In August of the year 1910, the 253-foot steamer Buckman was southbound on one of her regular trips between Seattle and San Francisco. Early one morning on this voyage the little vessel became the stage for one of the few, and certainly one of the most daring, attempts of ocean robbery ever recorded in the history of the modern American Merchant Marine.
Aboard were nearly 200 passengers. It was a typical, routine list for this ship and her running mates in the Pacific coastwise trade. There were gold miners, lumbermen, business men, and a few women and children. Some were traveling on business, and some were enjoying a vacation voyage.
In her cargo holds the Buckman carried the usual lots of freight moving between Puget Sound and California, plus one item not so usual. That item was a shipment of Alaska gold, transshipped at Seattle and destined for the mint at San Francisco. The exact value of this gold was never publicly known, but it was afterward reported worth approximately $2,000,000.
On the second evening out, the veteran Captain Ben Woods moved about the ship in his usual manner, little realizing that he was spending the last few hours of his life. He made a circuit of the decks. Inside, he stopped to talk in his genial manner with the groups that occupied the lounge and the smoking-room.
With the change of watch at midnight, the Captain checked the weather outside and the compass in the pilothouse. It was a typical summer night off the Oregon coast, with clear sky, a light wind, and the long easy swells of the Pacific giving motion to the ship. After he had given brief instructions and steering orders, Captain Woods retired to his cabin. The guidance of the Buckman was left in the hands of the second officer and a young quartermaster.
There are few places where men work that are more quiet and lonely than the pilothouse of a small steamer during the early hours of the morning. Aboard the Buckman the second officer stood for minutes at a time staring out of the windows. Sometimes he could pick up a distant light. Occasionally he would take a quick look at the compass. Once or twice he walked back to the chart table. The quartermaster remained fixed at his wheel, with the glow of the binnacle lamp on his face giving the only light in the place. Hardly a word passed between the officer and his helmsman.
One can well imagine the surprise of these two men when the door of the pilothouse was suddenly thrown open and two strangers entered. The intruders were armed with sawed-off shotguns and revolvers. One of them ordered the ship turned 90 degrees to the left. Menacing gestures with the shotguns backed up this command, and the quartermaster turned his wheel.
The Buckman was now steaming shoreward, directly for a rocky stretch of the coast near Umpqua, Oregon. With the change of course the ship began to roll heavily. In his cabin, Captain Woods was aroused from sleep. Sensing that something was wrong, he hurried to the pilothouse without taking time to dress. Before any questions could be asked, one of the bandits took point-blank aim, and the master of the Buckman fell dead at the feet of his quartermaster.
The steamer had been giving the coast a wide berth on this voyage. With the new shoreward course now being held, the bandits became much interested in the ship’s position. While one stood guard covering the second officer and the quartermaster, the other remained out on deck to keep a sharp lookout.
Some little time passed. The gunman inside became increasingly concerned with what his partner on the outside could see. Then came an instant when the quartermaster found himself unguarded. His arm shot out to seize the whistle cord, and he nearly pulled it out of the roof. This action so startled and confused the gunman that the second officer found his chance to escape on deck.
Shoreward the steamer continued. Other officers and men began to appear on the boat deck in response to the emergency sounding of the whistle. The two gunmen joined forces outside and soon they had every man that they could see on that deck rounded up and standing still with their hands raised above their heads.
Left alone, the quartermaster again acted quickly. He reached for the light switches on the after wall of the pilothouse. The entire upper deck of the ship was thrown into darkness. A few seconds later and the quartermaster was at the door, shouting to his shipmates to scatter. They did, hiding aft among lifeboats and ventilators. And while this confusion continued and the gunmen groped about, the quick thinking quartermaster put the wheel hard over, sending the steamer seaward.
Disgusted with the turn of events, the bandits out on deck directed their guns at the pilothouse, piercing its planking with bullets and shattering its windows. The young helmsman, however, escaped injury by feigning dead close by the body of his captain.
During the balance of the dark hours of that morning, the Buckman drifted. Down below her engineers had shut off steam, not knowing who had command of the helm. No one dared to venture out on the boat deck until daylight came.
At sunrise the mates instituted a careful search of the ship. In a bunk in the steerage quarters they found a man pretending to be asleep. He was identified by the second officer and the quartermaster as one of the gunmen and was placed in irons. His partner in this unsuccessful attempt to hold up a ship at sea, the man who had killed Captain Woods, was never seen again. He is believed to have gone over the side, as one of the ship’s life rings was found missing from its place on an upper deck railing.
That morning, at the normal hour, stewards served breakfast in the dining saloon. Many of the passengers learned for the first time of the murder of Captain Woods, and of their own escape from a crash on the rocky coast.
With her first officer in command, and with her shipment of gold untouched, the Buckman continued, arriving several hours late in San Francisco.
The prisoner, who had been taken from the steerage bunk, was in due course of time brought to trial and convicted in a federal court. He died some years later while still serving his sentence in prison.
The youthful quartermaster, who on his own initiative sounded the whistle, pulled the light switches, and turned his ship seaward in the face of close range gunfire, is still going to sea. He has long since attained his master’s papers and in succession had command of several American flagships. More recently he has had the bridge of one of our largest merchant vessels plying out to the Orient from Los Angeles and San Francisco. He holds a commission in the merchant marine branch of the United States Naval Reserve, and his ship flies the Naval Reserve flag.
Passing into the hands of new owners, the steamer Buckman was renamed the Admiral Evans. For many years she remained in Pacific coastwise trade and became a familiar caller in virtually every port from Puget Sound to San Diego. The end of her career came in the summer of 1936, when she was sold for scrap and taken to a junk yard in Astoria, Oregon.
Workmen who broke the ship up for the salvage value of her old steel hull and machinery found grim evidence of that eventful night in August of 1910. In the planking of the pilothouse they saw where putty and paint had filled in the holes made by sawed-off shotguns and revolvers.
And to this day speculation continues regarding the plans for the holdup of the Buckman. Just how did the two gunmen expect to make away with the shipment of gold? Whatever the plans were, they did not take into account the actions and the resourcefulness of a quick thinking quartermaster.