A Long, Dangerous Coastline

In September 1923, 14 US Navy destroyers raced into a channel off California's coast in darkness and thick fog. Minutes later seven of the ships crashed into jagged rocks, and 23 sailors died that night. Only five years before, a Canadian passenger ship steamed blind down Alaska's Lynn Canal in a late-night snowstorm, en route from Skagway to Vancouver. She ran up on Vanderbilt Reef, slid off the reef and sank, taking more than 350 people to their deaths. The west coast of North America has some of the world's most beautiful scenery along its thousands of miles of bays, coves and forbidding cliffs, but it's often subjected to ferocious storms. Here are stories of ships that met tragic ends - including Brother Jonathan, Princess Sophia, Benevolence, Star of Bengal, City of Rio de Janeiro and Columbia - and the passengers and crews who found themselves in extreme danger on this coastline.