Just before midnight on Dec. 17, 1874, a crew member cried out on the deck of the steamship S.S. Japan. There was a fire. In just 45 minutes, the flames engulfed the 4,000-ton ship's wooden hull, trapping some of the passengers below deck. Others, mostly Chinese migrant workers, could not reach the lifeboats and jumped into the South China Sea, where they were weighed down by their gold-filled belts and sank to the bottom. The Chinese laborers were returning home from the American West.
Source: Washington Free Beacon