On board were 82 people out to enjoy a festive party and dinner. Skies were mostly clear, but the wind was howling. Veteran skipper, Dave Clark, had confidence in his ship, and the white-capped waves did not appear too dangerous.

The ship made its way onto the lake, and salads and drinks were served. After the main course was eaten, the weather took a serious turn for the worse. When Captain Clark recorded wind gusts of 70 mph out of the west and observed swells six feet high, he figured it was time to run for shelter.

Very quickly Clark realized it was too dangerous to try to make it back to the Queen's usual docking facility South Lake Tahoe's Ski Run Marina, so he steered the ship toward Nevada Beach, a distant cove several miles away to the east.

The windstorm exploded into a blinding blizzard and lake conditions became like the winter seas of the North Atlantic. Capt. Clark decided he needed all as much weight as possible down low in the flat-bottomed sternwheeler. He ordered passengers into their life jackets and ask them to go to the lower deck.

The powerful waves tossed the Tahoe Queen around like a champagne cork. Cash registers crashed to the floor, pipes broke, glass shattered. Waiters struggled to secure a piano that was rolling like a loose cannon. Seasick passengers crowded the bathroom. The rest hung on as best they could, their end-of-the-year pleasure cruise now a Poseidon Adventure.

Despite the shrieking gale, Clark held his crew together. Their combined confidence helped calm passengers who were ill and near panic. Peering into the increasing darkness, Clark steered the ship closer to the Nevada shore where giant waves boomed onto massive boulders. The Captain desperately searched for a patch of sandy shoreline where he could beach his craft safely. As he maneuvered the ship close in, it hit a private pier. The crash damaged the vessel's 25-foot-long gangway. Several of the ship's pipes ruptured and water began spewing through the ceiling below the main deck.

Clark contacted the fire department by radio, and they sent crews racing to the scene. The crews used an extension ladder from the shore to the ship, now beached, to effect an evacuation. Passengers had to walk 30 feet across the broken gangplank and slippery fire ladder to reach shore, but everyone escaped safely.

"Captain Clark did a remarkable job," said Battalion Chief, Tim Smith, of the Tahoe Douglas Fire Department. "A couple hundred yards to the north of where they landed they would have been pushed in on rocks. It's anybody's guess what would have happened then." Smith said the waves were the worst he had seen in his 18 years.

Mark McLaughlin is  a weather historian living on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe.