On November 18, 1906, the Mosquito Fleet Steamer Dix was underway from Seattle to Port Blakely with 77 passengers and crew when she struck the Steamer Jeanie one mile west of Seattle's Duwamish Head. The Dix sank within minutes and only 38 survived. This is considered the worst marine casualty in the history of Puget Sound.

The Dix was discovered by wreck divers Laura James and Scott Boyd with the help of a yellow submarine. They first sited it from an ROV, which stands for an underwater "remotely operated vehicle", basically a robotic underwater camera, provided by OceanGate LLC of Everett, March 19. The week of April 14th they used OceanGate's five-person submarine, the Antipodes. Subsequent dives and high frequency sonar imaging were used to assist with the identification.

The West Seattle Herald worked with the Alki Log House Museum on this story two years ago interpreting sonar photographs released to the museum of what may have been the Dix, but that ship photographed was off Magnolia, and all involved felt it was probably a different wreck.

Alki resident, Laura Wold, who lives a mere two miles or so from the wreck, remembers her mother's grandfather, Norwegian-born Marcus Peterson Otnes, who lived in Ballard as a young adult until he died at age 99. He was a farmer in Norway, and worked in a lumber mill on Bainbridge island, where he commuted by ferry from Seattle, before becoming a fisherman. He is considered the oldest survivor of the Dix disaster, according to the book Early Ballard by Julie D. Pheasant-Albright. There are still Otnes relatives living in the Ballard area.

"Yes, it was my great-grandpa Marcus," said Wold, whose mother's father Peter Otnes was also a Ballard fisherman. "He died when I was five, and I’m fortunate to remember him. He was tall and quiet, and had white hair and a white mustache. We acquired his chair and used it for 10 years. It was a green recliner with wooden arm rests. It had a sheen to it but it was wearing away.

"My mom’s (Marcia's) aunt Bessie Otnes lives in Ballard and her daughter Kaylene has been active with the Leif Erickson Lodge."

The family believes that Marcus survived by clinging to a chain on the Jeanie as he couldn't swim, and prayed as he clung to the chain, promising that if he survived, he would never say an unkind thing to anyone for the rest of his life.

"He went with the flow and didn't struggle, and just held on," said Marcia Wold, Laura's mother and Marcus' granddaughter, who lives in Ballard. "Now that they found the Dix, I am so excited. It's closure for all those who lost loved ones. For those who survived, it reminds us, their ancestors, of how much we have that we wouldn't have had if they had died. My father was born in 1917, so if Marcus had died my family would not have been here."

"There are a bunch of wrecks in Elliott Bay too deep to dive," Scott Boyd told the West Seattle by phone from his home in Olympia. He authored Northwest Wreck Dives with Jeff Carr. "It's kind of amazing that we located it. In 1906 there was a hand-drawn map that showed where the wreck happened and I think they misread that a little. I plotted the course of the two vessels how I would have piloted the boats without navigation available, and found it where the two courses crossed.

"When we took the sub out there we spent a lot of hours (exploring) the wreck and everything was exactly in the right place and the right direction," he said. "It's a pretty cool find. The hull is starting to rot through between the ribs. The pilot house and aft cabin are in pretty good shape and the aft cabin is where the people survived. But visibility is very dark at 500 feet.

"I didn't believe it for a long time," he said, referring to after he and Laura James spotted the Dix. "Both Laura and I do a lot of wreck diving and for the first several weeks we were looking for clues that it wasn't the Dix. The realization that it was the Dix took us about a month. I think legally an insurance company owns it. I have a position (the wreck's location) on my website but it is a little different I don't want people going there. We're going to try to get the State to recognize it as a historical controlled resource, and leave it be."

For more history about the Dix, the accident, photos, and Boyd's story go to: http://www.boydski.com/