SS Pacific Wreck Exploration Ramps Up
9/12/2025 – The scene aboard the 85-foot, Desco-built, 1977-vintage commercial shrimper-turned-shipwreck explorer Seablazer docked at Fishermen’s Terminal is busy. Chaotic, even. Half a dozen crew are working aboard on countless tasks, including building out a second head and installing carpeting. The boat lists about four degrees to port because the fuel is pumped to one tank as a water intrusion issue is addressed in the other. But Jeff Hummel, the instigator of all the action as discoverer of the “Titanic of the Pacific Northwest” wreck of the steamship (SS) Pacific and founder/owner of salvage company Rockfish Inc., takes a break from the action to talk about the upcoming fall season.
The sinking of the SS Pacific stands as the Pacific Northwest region’s deadliest maritime disaster with over 300 souls lost on November 4, 1875 after the coal-powered steamship collided with sailing vessel (SV) Orpheus in the night. In addition to the lives lost, gold rush riches estimated to be worth millions of dollars today went to the bottom with the ship. Many tried and failed to find the wreck over the generations until Jeff Hummel, after decades of searching, declared the SS Pacific found and legally arrested the site in 2022.
Now three years on in 2025, interested parties and the public at-large await recovery news of both historic artifacts and, of course, precious cargo in the form of gold. Thus far a fire brick, pieces of wood, and coal stand as the important, but only, recovered material. According to Hummel, this fall represents a window of opportunity for intensified search and recovery efforts.
“We wanted to go this Sunday,” says Hummel. He explains that the ideal weather window is at least four days on site. Seablazer can take plenty of abuse offshore, but equipment deployment and safe deck working conditions demand relatively calm conditions. “Unfortunately the weather offshore is pretty nasty right now, last I looked it was 18-foot seas … basically just not compatible with going out.”
Getting three weeks on-site this fall is the goal, hopefully not a dream. But Hummel won’t be alone as he has recently recruited many fresh faces for crew. A transatlantic rower. Helicopter test pilot. The cast of adventurous characters seem to be chomping at the bit to get out there.
“We’ve got people from all over the country involved in the project,” says Hummel. “Everyone wants to see the gold, but what really everyone is interested in is the story. They just love the story of the project, the wreck… the whole thing.” Crew have supernumerary agreements that are not all that different than commercial fishing crew shares. Work hard and you get a slice of the gold that will someday be pulled up. The boat wins, the crew wins. If it doesn’t, that’s the fickle nature of the sea’s bounty.
“The goal is to find some more interesting objects, perhaps even find something that’s made out of gold,” says Hummel of fall 2025.
New Equipment Combo: Metal Detector and Sediment Blower
A key part of exploring the SS Pacific wreck are the capabilities of Rockfish’s two remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) Falcor and Draco. The two intrepid robots, made in-house, have been workhorses for the mission for years but are past their original operational lifespan. The new generation of ROVs is in the works in the shop, but for now, the Donald Rumsfeld quote about going to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had comes to mind.
“We have kind of scoured the world for equipment that we can add to our existing ROVs to give us the ability to detect gold on the bottom,” explains Hummel. “Detected gold really means you’re detecting something nonferrous; the metal detector we selected has the ability to discriminate between iron objects and non-iron objects.” Hummel and his team recently tested the new detectors at the University of Washington.
“We’re really happy that a recreational scuba diver underwater metal detector that coils has been designed to go to 2,000 feet,” says Hummel. “Who knew? Probably the manufacturer doesn’t even know.”
Finding and testing the ideal metal detector for the job is only the beginning. Now the team must integrate it into the ROVs both mechanically and electronically. They’ve already developed a necessary circuit board in-house that should allow pilots to run controls to the metal detector from the surface. Locating interesting objects with the detector isn’t all that useful if the targets are buried underneath inches, maybe even feet, of sediment.
On Deck
Equipment Deployment
ROV Retrieval
“We expect most of the stuff to be right near the surface but we need a way to expose it, to see it,” says Hummel. A water blower will also be integrated into the ROVs, positioned in the middle of the detector coil and pointed downward. “We figure we can blow a hole in the bottom maybe 12 inches deep, maybe even deeper.”
The need for the new equipment combination of the detector coil and blower are the results of in-field trial and error. Seablazer was last deployed to the wreck site in June of this year with a different kind of detector used specifically to find ferrous, iron, objects that was dragged on a tow fish-style system.
“We were able to confirm that the site that we believe contains the paddlewheels actually has some large iron objects there,” reports Hummel. “We also got some other large signatures off of other things that need to be investigated to figure out what they are. We just know they are large iron objects.”
The Mission Ahead
“We’re just going to spend as much time as possible looking around, seeing what we can see,” says Hummel. “We’ve mapped out over 400 objects in the debris field, you can quote me on that. It’s a matter of time just of going and looking at all those different things.”
“The first thing we’re actually going to do, people might be surprised to hear this, is finish up a project we started on the last dive,” continues Hummel. “Because we ran out of time, we needed about six more hours to locate something on the bottom. But we believe it’s the remains of a coal bunker. We want to get that wrapped up and we know that there are some great artifacts there and we’d like to cover those artifacts.”
Another new piece of equipment to join the arsenal is a large diameter sediment core sampler deemed “The Claw”. According to Hummel, this core sampler has the capability to bring up a one-foot diameter core about two feet deep, essentially a five-gallon bucket of material. The Claw will be deployed in the instance of the ROVs finding something interested with their detectors, blowers, and cameras.
“So the best success we could have is that we can find a poke of gold or find some collection of gold coins that was basically in someone’s purse or possession,” says Hummel. “We believe that stuff is concentrated in a fairly small area. We have the equipment to figure out where that area is.”
Estimating the exact amount of gold aboard the SS Pacific is the result of historical record sleuthing and educated hypothesizing.
“We estimate that in antiquity, there is probably around $100,000 in gold from that time period just in the debris field,” says Hummel. “The Chinese gold miners onboard, there were about 40 of them, had around $70,000 in gold with them, in their luggage. They were all seen huddled around the smokestack as the ship went down. They would’ve dropped that luggage and it would’ve gone straight to the bottom.”
Working Historical Theories: More Catastrophic Collision, Bigger Boiler Explosion
“So we think we have a good understanding of where things are, but there’s still a lot more to be learned,” says Hummel. Piecing together exactly what happened on that fateful day of the tragedy animates Hummel just as much as the promise of precious cargo recovery. Only two aboard SS Pacific survived to immortalize their accounts into the history books—quartermaster Neil Henly and passenger Henry Jelly, a 22-year-old Irishman. Accounts from the SV Orpheus, the northbound vessel that was the other half of the SS Pacific ending collision, also offer some clues. But besides these brief accounts, the most compelling new puzzle pieces to complete the picture are in the wreck itself. A location on the site that may offer important information lies about 400 meters off the main body of the hull according to Hummel.
“I believe that some of the equipment there is related to the anchor windlass,” says Hummel. “We realized on the last expedition that the anchors are not in the bow section of the vessel, there is no magnetic signature for them. Where are the anchors and why aren’t they there? What finally occurred to me after 30 years of thinking about this is I answered a question I’ve wondered for so long.”
Hummel’s guess comes from the account of Mr. Jelly who claimed to have awoken with a shudder and then the sound of falling rocks.
“It finally dawned on me that what he heard was the anchor chain passing over something, either through the hawsepipe or over a timber or something,” explains Hummel. “As it paid out from the vessel, the clunk clunk clunk sounded to a guy who didn’t spend a lot of time on a boat like the sound of falling rocks. I have wondered about that for 30 years, but it never occurred to me before that the anchors would be gone.”
If this hypothesis is correct, then confirming the location of the wayward SS Pacific ground tackle would mark the coordinates where SS Pacific and SV Orpheus made their initial collision so long ago. This discovery would also confirm Hummel’s suspicions that the collision was far more forceful and catastrophic than the current historical narrative suggests.
“I can’t quote the force of the impact, but we know the velocity of the ship was about 8.5 knots,” says Hummel. “The mass of the ship… it’s a huge amount of force. We also know from the witness statements that the vessel did not reverse the engines until after the collision. So the vessel did not slow down at all. The full force of the Pacific going 8.5 knots went straight into the side of the Orpheus. A lot of people described it as a glancing blow; it was absolutely not a glancing blow. The Pacific T-boned the Orpheus and drove its bow into the Orpheus and the impact created a hole into the side of the Orpheus that went to two feet above the waterline.”
Hummel continues, “The Orpheus had a very sturdy thick hull, I believe it had an ice hull so it was extra heavy-duty planking. So, I now look at it and estimate that the damage to the Pacific went back (aft) at least five meters, probably even further. And that totally encompasses the area of where the anchor hangs over the side of the boat and where the windlass is. I think that the objects that we see on the bottom are perhaps an anchor buried in there, I don’t know. It’s something that certainly warrants further investigation.”
Hummel also currently believes that the boiler explosion was truly massive, likely responsible for blowing apart much of the SS Pacific. Henly’s account includes being pulled underwater during the ship’s rollover for a time, probably 5 to 15 seconds. When he broke the surface for a breath, Henly claimed the vessel was gone.
“In that brief time period, the vessel vanished from the surface,” Hummel says with near awe. “When it [the sinking] got to a certain point it was going slow, then all over with a sudden kaboom.” The recovered fire brick adds evidence of the destruction.
Ultimately, the only way to confirm these theories is to set sail for the site, explore, and recover. Stay tuned, curious readers—SS Pacific wreck may surrender a few of her mysteries this year.
New Images from the Rockfish Inc. Team – Suspected Paddlewheels
From Jeff Hummel: “These never before published sonar images were produced by a high-resolution synthetic aperture side scan sonar.
Paddle Wheel Location: The upper image shows what are believed to be the remains of the port and starboard paddle wheels. The objects shown are the same size as the paddle wheels on the SS Pacific, they are located approximately 100 meters from the main wreck. Rockfish used a gradiometer to determine if they are made of iron. Both the objects registered separate and significant returns, proving that they are made of iron or steel.
One of the paddle wheels appears to be damaged and Rockfish believes this is consistent with it being separated from the vessel during the steam explosion. Further exploration is planned by Rockfish to assess the level of damage to the paddle wheel to help understand the final moments before the ship plunged to the bottom.
The second image show two concentric rings that match the paddle wheel configuration super imposed on the sonar image.
You may wish to note that Rockfish concluded in 2023 that the object believed to be the paddle wheels are too far from the wreck to match up with the witness accounts. The old site consisted of three pairs of objects buried in the bottom in such a fashion that they were able to stop a fishing trawler, that subsequently wrapped it’s net around them. Rockfish now believes the original site consists of steam machinery associated with the anchors.”
