Beneath Waves and Shadows: The Sinking of the Steamship Valencia

The gripping untold story of the tragic sinking of the steamship Valencia in the pacific northwest in 1906, for fans of David Grann, Candice Millard, and Erik Larsen.

The sinking of the Valencia was one of the most harrowing and significant disasters of its era—and an important precursor to the fabled sinking of the Titanic six years later. Based on Tyler Hooper’s years of painstaking archival research, Beneath Waves and Shadows brings the catastrophic Valencia sinking to life and establishes it as a pivotal moment in the remarkable history of the Pacific Northwest.

On a mild January day in 1906, the Valencia steamed out of San Francisco and began the four-day voyage to Seattle. It was a journey made countless times by steamships in those years, yet routine as the journey may have seemed, the Valencia’s crew were well aware of what could go wrong. Hundreds of ships had gone down off the west coast of Vancouver Island, an area known as the “Graveyard of the Pacific” for its poor visibility, rocky shoals, and fearsome currents.

The Valencia’s captain, Oscar Marcus Johnson, was an experienced mariner, but on the third day of the journey, he lost his bearings in the increasingly thick winter fog of the Pacific Northwest. The vessel’s hull was torn by jagged rocks on Vancouver Island’s shallow coastline—beginning a terrifying multi-day ordeal for those onboard and a desperate “Hail Mary” rescue operation for the island’s lighthouse keepers and telegraph operators. Of the approximately 165 souls who left San Francisco, fewer than 40 would survive.

Dramatic, tragic and powerfully written, Beneath Waves and Shadows tells the story of the passengers and crew's struggle to survive, following the tradition of classic bestselling stories of disaster at sea.