WRITTEN BY PAUL DORPAT

COURTESY OF DORIS CLEMENTS

The Spanish-style Colman Dock with its landmark clock tower was only four years old when the steel-hulled Alameda cut through its outer end. Overhauled with a new tower in 1908, the pier was next renovated in the mid-'30s as a terminus for the Kalakala, "the world's first streamlined ferry." The contemporary Colman Dock, below, dates from 1961.

	COURTESY OF ROBERT MONROE

Here is evidence of an uncontrolled crash at Colman Dock on April 25, 1912. The culprit was not the steamer but human communication aboard the Alameda, the Alaska Steamship Company's ocean-going liner. As the Alameda rested about 250 yards off the pier head, Capt. John (Dynamite) O'Brien gave a "full astern" order that was relayed to Second Assistant Robert Bunton at the throttle. Bunton understood the order as "full ahead," and quickly jerked the Alameda into action.

The iron-hulled ship crunched through the end of Colman Dock at an angle, dropping its tower into the bay and exposing the passenger waiting room beneath the dock's dome. Slowed but not stalled, the ship continued slicing, sinking the stern-wheel steamer Telegraph berthed on the opposite side of the pier. The Alameda might have gone on up the waterfront, but for the quick thinking of O'Brien. The captain shouted for the anchors to be dropped, and after 125 fathoms of chain were out, the starboard anchor caught. The next pier north — the Grant Trunk Pacific Dock, then the largest wooden pier on the coast — was saved, only to burn two years later.

No one was killed in the Alameda crash, and the hardy liner was merely inconvenienced, continuing its scheduled run to Alaska only a few hours late.