Laura Van Wyck
Laura Van Wyck was a first-class passenger on the Valencia on her way to Seattle to visit her sister. She lived in San Francisco she came from a rich family and described as a prominent young society woman. In the days and weeks after the Valencia disaster she received a lot of attention in the press which highlighted her rich and prominent family. The San Francisco Examiner on January 25th, 1906 wrote:
The Van Wyck family is well known in San Francisco and is of distinguished origin. Miss Laura Van Wyck's name appears in Browning's recently published list of royalty's descendants in America. She belonged to Jefferson Davis Chapter, Daughters of the Confederacy, of which her mother is president. She recently returned from an extended visit to friends and relatives in the East. In society she has been a belle since her debut.
Another newspaper reported that she had planned to travel to Seattle by rail, but at the last moment decided to go by sea and take the Valencia. Her mother urged her to travel by train as she worried about the dangers of travelling by steamship. She couldn't be persuaded and insisted, "It will be exciting to go on the boat, and I expect to have a grand time."
A week after the Valencia wreck, on January 31st, Laura Van Wyck's brother Sidney M. Van Wyck travelled to Victoria to search for her body which was yet to be recovered. He met with his brother in law, Mr. Peters who also came to search. Peters, three days previously had narrowly escaped death himself when the Southern Pacific train he was on collided with a freight train at Grants Pass. Laura Van Wyck's body was found on February 2nd by the United States revenue cutter Perry. On that day the Perry found five bodies floating more than a mile from the Valencia wreck. The bodies, two woman and three men were spotted from the deck of the Perry. All were described as badly mutilated and nude. One was thought to be Laura Van Wyck, though far from certain. As of February 2nd, the number of victims of the Valencia wreck recovered totalled twenty-seven. The following day she was positively identified by her dental records sent from San Francisco which matched the teeth of the recovered body. Her body was brought back to San Francisco by her brother.