June 9, 2026 – The first in-depth film to examine the “Titanic of the West Coast” – a notorious 1865 shipwreck near Crescent City, Calif. – launched this week by Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB).

“The Wreck of the Brother Jonathan,” part of OPB’s “Oregon Experience” historical documentary series, digs into the questions that still surround the 220-foot steamship, which slammed into a nearly submerged rock and sank to the ocean floor about 20 miles south of the Oregon border.

The steamer took with it more than 200 passengers and crew members, 346 barrels of whiskey, two camels and $20 million in gold. Salvage crews have spent more than 100 years searching for the lost treasure, but only about $4 million has been accounted for.

“Legend has it that most of the gold remains unrecovered,” said OPB producer Kami Horton. “Even now, no one knows for sure.”

A snapshot of the West Coast in the 1860s

More than a shipwreck saga, the 30-minute film is a story of promise, profits and peril shortly after the Civil War. The S.S. Brother Jonathan was one of many commuter steamships that traversed the Pacific Coast before cars and planes existed, shuttling miners, merchants, settlers, and goods between California and Canada.

The steamer was also known as a “freedom ship” because it ferried Black citizens from San Francisco and Portland, where they faced severe restrictions and exclusion, to what was then called Vancouver’s Island in British Columbia, where they could start businesses, own property, vote and enjoy full citizenship.

The Brother Jonathan story “became a way to show what was happening on the West Coast during this time when there was so much change happening for a variety of populations,” Horton said. These affected groups included Native Americans decimated by diseases introduced by settlers, miners following the Gold Rush, Chinese railroad workers and Black Americans from Southern states.

New scholarship by Zachary Stocks, executive director of Oregon Black Pioneers, added another layer to the story. Stocks connected the steamer to the experiences of Black Americans on the West Coast in the 1860s and to early Black Portlanders, including Allen Flowers, who worked aboard the Brother Jonathan as a teenager. Months before the wreck, Flowers jumped ship when it docked in Portland. He eventually made a home in the city with his wife, Louisa Thacker.

“They started a family, which would become among the most prominent and successful Black families in all of Oregon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” Stocks said.

Horton also interviews Dennis Powers, author of “Treasure Ship,” who describes the efforts of salvage crews that in 1996 recovered bags of gold coins 287 feet below the ocean surface. She tours the Del Norte Historical Museum in Crescent City with director Karen Betlejewski, who shows off the ship’s original bell, a crew member’s shoe and one of the salvaged gold pieces, among other artifacts housed there.

Although only one photo of the Brother Jonathan remains, the film uses black-and-white silent movie footage to evoke what it was like for wealthy travelers and the steerage class aboard the steamer.

More recently, Horton and cinematographer Dan Evans caught a ride with Crescent City boat captain Harry Adams. In “The Wreck of the Brother Jonathan,” they steer viewers into the frigid waters off Crescent City and up to the edge of the rock that started it all.

The creative team behind “The Wreck of the Brother Jonathan,” produced by OPB:

• Producer, writer, narrator: Kami Horton
• Editor: Danika Sandoz
• Cinematographers: Dan Evans, Evan Rodríguez
• Executive producer: Arya Surowidjojo

How to watch

Viewers can watch “The Wreck of the Brother Jonathan” on OPB’s website, YouTube, and the PBS app. They can watch on OPB TV on Monday, June 22, at 9 p.m.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/pressroom/new-opb-film-the-wreck-of-the-brother-jonathan-takes-viewers-aboard-the-west-coasts-titanic/