The Midnight was a WW2 C-2 type standard cargo ship built by North Carolina Shipbuilding in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1944. She sailed under the names Pacific Bear and Lanikai, but in 1961 she was renamed Panoceanic Faith. On October 9, 1967 she was en route to India from San Francisco where she had loaded over 10,000 tons of fertilizer, she was to make a stop in Japan, but never made it there.

The ship ran into a heavy storm and began taking on water in the forward holds, she was also having engine trouble, which was reported to the ship's owners in New York by the captain by radio. He told them "Due to continual gales and mounting seas and swells numerous repairs to boilers (and other engine room equipment) fuel and water very critical, doing best".

In his last radio message to New York he said "Speed four knots... boilers, tubes, plates leaking badly... repairs impossible because of weather... advise nearest bunkering station". The main cause of the problem was that a hatch in the forward section of the ship had been leaking and that a tarpaulin that was supposed to cover it had become dislodged and was not replaced. As the water came in it created a domino effect, as one compartment filled it spilled into the next one through any opening it could find.

With the ship listing to starboard at 35° the port lifeboat could not be launched, so the only means of escape was the starboard boat, which when launched got jammed and overturned spilling it's occupants into the sea. A U.S. Coast Guard aircraft was flying over the scene dropping rubber life rafts to the men in the water, but most were to weak to inflate them. As the pilot continued to circle the last distress signal went out from the Panoceanic Faith, and three minuets later she went down.

Only five of the forty-one man crew survived in the freezing water, Edwin D. Johnson, John Kirk and Oscar C. Wiley were picked up by the Norwegian ship Visund and landed at Long Beach, Gordon L. Campbell and Lewis E. Grey Jr. were picked up by the Japanese ship Igharu Maru and landed at Yokohama, Japan. Only thirteen bodies were ever recovered, eight of them being picked up by the Russian ship Orkehov.

When the ship docked in Vancouver on Oct. 10 the captain, Leonid Zhezherenko, refused to allow the bodies be unloaded with a crane, which the local authorities were going to use. It was not until stretchers were brought aboard and each man had an American flag placed over his body that the Russian captain allowed the bodies to be removed from his ship. A very respectful gesture toward fellow seamen made by a captain of a Soviet merchant ship during the cold war.

The captain of the Panoceanic Faith was found at fault for the loss of his ship and for the loss of the lives of his crew, he put up no defense as he also perished in his ship. It would seem however that he, perhaps under pressure from his company, took short cuts and did not observe safety regulations which led to the disaster.