The wind hissed and howled. Waves crashed.

It was January, 1906. The S.S. Valencia was being tossed upon the ice-cold Pacific like a rubber ducky.

Two days earlier, the ship had set out from San Francisco to Seattle. It was a bad trip.

Currently, passengers were gathered along the stanchions, demanding to know what was wrong. They knew something wasn’t right, but had been cooped up in cabins and kept—literally—in the dark.

Passengers kept asking the crew what was wrong, but the crew was too busy running around like proverbial headless chickens.

“Tell us what’s happening!” one of the mothers pleaded with a crewman.

The crewman looked at her, clutching her two sons, and broke the news to the gaggle of moms and dads.

Last night, he explained, while passengers were sleeping, the ship went off course. Celestial navigation was impossible, because of low visibility. So they had been forced to navigate by dead reckoning.

The ship missed its entrance into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. So the captain ordered the ship closer to shore, since weather was worsening.

It was a mistake. Around midnight, the ship struck a reef.

“Get them back in their cabins!” shouted an upper crewman. “Too dangerous out here for passengers!”

There were 108 passengers aboard. A crew of 56. The iron hull was taking on water. The ship was riding lopsided in the Pacific.

The captain ordered the ship to be run aground, to prevent sinking. Another big mistake.

The Valencia was driven into the rocks again.

The captain ordered all lifeboats be lowered. Mistake Number Three.

All but one of the ship’s lifeboats were lowered. Three were flipped by wind and waves while being lowered, spilling occupants into the drink. Two lifeboats were capsized. One was lost at sea.

And so it was, the great steamship sank and 137 people died. No women or children survived.

Chief Freight Clerk Frank Lehn was there. He told newspaper reporters, through many tears, precisely how it happened:

“Screams of women and children mingled in an awful chorus with the shrieking of the wind, the dash of rain, and the roar of the breakers.

“As the passengers rushed on deck they were carried away in bunches by the huge waves that seemed as high as the ship’s mastheads.

“The ship began to break up almost at once and the women and children were lashed to the rigging above the reach of the sea.

“It was a pitiful sight to see frail women, wearing only night dresses, with bare feet on the freezing ratlines, trying to shield children in their arms from the icy wind and rain.”

The ship sank deeper. Mothers clutched their children tightly. And as a storm frothed around them, they sang. Their voices grew louder, survivors said. The deeper the ship plunged into the frozen waters, the more powerful the singing.

“[I remember] the brave faces looking [at us] over the broken rail of a wreck and of the echo of that great hymn sung by the women who, looking death smilingly in the face, were able in the fog and mist and flying spray to remember: ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’”

And anyway, now you know the story behind my favorite song.