Dix (steamboat) - Impact of Sinking

Impact of Sinking

The first vessel on the scene was Florence K., whose master, Capt. Cyprian T. Wyatt (1877-1952) and chief engineer, E.L. Franks, picked up the first survivors and took them to Port Blakeley. The shock of the survivors was great, as a newspaper account of the time showed:

Reports of the number of passengers lost vary; The New York Times, having received a dispatch from Portland, Oregon about the sinking, reported the number lost as 40; Years later, in a 1913 story about Jeanie's loss off Calvert Island, the Times reported the number of passengers lost by the sinking of the Dix as 54. A 2011 Seattle Times article said the number was "as many as 45", when another source has it as over 45 people, including Charles Dennison. Mrs. Byler’s sons, Charles and Christian, and their sister, Lillian, were all trapped below deck and taken down when the ship sank.

The chief engineer, George F. Parks also drowned. The wreck was sunk so deep that salvage operations were impossible. No bodies were ever recovered; the people were trapped inside and went down with her. Most of the Dix victims were from Port Blakeley, and the place was hit hard, that night in the little town being described as "running of a gauntlet of shrieks and moans of grief-stricken wives and mothers ..." Work stopped briefly at the huge Port Blakely Lumber Mill for the first time in the mill’s history.

Captain Lermond was one of the survivors, indeed he died only in 1959, at the age of 90 years. Following the Dix sinking, his master’s license was revoked. Although it was reinstated a year later, Captain Lermond served in command of tugs only for the rest of his career until 1933, never again commanding a passenger vessel.

Up until then, with the significant exception of the Clallam, the steamboats had enjoyed a good reputation for safety, at least by the standards of the time. The horrible circumstances of the loss of the Dix were all the more shocking to the people on the Sound, who depended on the steamboats for their basic transportation.

In 1973, a memorial to the Dix was dedicated in a small park at Duwamish Head.