Near-Miss Echoes Dix Sinking; More on Chinese Seafaring

An investigation into a near-miss between a Washington State ferry and a container ship on Puget Sound Dec. 20, 2005 has pinned fault on the first mate, an eerie echo of a maritime disaster that took place on almost exactly the same spot almost exactly 100 years ago. [link] On November 19, 1906, a small cargo vessel collided with the passenger steamer Dix, an ancestor of the modern Washington State ferry system. The steamer, with 77 passengers aboard, was on a run from Colman Dock in Seattle to Port Blakely on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound. The cargo ship, the Jeannie, hit the Dix broadside, pushing over the steamer on her beam ends. Dix went down in 600 feet of water in less than five minutes just a few hundred yards off Alki Point. Thirty-nine of the passengers were killed, mostly women and children. Their bodies were never recovered and still rest at the bottom of Puget Sound. The disaster took place less than a mile south of the Dec. 20 incident between the ferry Wenatchee and the cargo vessel. The Dix accident was blamed on the first mate, similar to the Wenatchee incident, and the Dix's captain never skippered a passenger vessel again. Today's ferry riders should remember the Dix and how history nearly repeated itself.

Here's another take from an Islamic art and architecture critic Tareq Kahlaoui on the possibility that the Chinese discovered America long before Europeans. [link] See my blog entry of January 14. [link]