SS Valencia

SS Valencia was an iron-hulled passenger steamer built for the Red D Line for service between Venezuela and New York City. She was built in 1882 by William Cramp and Sons, one year after the construction of her sister ship Caracas. She was a 1,598-ton vessel (originally 1,200 tons), 252 feet (77 m) in length. In 1897, Valencia was deliberately attacked by the Spanish cruiser Reina Mercedes off Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The next year, she became a coastal passenger liner on the U.S. West Coast and served periodically in the Spanish–American War as a troopship to the Philippines. Valencia was wrecked off Cape Beale, which is near Clo-oose, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, on 22 January 1906. As her sinking killed 100 people (including all of the women and children aboard), some classify the wreck of Valencia as the worst maritime disaster in the "Graveyard of the Pacific", a famously treacherous area off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island.