In One Ear: Good-bye, Ada Iredale

Published 5:00 am Thursday, February 19, 2026

The Daily Astorian, Feb. 19, 1879, mentioned that a ship had recently left San Franciso, heading for Tahiti with carpenters and iron workers to rebuild the Peter Iredale‘s sister ship, the iron 212-foot Ada Iredale, named after builder Peter Iredale’s daughter, Ada May, and built in 1872.

According to the Iredale ships website, the ship was abandoned in the South Pacific, about 2,000 miles east of the French Polynesian Islands, on Oct. 15, 1876, after her coal cargo caught on fire.

After drifting westward for eight months, she was picked up by a French cruiser and was towed, still afire, into Papeete, Tahiti. The fire wasn’t put out until May 1878, when she was bought by a San Francisco company, who repaired, re-rigged and renamed her the Annie Johnson. In 1923, she was refitted with a diesel engine.

In March 1927, she was sold again, this time to a French company. Now described as a “four-masted schooner with auxiliary oil engines,” she was renamed again as the Bretagne.

This time, her luck ran out. On Oct. 5, 1929, a radio company picked up a wireless message from the steamer Whitney Olson saying they’d picked up 17 off the sinking Bretagne, plus the captain’s wife and daughter from a lifeboat, off the Oregon Coast. The description of the location varies by news source.

One thing they all agreed upon is an ongoing mystery: No one seemed to know if she actually sank or not. Perhaps she’s a ghost ship, still roaming the seas? (Photo: State Library of South Australia)