The Overdue Schooner Lizzie Prien -- January 29, 2010

From the 17-April-1897 San Francisco Call. WA Coulter did many maritime drawings for the newspaper. This one shows a schooner which reached San Francisco after her owner had assumed she was lost. The accompanying article:

IF THE LIZZIE
PRIEN GOT IN

Why Shouldn't the Samaria
Be Heard of Before
Long?

Was Twenty Days From Tacoma
and Did Not Sight the
Samaria.

One of the overdue fleet got in from the Sound yesterday. The little schooner Lizzie Prien made an unusually long run of twenty days from Tacoma.

Her owners had piven her up as lost and were much surprised to learn that she was passing through the Golden Gate. When she reached the Golden Gate Lumber Company's wharf in Oakland Creek no one was more surprised than the manager of the concern. The little boat did not engage a tug, but with a fresh breeze failed up tho bay and making the mouth of the creek sailed in and the breeze holding good made her landing without assistance. "We never expected to see the vessel again," said George Fisher, manager of the company. "She was an unusually long time out, and judging from the reports of the weather and the hard times that other vessels had encountered we naturally feared the worst. However, all's well that ends well, and the Lizzie Prien is safe and sound in Oakland Creek."

"The Lizzie Prien sailed from Tacoma twenty days ago," said Captain Anderson yesterday, "while the Samaria left a week ahead of ns. The first day out we got it hot and heavy, and from that on it was a succession of sharp gales and calms. We passed no wreckage and saw no vessels in the distance. We passed an old spar, but it had been so long in the water that we did not pay any attention to it. If the Samaria did not go down during the seven days prior to. our sailing date, she certainly did not founder in the storms we encountered."

If the captain of the Rufus E. Wood is correct in bis surmises, then the last time the Samaria was seen was on April 2. In that event Captain Anderson is willing to swear that she is still afloat, as after that date there was no storm sufficient to sink a longboat. The owners of the missing vessel have nothing to say about the matter, and will not express an opinion until after the return of the revenue-cutter Rush.