Description
Payment must be made within 3 days of the end of auction. I have been collecting RPPCs and other Real Photos, mostly maritime related, for 25 years. I'm now thinning my collection a bit so check back often to see new listings or check the "Follow This Seller" button. I combine shipping for multi-wins. For multi-wins, please wait for an Ebay invoice from me before making payment. Happy bidding! SS CONGRESS AT SEA: If youd walked into the town of Marshfield now called Coos Bay on the afternoon of September 13, 1916, you probably would have found the streets eerily empty. Storekeepers, restaurateurs, bank tellers everybody in town was clustered around the beach south of the harbor opening, watching a 7,985-ton passenger liner belching smoke and flames, and praying the 428 passengers and crew members would be able to get off the ship before the whole thing became engulfed. They just barely made it. The last boat to leave contained Captain Cousins, AP reporter E.J. Griffith wrote. They pushed away choking in the smoke and blistered by the heat. When their boat came out of the smoke that hid the Congress the passengers lined along the rail of the (rescue boat) sent up cheer after cheer for the commander and his crew. When the fire first broke out in one of the aft holds of the Congress, nobody worried much about it, thinking it would soon be put out. But before the crews could get to the source of the blaze, buried deep beneath stacked cargo, it had flared up to an uncontrollable level. The crew tried starving the fire of oxygen, but the hold wasnt airtight, so this only slowed it a little bit. They sent word to the bridge, and Captain Cousins was awakened to the news that his ship was in serious trouble. The timing couldnt have been much worse. The ship was 30 miles off the southern Oregon coast. The nearest port was Coos Bay, and it was half a day away. The Congress had a radio, but in those early days of wireless they couldnt count on anyone picking up a distress call, especially not in such a remote part of the sea. Cousins immediately rang for full steam, pointed his ship at the mouth of Coos Bay, and had the radio operator start broadcasting distress calls. He also sent crew members out to wake the passengers and get them up on deck. Into the inky blackness of the pre-dawn September morning the huge passenger liner surged, racing against time to get to Coos Bay before the growing blaze reached and disabled the ships nine boilers. When that happened, there would be nothing further to do but to take to the lifeboats
and because of the heavy smoke on the leeward side of the ship, theyd only be able to use half of those. Cousins was acutely aware that if the Congress didnt make it to Coos Bay, at least some of the 428 people entrusted to his care would probably die. Morning dragged on into early afternoon as the big ship roared through smooth and gentle seas at top speed, trailing a thick cloud of smoke. The Congress was one of the biggest liners on the West Coast, but it was far from the fastest; it topped out at just 15 knots. Would it be enough? Theyd soon find out. The fire reached the main wireless apparatus, silencing the frantic distress calls; the radio officer got the auxiliary unit out and kept transmitting. Every crew member who could be spared from other duties was below decks struggling to slow the spread of the fire, which had by this time taken the aft part of the ship and was inexorably working its way forward. Crew members started being overcome by the smoke; their mates dragged them up on deck to revive. Then just minutes before the fire reached the ships engines the big liner reached its goal: An area of deep water just under a mile off the Coos Bay harbor entrance. Cousins ordered the anchor dropped, and looked up to see a small ship approaching. It was the harbor dredge Colonel P.S. Michie, which had picked up one of the last few distress calls sent on the auxiliary wireless set. The Michie issued four whistle blasts to let the Congress know it was coming; the Congress tried to reply, but had only enough steam for two and a half toots. Smoke was billowing from its twin funnels, probably from the fire having reached the engine rooms, but the boiler pressure valves were open to prevent a steam explosion. The big, stove-hot ship was well and truly dead in the water. Reassured by the approaching Michie and the nearness of land, the passengers became calm, AP reporter Griffith wrote. Women and children were the first to enter the boats. One man was found hiding beneath the seat of a lifeboat as it was being lowered. A seaman roughly yanked him out. Its hard to blame that cowardly guy for panicking, though. Even at the forward end of the ship, the decks were already too hot to stand on with bare feet, and for the first time tongues of flame were starting to emerge at the stern of the ship, shooting out of vents and portholes. Crew members whod been fighting the fire were now focusing their energy on the evacuation, giving the raging fire a free hand, and it was clear that within a very few minutes the entire ship would be a 424-foot-long barbecue grill. Because not all of the lifeboats could be used, the evacuation process took some time, and it was nearly dark by the time the last one was away. In the grand tradition of maritime disaster, that last boat contained the skipper, Cousins. It got away just in time, before the fire below decks reached the bow of the ship and broke through the decks. In short order the whole ship was on fire. As for the Congress, the ship burned merrily and spectacularly offshore until about midnight, when one of its oil tanks ruptured in a fiery outburst; then things settled down. By the third day, the hull was cool enough to inspect, and salvors were surprised to find the engines and boilers all in serviceable condition and one of the fuel tanks still full of oil. The vessel was soon rebuilt, rechristened the S.S. Nanking, and went on to have a long and successful career for the China Mail Steamship Company of New York and, later, the Pacific Steamship Company of Seattle.
