Stranded (3 page)

The
Hassler
in one of the only surviving photographs of her short life as
Clara Nevada
. She would go to the bottom of Lynn Canal in February 1898.
Jefferson County, Washington, Historical Society.

These reports are only known due to the few lucky passengers who eventually disembarked in Skagway, blissfully unaware of the dangerous situation they'd just escaped. On the evening of February 5, 1898, as the
Clara Nevada
made her way back down the turbulent waters of Lynn Canal on her first southbound voyage to Seattle, Captain C.H. Lewis sailed her straight into a
near-hurricane
-force blizzard that raced through the mountain ranges of Lynn Canal and barrelled down on the ship with enormous force. Several witnesses remember seeing her deck lights through the blowing snow as she sailed south down Lynn Canal near Eldred Rock. Without warning, a fireball erupted into the night sky. It tinted the snow and ambient light a ghostly amber colour for miles around. When it had dissipated, the
Clara Nevada
was nowhere to be found.

Speculation still rages to this day as to the exact cause of her sinking. There's substantial evidence to indicate her boilers were in a dangerous state of disrepair and liable to explode at any time. If they did, it might have sparked another, equally devastating, chain of events, since the
Clara Nevada
was rumoured to have also been carrying large quantities of dynamite; a strict “no-no” for vessels in passenger service, even in the lax regulations of 1898. Maintenance was not likely to have been the crew's first priority, and there was the inescapable fact that the
Clara Nevada
had drunkenly bumped and crashed her way north.

More sinister speculation also can't be ignored.
Clara Nevada
was thought to have been carrying as much as $300,000 in gold. Though figures vary wildly, and no one seems to agree on what form it was shipped in, the
Clara Nevada
likely was transporting gold, which was never found despite the wreck lying in relatively shallow waters off Eldred Rock. Accusations that her inexperienced and morally dubious crew had intentionally wrecked the
Clara Nevada
in order to make off with her cargo seem far-fetched, but have persisted for over a century — largely due to the fact that it can't be disproven. Not a single soul who was on board that night is known to have survived.

The tale of the
Clara Nevada
, sadly, is not all that unique — except in that her story is still known to many southeast Alaskans. She was one of many ships to go to the bottom of Lynn Canal during the untamed days of the Klondike gold rush, the vast majority of which have long since vanished into obscurity.

For all those who went to Skagway in search of untold wealth, the vast majority left penniless. J. Bernard Moore, who became one of the first pioneer settlers in Skagway (he initially named the beachhead “Mooresville” after his family name) and who would also be relieved of much of his own fortune later in life, kept a detailed journal of his struggles against the harsh elements in the Klondike. Just weeks before gold was discovered there, on Saturday, July 18, 1896, Moore wrote that his group had been unable to move all day due to unrelenting rain and bitterly cold temperatures.
[5]
“Still lying here, stormbound,” he wrote. “Heavy, cold southerly wind with drizzling rain. I certainly did not expect weather as chilly as this at this season of the year.”
[6]

The weather — not to mention the mosquitoes — caught many a would-be prospector off guard. The physicality of prospecting also drove others away. Describing his own provisions — which were actually quite sparse for the time — Moore rattles off a laundry list of things that must be carried through the elements: one half-sack of flour, ten pounds of bacon, twenty-five pounds of sugar, fifteen pounds of beans, two small cans of yeast powder, two rolls of butter, two pounds of coffee, five pounds dried mixed fruit, and five pounds of rice.
[7]

At the height of the gold rush, between 1897 and 1899, the prices of even the most basic supplies soared. Mediocre horses could fetch as much as $700 — over $20,000 in 2014 currency, and merely getting to the Klondike cost the average person more than a mid-sized car would today.
[8]
Fewer than four thousand prospectors found gold, and those who did frequently lost their fortunes in subsequent years or spent it all on grandiose (and often bizarre) gestures. Bill Gates — the frontiersman, not the software tycoon of the same name — earned his place in Dawson City lore when he reportedly presented a local dance hall girl, a
nineteen-year
-old named Gussie Lamore, with her exact weight in gold.
[9]
To keep the competition away from his beloved Dawson City, he also famously bought up every available egg in town to ensure that would-be prospectors would lack basic provisions.

The gold rush ended in late 1899. Towns like Skagway and Dawson City gradually became less lawless and started to diversify their economic offerings, while gold was found in other parts of Alaska. The transient prospectors who had come to the Klondike went with it, always in search of an even bigger payday.

By October 1918 the Klondike gold rush had been over for nineteen years. Both Dawson City and Skagway still retained permanent populations, though their numbers were far from those of the boom days of 1898. Dyea had boasted between five and eight thousand inhabitants in 1898, and by 1903 that number had dropped to less than a dozen.
[10]
In towns like Skagway that had managed to struggle through the post-gold rush hangover, the population was largely seasonal, with only the heartiest “sourdoughs” choosing to stay behind to weather the dark loneliness of the Alaskan winter.

Marine transportation in the autumn of 1918 was scheduled, regulated, and reliable, and provided towns with necessary provisions, freight, and passenger services. Ships would operate from Vancouver and Seattle up to Skagway, where the
eighteen-year
-old White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad would take passengers safely to Dawson City, bypassing the old Chilkoot Trail that prospectors had to traverse in 1898. No one went to Dyea anymore; the town had been virtually abandoned since 1902, and was a full-fledged ghost town in 1918.

In late October of 1918 one ship quietly pulled into her berth in Skagway, threw out her lines, and tied up. She didn't crash into the dock as
Clara Nevada
had twenty years earlier, and, in fact, her arrival was wholly unremarkable except for the fact that she was running a little behind schedule.

In both design and quality of her crew, the
Princess Sophia
was far different from the derelict craft that was the
Clara Nevada
. One of four nearly identical sister ships in the coastal service fleet of the Canadian Pacific Railway, she was completed in 1912 and operated the Inside Passage route from Vancouver. Her voyages took her up the coast of Alaska, where she would eventually arrive at Skagway before beginning the return journey south. Like her sisters, she was a popular, if simple, ship. On Wednesday, October 23, 1918, she was also fully booked — the perfect escape for those fleeing the north for the winter. It would be her last sailing of the year, and demand for passage south was so strong that additional berths were added to the ship to keep up with demand. Scheduled to leave at 7:00 p.m.,
Princess Sophia
's departure would be delayed until 10:10 that evening to allow for the additional passengers and cargo to be loaded, and to sort out a rather chaotic situation at the docks when stowaways were discovered on board.
[11]
Those who were fortunate enough to wave to the bystanders on Skagway's docks that night might have thought differently about their luck as
Princess Sophia
made her way south into the darkness of Lynn Canal, chased by fierce winds and a blinding snowstorm that seemed to get worse with each passing hour.

The only similarity
Princess Sophia
bore to the
Clara Nevada
that night was the fact that she, too, was leaving Skagway forever.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1918

SKAGWAY, ALASKA

The last embers of the late October sun had just disappeared behind Face Mountain when the 5:30 p.m. train from Whitehorse chugged its way along the centre of Broadway. Like nearly every other person who crowded Skagway's hotels and bars that cold, wet Wednesday evening, the daily “boat train” was packed with passengers bound for the petite little Canadian Pacific steamship known as the
Princess Sophia
.

Fall was the only time of year when Skagway really came alive again, and it was for all the wrong reasons. If the Klondike gold rush twenty years earlier had brought people to Skagway in droves, the winter of 1918 was driving them away. The population in Skagway had had a seasonal quality to it since the gold rush ended in 1899; every year a small yet hearty contingent stayed behind to brave the wind and the cold and the darkness. Not to mention the snow. The deep, thick, never-ending snow that made roads impassable and periodically stopped the trains between Skagway and Carcross, despite the best efforts of the rotary plow that was sometimes buried up to its cab. It's no wonder that those with the means to travel south each year did so, preferring to winter elsewhere and return to Skagway in the spring when temperatures had warmed up. Those who stayed on throughout the dark Alaskan winter remained, ostensibly, out of an undying love for their community; though it's equally likely they could not afford to book passage themselves.

That year, the fall exodus seemed more pronounced. Like a nail in the coffin, the last ship of the season marked the official start of the long winter ahead — and this would be the last time that
Princess Sophia
would grace Skagway with her presence. More than usual, people in Skagway seemed to not only notice, but understand this. Hotels were packed, and cargo — which would eventually total 266 pieces ranging from horses to Christmas presents to war supplies — was already clogging the pierside sheds, with dock workers trying desperately to keep up with the continuous stream of supplies.

Pre-departure festivities held in Skagway went on unabated for nearly a full week. The evening of Saturday, October 19 was noticeably more festive than in years past, with
The
Daily Alaskan
proclaiming the annual Sourdough Dance held that night, “one of the most enjoyable affairs ever held in Skagway.”
[1]
The paper, run by L.S. Keller, was the only source of news in Skagway following the shutdown of the
Skaguay News
in 1904. Additional parties continued throughout the week: on Monday evening the White Pass Athletic Club threw a dance in honour of those heading south, and Tuesday evening brought with it a large fundraiser put on by the Skagway Popular Picture Palace to refurbish St. Mark's Church. Once again, Keller's paper waxed nostalgic about the event, which featured the “rich baritone voice” of a Mr. William O'Brien of Dawson City. O'Brien was no stranger to Skagway — indeed,
The Daily Alaskan
billed him as the man who “hardly needs an introduction.” This time, though, he was in town for a limited engagement: along with his wife and five children, William O'Brien was due to set sail on
Princess Sophia
the following evening, like so many others in town that night. By the time
The Daily Alaskan
came off the press Wednesday morning, the jubilation of the night before had already evaporated, replaced with a town filled with travellers anxious to board the
Princess Sophia
and finally get underway.

One such person was
twenty-five
-
year
-old Walter Harper, who was travelling with his wife, Frances, on a one-way trip to Philadelphia. Harper had gained notoriety, at the young age of twenty-one, after becoming the first person to successfully ascend Mount McKinley on June 7, 1913, along with fellow climbers Harry Karstens, Hudson Stuck, and Robert Tatum. Even after achieving such a monumental feat, things were still looking up for the young mountaineer. He'd survived a frightening bout with typhoid fever in 1916 and just a few weeks before sailing, on September 1, 1918, he'd married Frances Wells — the nurse who had treated him at Fort Yukon's Mission Hospital. Now, Harper and his new wife were bound for the east coast, where he had been accepted into medical school in Philadelphia. The arduous but enjoyable journey ahead would serve as their honeymoon.

Others gathered on the docks in Skagway for far less glamorous reasons. A total of eighty-seven passengers — all employees of the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad and the American Yukon Navigation Company — were making the journey south. They were steamboat men, having just finished their contracts on board the steamers that ran seasonally along the Yukon River from Whitehorse to St. Michael and back. Four of the men were certified master mariners, while the others ranged from deckhands to cabin stewards. With their work done and their ships tied up for the season, they too were headed south to escape the winter freeze-up.

Booking passage south in 1918 was far from being an exact science. For those employed on a seasonal basis — as nearly everyone was — changing schedules had a way of creating absolute chaos with passenger lists. Ships that were booked full one day suddenly had available berths the next day, and vice-versa. The
Princess Sophia
was a well-liked vessel among northerners, and many passengers went out of their way to book their tickets aboard her in advance. Even in the days leading up to her departure, it was unclear exactly how many people would be travelling aboard the
Princess Sophia
.

Confusion wasn't merely limited to a few latecomers whose plans had changed. In fact, so many last-minute travellers had turned up in Skagway looking for passage south that those who lacked tickets (and nearly everyone did) suddenly became priority number one for the shipping lines. As early as October 17, while
Princess Sophia
was still in tied up in Vancouver, Canadian Pacific's Skagway agent, Lewis H. Johnston, telegraphed word that between six and seven hundred ticketless passengers had already arrived in town, and were all eager to get out of Skagway before the winter freeze-up. The fall exodus was among the most lucrative for Canadian Pacific, and Johnston advised that if Canadian Pacific could squeeze more berths onto
Princess Sophia
for her last run south, he would have no issues selling them immediately — presumably at a premium.

Four years earlier, adding additional berths would have been a walk in the park. But in the early morning hours of Monday, April 15, 1912, the largest ship in the world — White Star Line's RMS
Titanic
— had foundered in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg, taking more than 1,500 souls down with her. Her loss had changed the way maritime authorities regulated lifesaving equipment on board, which would no longer be measured by tonnage but instead by the maximum number of passengers on board.

Based on Johnston's wire to the company, Canadian Pacific determined they could add an additional fifty berths to the
Princess Sophia
before she set out on her last northbound trip to Skagway. To account for the increase in overall passenger capacity, extra life rafts were quickly installed at the same time. They were stacked, one atop the other, on the roof of her smoking room, next to the lifeboats mounted in davits. The new rescue craft were made of wood and not steel like
Princess Sophia
's existing boats. They were, for all intents and purposes, merely window dressing; reassurances that, if an emergency were to occur, all passengers and crew on board would be able to safely abandon ship. As they were hoisted aboard the
Princess Sophia
pierside in Vancouver, few if any of the workers or crew supervising the installation of these new craft ever seriously thought they would be needed.

Even with the additional berths installed before the last voyage north, numerous people were still turned away on sailing day in Skagway. Edward Bemis, a purser who served aboard the riverboat
Tanana
, was one of them. He had wired ahead in advance to Skagway to secure his passage south aboard the
Princess Sophia
, but discovered upon arrival that Canadian Pacific simply didn't have enough space aboard her. Placed on the
Prince Rupert
, he and his fellow travellers tried to goad several confirmed
Princess Sophia
passengers into transferring their tickets to them, without success. Resigned to the fact they would be heading out aboard the
Prince Rupert
, Bemis wished his friends on the
Princess Sophia
farewell. “‘We'll see you in Seattle' was the general remark as we left,” he would later say. “It never occurred to any of us that we were saying goodbye for the last time.”
[2]

Skagway, 2014. Except for the modern cruise ships in the foreground and the new pier structure, little has changed. Departure from Skagway today looks nearly as it would have in 1918.

Those who did manage to secure passage aboard the
Princess Sophia
were as diverse as the north itself — and not all who came were excited about the journey south. Travelling from Dawson City, Murray and Lulu Mae Eads were booked on the
Princess Sophia
, destined for Seattle. They had each paid $37.50 for their first-class passage, and were travelling south after selling their business interests in Dawson City. Lulu Mae was a dance-hall singer who, despite having been charged with “allowing women of loose, idle or suspicious character on the premises for the purpose of drinking and keeping company with men,”
[3]
was well liked in Dawson City.

She was also deathly afraid of the voyage south. Since coming to Alaska from Alabama in the early 1900s, she'd never once sailed south for the winter; a highly uncommon situation for northerners with as much money on hand as Lulu Mae. Now, with a journey that would take them by sea to Seattle then along the Pacific Coast and through the Panama Canal by ship, the Eads had a Dawson City lawyer modify their wills: if both of them should die together, their estate was to be split equally amongst Lulu Mae's two sisters.

As Murray and Lulu Mae Eads stared out the window of their train coach, darkened trees giving way to houses and buildings on the approach to Skagway, there was likely no shortage of anxiety between the couple. The long journey from Dawson must have been nearly intolerable; the safety and security they had known in the north for nearly two decades was evaporating with each passing mile.

Even the train that brought them to Skagway along the famed White Pass & Yukon Route wasn't exactly inspiring confidence in the worried travellers. The
twenty-eight
-
year
-old railway hadn't purchased a single new piece of equipment since 1908, and the existing passenger cars were becoming worn from overuse and caked with the fine, granulated black soot that belched from the locomotive as it slowed to a crawl in the cold night rain.

Like ants swarming out of a hill, passengers rushed off the Pullman cars across the pier, to the relative warmth and splendour of the
Princess Sophia
. She was never Canadian Pacific's most glamorous ship — that award went to the sleek, white-hulled
Empress
fleet that plied the Pacific Ocean. But with her deck lights glowing in the ever-increasing darkness, she shone across the docks like a beacon of hope.

Built in Paisley, Scotland, at the Bow, McLaughlan and Company shipyard,
Princess Sophia
was on the verge of celebrating her seventh birthday. She had been officially launched on November 8, 1911, when her hull met the waters of Scotland's famous Clyde River for the first time. At a contract price of £51 million she was the second ship to have been built by Bow and McLaughlan for Canadian Pacific. Stout and sturdy, she was designed exclusively for Canadian Pacific's Alaskan runs between Vancouver and Skagway, but could be deployed elsewhere if need be. Indeed, capacity needs sometimes found her doing short overnight jaunts between Vancouver and Victoria. With four passenger decks and a single tall,
buff-and
-black funnel centred nearly amidships, her
two-hundred
-
forty
-five-foot length and
forty-four
-foot beam gave her a decidedly unique exterior profile.