On January 14 [1899] a tragic accident had occured in the harbor of Tacoma. In contrast to the freightening uproar attending the Kingston-Glenogle collision, this disaster took place without warning and in almost complete silence.

The four-masted, full rigged British ship Andelana was laying at anchor preparatory to taking on cargo. Her ballast had been removed and she was held upright by logs chained to her hull on either side at the waterline.

During the night Commencement Bay was swept by winds of nearly forty miles an hour and as a gust hit the towering tophamper of the 2,579-ton ship she capsized and sank in 180 fathoms of water, carrying Capt. George W. Stalling and all hands to their death, the only survivor of the Andelana’s crew being an apprentice, Percy B. Buck, who was ill at a Tacoma hospital.

Efforts of four tugs to pull the sunken vessel into shallow water where she could be salavaged failed, and to this day the square-rigger lies at the bottom of Commencement Bay, the tomb of 17 unfortunate seamen. Later a deep-sea diver attempting to locate the wreck was killed when his air pump packing gland failed. In 1935 George Wayne, a diver employed by the Ocean Tug Boat Co. of Tacoma, stumbled upon the remains of the Andelana and brought up pieces of the wreckage.*

*credit: H.W. McCurdy, Marine History of the Pacific Northwest