tug was close enough to pull her past the breakers. Eventually she was sold, blown up, and scrapped. William Begg would go on to marry the landlord’s daughter, Maude. Turnbull would marry another local woman, named Agnes.
For 60 years the hull remained visible in the shifting sands. Occasionally, Begg would take his grandkids clamming around the wreck and tell his story. Ceres the figurehead ended up in his care, and by 1983 was a moldering statue in his granddaughter’s garden. In 1991, she was sold at auction in New London, Connecticut, and the last information I found was a post by Begg’s great-great grandson, who was hoping to hunt her down.
