BOILER BAY, LINCOLN COUNTY; 1910s:
Fiery explosive shipwreck gave Boiler Bay its name
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By Finn J.D. John
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Unguided, the steamer came ashore, behaving more and more erratically as her boiler pressure rose. She actually made a full circle, just missing the rocks, and just as she passed the shore one of her oil tanks burst, showering the nearby trees with burning oil. Then she looped back around as if to try again, and piled onto the rocks with an enormous crash, still under full power and trailing a column of smoke and fire like a floating volcano. The ship heeled over and burned fiercely for a time; then her long-suffering boiler exploded with a thunderous blast, ripping chunks of wood and steel free and sending burning debris in all directions. One of those pieces of debris was, of course, the steel duct pipe that’s still sticking out of the bluff today, right where it fell. Luckily, neither the duct nor any of the other bits and pieces of burning wood and scalding steel that flew up into the air came down on any of the spectators who had gathered to watch the show.
As the men rowed shoreward, they made for Fogarty Creek, just north of Boiler Bay and almost within sight of the burning wreckage of their ship. Unfortunately, a woman on the shore there spotted them and started vigorously waving a red shirt at them from that spot, assuming that they would understand that she meant that this was where they should land. To the sailors, though, it looked like she was waving them off, warning them of some danger. So they turned and pulled back out to sea, and rowed all the way around to the other side of Depoe Bay to Whale Cove, about three miles south, and came ashore there. By the time they got to land, it was almost dusk, and Frank Tiffney was beyond help. He succumbed to hypothermia shortly after they reached the shore. There were plenty of locals eager to help the sailors out, but unfortunately all of them were three miles to the north clustered around the burning ship. In Whale Cove, the sailors found there was nobody there to help them. They cast about a bit looking for shelter; but they ended up huddling on the beach around a fitful campfire trying to stay warm as darkness fell. In the morning they hiked out in various directions to find settlements where they could get help. In the end, it could certainly have been worse; Tiffney was the only fatality. But the crew definitely would have had a more pleasant shipwrecking experience if they’d pulled in at Fogarty Creek as they’d originally meant to do!
This firebox is quite large, about 12 feet long and probably 10 feet wide, shaped like a giant soup can. When the boiler exploded and blew the ship to pieces, the firebox never left the blast site; it’s nestled among the rocks at the base of the bluff and is usually covered by the sea. But at very low tides, when the conditions are right, it can be reached via a rough trail leading down from Highway 101, from that parking area I mentioned at the start of this story. It's because of that rusty firebox — still mostly intact despite more than a century of immersion in salt water — that the little bay where the Marhoffer fetched up, formerly known as Briggs Landing, is today called Boiler Bay.
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