Sea Victims’ Memorial Dedicated

A memorial to those who have lost their lives at sea after leaving Newport Harbor was dedicated Tuesday morning at Rhine Wharf Park in Newport Beach.

The 6-foot-high memorial, installed by the Newport Beach Historical Society and the Balboa Pavilion Co., and fashioned by Laguna Beach sculptor Terry Thornsley, is the centerpiece of the small park on Lido Park Drive between Delaney’s and the Cannery Restaurant.

Phil Tozer, president of the Balboa Pavilion Co., has been one of the main supporters of the memorial, having lost a number of friends to the ocean in the nearly 50 years that he has been involved with the harbor and sea.

According to local historian Ellen Lee, many tragedies and drownings occurred in and around the Newport Bay entrance between 1878 and 1939. Work to improve the harbor’s entrance was completed in 1936.

The bay entrance in those earlier times “was so narrow, shallow and treacherous that the steamer Newport sometimes could not enter” and “would anchor outside,” forcing sailors to use small boats to travel to and from the ship. Five men were lost when their small boats overturned on April 8, 1878, Lee recounts.

In the summer of 1890, Lottie Spurgeon, the 16-year-old daughter of Santa Ana founder William Spurgeon, drowned while swimming near Newport Wharf.

Five men drowned June 14, 1925, when the fishing launch Thelma capsized at the bay entrance, Lee said in recounting just a few of the tragedies.

One of the more prominent county residents to have been lost was Supervisor Ronald W. Caspers, who vanished at sea along with his two sons and two others aboard the Shooting Star. The ship was lost in a storm off Baja California in June of 1974.