Category: Shipwrecks

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Shipwreck at Long Bay

Long Bay, also known as Nahku Bay or Fortune Bay is between Skagway and Dyea. At extreme low tide there can be seen remains of the Bark Canada which, after a series of mishaps, sank in Long Bay in February 1898.

 

Originally the Bark Canada was  full-rigged ship launched at Bath, Maine on November 19, 1859. Built by John Larrabee, master builder for F.F. & J. Patten Company, ship builders. Her original dimensions were 179′ 6″ in length and 996 tons. She was probably buit for the cotton trade with England, as her fist voyage was to New Orleans.  In 1874, she was sold for $40,000 and San Francisco became her new home port.  She made numerous voyages up and down the west coast and at least three trips back to New York during this period. In 1887, she was listed as being cut down to a bark, a common practice of the day. By 1888 her home port was Tacoma Washington.

 

She left Tacoma in late January 1898 with a cargo of some 800,000 board feet of Puget Sound fir lumber, 400 bundles of shingles, 200 doors, 200 windows, a few wagons, a lot of miscellaneous building material, 200 horses, and an unknown number of passengers.  Much of the lumber was from the St. Paul nd Tacoma mill and was intended for the Chilkoot Railroad & Transport Company operating out of Dyea and for George Brackett’s wagon road that was being built up the White Pass.  She was loaded to capacity and was being towed up by the tug Pioneer with Fred C. Andrews, the captain.

 

It took two weeks to reach Skagway because of rough seas and stormy weather along the way.  She arrived inSkagway on Monday, Februray 14, 1898 and spent about a week in Skagway unloading part of her cargo before leaving for Dyea.  On the 19th while heading to Dyea a squall blew the vessel on the rocks. She was re-floated again only to be blown asore three days later.  She was described as stranded and a total loss on February 24, 898. The passengers and most of the cargo were saved but the 4 remaining horses had to be shot.

 

Alakashipwreck.com

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George S. Black

Another Skagway Sleuth sent me this nice photo of the grave of George S. Black buried in Fairbanks at Birch Hill Cemetery, plot: Pioneer 2, tier: 2 , row: 7.

Here is the previous story in the blog on him:

http://www.skagwaystories.org/2011/09/george-s-black.html

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Winfield Scott Woolever

W.S. Woolever was born on this day, May 17, 1863.    Before heading out for the gold rush, he was a partner in a hardware store in Wallaceburg, Ontario, Canada.  He caught gold fever and abandoned his wife Clara (Ayres) and his two daughters,  Miriam and Yula.  The daughters had a brief reunion with him some years later in Seattle at which time, he gave my grandmother Miriam his  gold rush journal. For those interested in his journal is presently at the Wallaceburg museum.

Between 1901 and 1904 Woolever staked gold claims in the Yukon and actually came away with some profits. During his time here in Skagway, he became an active member of the Arctic Brotherhood. Woolever married Paulina Scott Banks after 1905. When Paulina died in 1927 Woolever met Daisy Banks Haner, also a widow in 1926.  They married on August 01, 1927 in Whatcom Co., WA.

Winfield Scott Woolever died on May 4, 1945 in Wickersham, Washington at the age of 82. Seen above is his third wife, Daisy with her son Lawrence Haner, born 1912, and taken at their Wickersham, Washington home.

Paulina was not the sister of Robert Bruce Banks who died in the fiery explosion of the Clara Nevada here in Skagway in 1898.

Many thanks to John Martin for the early history in Ontario, and to Beverly Banks Hammer and Malcolm Haner, grandson of Daisy for setting this story correct!  As with all family histories, the true stories lie with the family, not all of which are as stalwart as we would hope. I just try to spotlight the goldrushers for their feats here in Skagway and the Klondike!

 

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Charles Herbert Lightoller

Today is the anniversary of the night when the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the wee hours of the 15th of April 1912.
I cannot speak any more eloquently of the bravery of Officer Lightoller during that night as the blog post by Dr. Grumpy:
http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/
I was surprised to hear that Lightoller was another goldrusher here in 1898 but it makes sense, the men and women who were drawn to the drama of the Klondike were a special breed!

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Captain John Roberts


John Roberts was born in 1853 in England. He was the captain of the wooden Steamship Farallon which made trips in 1898 to Skagway. The ship ran aground in January 1910 on Black Reef on Lower Cook Inlet.
The ad above appeared on this day, March 12, 1898 in the Victoria Daily Colonist.

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Shipwrecks anyone?


For those of you interested in shipwrecks, here is a great site for finding what ship sank on this day in history! Seen above is the S.S. Cottage City in Skagway in 1900. It later ran aground on January 26, 1911 in a blinding snowstorm and heavy fog off Quadra Island, Northern British Columbia. Equipped with a radio they were able to send for help and everyone survived but the wooden-hulled ship was lost.

http://www.wrecksite.eu/wrecked-on-this-day.aspx?26%2f01%2f2012

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Princess Kathleen part two


Gordon Newell wrote this very interesting narrative of the sinking of the Cruise Ship Princess Kathleen in 1952:
“Death of a Princess
The loss of the S.S. Princess Kathleen on September 7, 1952 was the most recent and best-remembered disaster to a large cruise ship in Pacific Northwest waters. It occurred in the waters of a notorious ships’ graveyard north of Juneau, not far from where the Island went down in 1901 , the Union Steamship Company’s Cutch in 1900 and the Princess Sophia that slipped off Vanderbilt reef in 1918, carrying all 343 persons aboard to their deaths.
It was three o’clock in the morning when the Kathleen, steaming at normal cruising speed through the light rain, struck almost without warning on the rocky shore. The first officer, who had charge of the watch, was unable to explain why the ship was a mile and a half off course.
The SOS was promptly flashed on the air, but on the wrong frequency. [What the ?!?!]
After two hours without an answer it occurred to someone to check on the situation and a ship-to-shore telephone call was placed to the Alaska Communication System, after which a nearby Coast Guard cutter hastened to the scene, arriving at 6 a.m.
Although the Princess Kathleen remained high on her rocky perch for nearly twelve hours after her stranding, no apparent effort was made to seal off her hull from the sea, nor was any of the passenger’s baggage removed. At 2:40 p.m. the incoming tide floated the liner briefly, but she filled fast, slipping back until she literally stood on her stern, then slipped under 90 feet of water.
The unhappy passengers filed damage suits for the loss of personal property-clothes, jewelery, watches, luggage, cameras-which all went down with the ship, the claims averaging over a thousand dollars per person. CPR attorneys, however, quoted that interesting provision of admiralty law which limits the liability of shipowners ‘to the value of the vessel at the termination of the voyage’ (which was zero, since the Kathleen was a total loss), plus her ‘pending freight,’ which consisted mostly of the fares paid by the passengers for a voyage that was never completed. [what clever attorneys!!]

Eventually the company refunded the fares paid and settled property losses at the rate of $200 per passenger. Although there were those who felt they had received their money’s worth in having taken part in a spectacular and much-publicized shipwreck, a good many of the Princess Kathleen’s passengers view her last voyage, to this very day, as an extremely high-priced lesson in the vagaries of maritime law.”

Newell: “Pacific Coast Liners” 1959.

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Princess Kathleen


The Cruise Ship Princess Kathleen was built in Glasgow in 1924 and went through the Panama Canal in 1925 on route to her “triangle service” between Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria. The King and Queen traveled aboard Princess Kathleen en route to Victoria in 1939.
In 1949 she started her Inside Passage runs and was the preferred cruise ship that could carry 1800 passengers and 30 automobiles.
Unfortunately on September 7, 1952 the Princess Kathleen ran aground at Lena Point in Alaska’s Lynn Canal at low tide; it was later determined that radar was not operational at the time of the grounding. The United States Coast Guard was alerted two hours later and a rescue cutter arrived at 0630. The crew tried to reverse off Lena Point, however as the tide rose, her stern became swamped. All passengers and crew were transferred to lifeboats and ashore as she slid into deeper water and then sank.
The wreck of Princess Kathleen sits in approximately 50 ft -100 ft of water and is accessible to divers, however, tides and currents in the vicinity of Lena Point are strong. The wreck contains approximately 155,000 US gallons of Number 6 fuel oil and in April 2010 crews began operations to salvage the fuel in advance of a possible catastrophic leak.

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Stephen Joseph Rooney


Stephen Rooney was born on this day, December 29, 1864 in Sacramento. His father, John Rooney, had emigrated from Ireland at the age of 21 in 1849. John went from Liverpool to Boston to New Orleans, through the isthmus of Panama to San Francisco and finally to Sacramento. He was following the 49er’s to find gold which he did. The Alabama mine in Eldorado county, owned by Mr. Rooney, yielded as much as $800 per day, and by 1853, he had netted $25,000. John married and had four sons, among them was Stephen born on the homestead on Coloma road, five miles from Sacramento. Stephen entered Sacramento Institute and later was a student at St. Mary’s college in San Francisco (St. Mary’s moved from the city to Oakland in 1889 and now is at Moraga). Interested in agriculture, he raised hops, but at one time he also served as deputy Sheriff of Sacramento county.
So it is no wonder that in 1898, he decided to go to the Klondike to search for gold much as his father had 50 years before. He, his brother and Lee Brown landed at Skagway where they tried to move their load to Lake Bennett. However, from the very outset they had bad luck. A number of valuable pack animals had been lost with the Steamship Corona January 24, 1898 on Lewis Island (480 miles north of Victoria). A quantity of forage and provisions was lost in another vessel which went down. Finally, when his high hopes had begun to sink beneath the weight of his failures he fell ill with spinal meningitis and died in Skagway on March 7, 1898. There is a Skagway record of his body being buried in the Gold Rush cemetery, but it was then disinterred and sent back to California by his brother and was interred in a local cemetery in Sacramento. He left a wife, Mary, and three children ages 9, 7 and 5.

Seen above is the Steamship Corona in 1907 when she foundered again.

Willis, William L., History of Sacramento County, California, Pages 693-696. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1913.

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The Glacier Queen


While on the subject of little warships, there is the case of the little Canadian HMCS (Corvette Castle Class) ship built in 1944 in England at Smith’s Dock Co. Ltd. She was the next to last ship of its class finished before the end of the war when the others were cancelled. Of the Castle class ships, three were sunk in enemy action but they sunk seven u-boats. They were underpowered and tended to turn into the wind despite everything the helmsman tried.
First named the Walmer Castle, she was renamed the Leaside before being sold to the Union Steamship Company of Vancouver where she was renamed the SS Coquitlam around 1955. Then sold to the Alaska Cruise Lines in 1958 where she was renamed the Glacier Queen. Here you see her at Skagway as a nice little cruise ship in the 1960’s.
In 1970 she was bought by Stanley M.J. and hulked as a floating hotel near Vancouver B.C.
On the 8th of November 1978 she sank at Anchorage off Seldovia Bay, but was later raised and scuttled by the U.S. Coast Guard about 100 miles west of Cape Elias.

Wikipedia; wrecksite.eu.; cruiselinehistory.com