Early in the spring of the year 1884 the three-masted schooner Castor from San Francisco to Valparaiso was struck by a tornado off the coast of Peru. The storm which rose with frightful suddenness was of short duration but it left the Castor a helpless wreck. Her masts had snapped off and gone overboard her rudder-post had been shattered by falling wreckage and she was rolling in the trough of the sea with her floating masts and spars thumping and bumping her sides.