SYMHC Classics: SS Princess Sophia

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Happy Saturday.

00:00:03
Speaker 2: Our episodes this week were about Walter Harper, who died in the SS Princess Sofia disaster. We have a previous episode about that disaster, which is Today's Saturday Classic. This episode talks about what an enormous tragedy this was for the people of the area, beyond the deaths of Walter Harper and his wife Francis. This episode originally came out on October fifteenth, twenty eighteen. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vee Wilson.

00:00:44
Speaker 1: And I'm Holly Frye.

00:00:46
Speaker 2: We're coming up on the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the SS Princess Sofia, which sank in the Lynn Canal in southeastern Alaska on October twenty fifth of nineteen eighteen. This was a massive tragedy for both Canada and the United States. It had a huge impact on Alaska, British Columbia, and Yukon, but it was also really overshadowed by the end of World War One and the flu pandemic that was going on by that point. So it has been nicknamed the Unknown Titanic of the West Coast.

00:01:17
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighteen, the primary way to get to many parts of Alaska and Yukon was by water. Ships carried passengers, cargo, and mail to ports along the coast of Alaska and British Columbia, and people traveled by river inland from there. And to some extent, this continues to be true today. Although there are more roads and airplanes going to and from these places, boats still continue to be a major way to travel.

00:01:43
Speaker 2: One of the companies that was providing passenger and cargo service along the coast of Alaska and British Columbia was Canadian Pacific Railway Company, which is often abbreviated as CPR. It still exists today as Canadian Pacific. CPR started a steamship business, which was called can Pacific Steamship Company in the late eighteen hundreds. Their first routes were trans Pacific and they connected Vancouver, British Columbia with Asia. Soon the company started offering transatlantic service from the East coast of North America as well. In the early twentieth century, Canadian Pacific Steamship Company started providing service up and down the coast of the Pacific northwest. To that end, CPR purchased Canadian Pacific Navigation Company in nineteen oh one. The newly purchased company had been carrying passengers and cargo along the coast of British Columbia as well as through Alaska's Inside Passage. So the Inside Passage is a collection of fjords, channels, and straits that stretches more than a thousand miles that's about sixteen hundred kilometers from Seattle, Washington, north through British Columbia to Skagway, Alaska. The vessels that CPR operated along these routes were nicknamed the Princess Fleet, and all the ships had the word princess and their names. The Princess Fleet grew really quickly during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and the company was supporting the tourism industry in addition to carrying the workers, families, cargo, and mail that needed to get around that area. This growth didn't really slow down during World War One, although some of CPR's ships were requisitioned for the war effort. People still needed to get to and from all these places, and the best way to do it was still by water. People from the US and Canada who had the means to travel for fun were also choosing to do it in North America rather than visiting increasingly war torn Europe. During the war, the Princess Fleet also started carrying troops, including people who had enlisted and were reporting for duty. The SS Princess Sofia was, of course part of this fleet. It was built by Beau McLaughlin and Company, was launched on November eighth of nineteen eleven, and took its maiden voyage on June seventh on the following year. The Princess Sofia had been commissioned specifically for running these routes along the inside Passage during the May to October season. In the off season, the ship operated as a ferry between Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia.

00:04:10
Speaker 1: The Princess Safaiya was built to be a modest but comfortable vessel, suited for both passengers and cargo in these northern waters. It was two hundred and forty five feet or seventy five meters long, with a maximum speed of thirteen to fourteen knots. Its typical running speed was eleven knots under normal conditions, the Princess Safaia carried between two hundred fifty and three hundred fifty passengers, but that number could be increased all the way up to five hundred in special circumstances and with special permission.

00:04:41
Speaker 2: The ship's typical route had four stops in British Columbia and four in Alaska from north to south. These were Victoria, Vancouver, Alert Bay and Prince British Columbia, and wrangel Ketcan, Juno and Skagway, Alaska. The stops in Juneo and Skagway were also really important to communities in Yukon since they were connected to the Yukon interior by water. Even with an experienced and capable crew, this route could be really treacherous. The SS Princess Sofaia had a number of incidents before sinking in nineteen eighteen, some of them serious. The ship collided with something underwater in November of nineteen thirteen, which broke its stern post, and it also ran aground twice, once in April of nineteen thirteen and again in January nineteen fourteen, and there were also many more minor incidents over the years. One particularly treacherous stretch of the route that the Princess Sofia was usually taking was the Lynn Canal. In spite of what its name suggests, the Lynn Canal isn't an artificial waterway. It's a fiord that's part of the inside passage. Captain George Vancouver named it after his birthplace of King's Lynn.

00:05:53
Speaker 1: The Lynn Canal is very narrow. It ranges from about three to thirteen miles or roughly five to twenty kilometers wide, and it is also very windy. The shape of the canal funnels the wind, so wind speeds of seventy to eighty knots are not uncommon. On top of that are willowwaws, which are sudden, violent squalls and winds that blow in off the surrounding glaciers.

00:06:18
Speaker 2: Making the Lynn Canal even more dangerous than all that wind and the squalls is the Vanderbilt Reef, which is a stretch of about seven miles or eleven kilometers of rock that's right in the middle of the fjord. The tides create a huge variation in how deep the water is around the reef. Most of the time it is just under the surface, but during very low tides it can be as much as twelve feet or about three and a half meters above the surface. Obviously, this reef has been there for thousands of years and people knew that it existed, but in terms of being a hazard to commercial shipping, it was first noted in eighteen eighty when J. M. Vanderbilt of the Northwest Trading Company charted it and named it after himself, and then spread the word to other captains about it. In nineteen eighteen, the Vanderbilt reef wasn't well marked at all. The nearest lighthouse was the Sentinel Island Lighthouse, which is about four miles or six and a half kilometers away. The reef itself was marked with a buoy that was only visible by daylight. CPR had asked the US government to install a light on the reef in nineteen seventeen. Although Canadian vessels were in and out of this area all the time, the reef itself was part of Alaska territory and therefore it was the responsibility of the United States and not Canada to put a light there, but because of the war, funding wasn't set aside to do it.

00:07:41
Speaker 1: The ss Princess Sofia departed Skagway Alaska at the end of the Lynn Canal on October twenty third, nineteen eighteen, for the last run of the season, and this was a big trip every year. The ship was sold out and the company had prepared for a big crowd.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: But even in spite of the advanced preparations, boarding and loading that evening had been particularly chaotic. There were people who had made their way to the region during the Klondike gold Rush. Skagway itself had been founded during the gold Rush. By this point, the gold rush was over, and this departing crowd included people who had decided finally to leave Alaska and the North entirely. It also included sezonal miners whose jobs were ending for the winter, but who planned to come back again in the spring. Miners weren't the only seasonal employees leaving Skagway that day. The Yukon River connected Skagway, Alaska, to Dawson, Yukon, and the steamship operators who traveled that route were shutting down for the season. Two other passengers included government officials, business travelers, and families, and there were also new recruits aboard reporting for duty in World War One. Because this was the last run of the season. The mood at the dock was really festive. It was basically a big Sea in the Spring party, with the people who were staying getting ready to hunker down for the winter. A lot of people were also bidding what they thought was a temporary farewell to friends and family who were planning to come back once all the waterways thought in the following spring. Probably because of all the busyness and chaos, the SS Princess Safaia left Skagway, Alaska at about ten pm on the twenty third. That was about three hours behind schedule. Captain Leonard Locke was at the helm, and most of the Princess Safaia's crew had plenty of experience on this route, and Locke was no exception. He had been working in the waterways in this part of the Northwest for twenty five years. But not long after departing, the weather really started to turn sour. We will get to that after a quick sponsor break. About an hour after leaving Skaguay, Alaska, the SS Princess Sofaia rounded Battery Point and met a terrible storm. Winds were blowing at about fifty knots and a heavy snow and fog had rolled in. Under normal procedures, Locke would have slowed his speed from the typical running speed of about eleven knots down to seven knots, but instead, possibly because they were running so late, he kept the ship running at eleven knots.

00:10:20
Speaker 1: Many of the technologies used for navigation and avoiding collisions today did not exist yet, or they were in their infancy. The first passive sonar system for detecting submerged objects was developed in nineteen sixteen, and the first active sonar system was created in nineteen eighteen, so this technology was still brand new and was being used to detect submarines and military vessels, but it really wasn't in use in civilian vessels at all yet. Practical radar systems were still a couple of decades away. By daylight ships navigated the Lynn Canal by taking compass readings while siting known points on the land and the dark and in back weather, what they would do is sound the ship's horn and then count the time until they heard the echo off the surrounding cliffs and glaciers. That's one of those things that when people describe it, I know people used this all the time very safely. To me, this is terrifying well.

00:11:16
Speaker 2: And I mean that was an imprecise way of doing it, even under good circumstances. Yes, And of course as the storm got worse, it probably became harder and harder to hear those echoes, and soon the Princess Safaya was blown off course. Rather than to one side of the canal where they were supposed to be, they were right in the middle. The Princess Safaia struck the Vanderbilt reef at about two am on October twenty fourth, traveling at their usual speed of eleven knots. The ship came to a total halt almost instantly, with sleeping passengers being thrown from their berths and crew being thrown from their stations. At first, the situation seemed to be extremely inconvenient, but not all that perilous. The ship was firmly jammed on the rocks, but didn't seem to be badly damaged. Once everyone recovered from the shock and the physical effects of being thrown around, most of the passengers really remained calm. People who had minor injuries were patched up, and some damage within the ship was repaired. At first, Captain Locke thought they might be floated off of the rocks the next high tide and just to continue on their way. That is actually what had happened when the Princess Sofia had run aground in April of nineteen thirteen, which had also happened on the Vanderbilt Reef. Passenger Arris McQueen wrote a letter during these relatively calm hours which said quote, she is a double bottom boat and her inner hall is not penetrated, so here we stick. She pounds some on a rising tide, and it is slow writing. But our only inconvenience is so far lack of water. The main steam pipe got twisted off, and we were without lights last night and have run out of soft sugar. But the pipe is fixed, so we are getting heat and lights now, and we still have lump sugar and water for drinking. If you have the energy to note that they're out of soft sugar.

00:13:13
Speaker 1: Right, things seem fine.

00:13:14
Speaker 2: They don't seem that bad at that point. So, of course, after hitting the Vanderbilt Reef, the ship's wireless operator had sent out a distress call. There weren't any other vessels in the area that were large enough to accommodate all the Princess Safia's passengers and crew, though, so four fishing vessels were sent to try to assist. These were the Estebeth, the Amy, the ea Hegg, and the Peterson. Soon a fishing schooner called the King and Wing came to assist, as well as the Cedar, which was a lighthouse tender from the US Lighthouse Service. As these vessels started to arrive on the morning of the twenty fourth, though, the weather got worse. The other vessels couldn't get close to the Princess Safaia without endangering themselves, and it became clear a crosswind was grinding the ship onto the rocks, and that was making a visible hole in the outer hull. Captain Locke thought it would be more dangerous to try to put people into lifeboats than it would be to just stay put and wait for the weather to turn, and the barometer was rising, so he was hopeful that better weather was on the way. High tide also came and went without shifting the boat off the rocks. The wind was blowing the water so hard that the tide appeared to be several feet lower than it really was. They weren't hoping to be lifted off the rocks anymore now that it was clear that the hull was damaged, but with all that having happened, it didn't seem like they would be, so with all that in mind, it seemed safer to just wait.

00:14:45
Speaker 1: The captain's decision may have also been influenced by the nineteen oh four wreck of the Ssclllum, which foundered just outside of Victoria Harbor, and on that ship, the captain ordered all of the women and children to be evacuated into lifeboats along with some of the men, and every lifeboat either capsized or was wrecked. Everyone who had been evacuated died. Captain Locke also would have been familiar with the nineteen ten stranding of the Princess May on nearby Sentinel Island, from which all the passengers and crew were evacuated safely. It turned out that barometer reading was deceptive, though. The barometer started falling rapidly at about three pm on the twenty fourth, and the weather suddenly got a whole lot worse. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police report that was written after the disaster called it quote the worst storm in progress ever known in the Lynn Canal. During all of this, the Princess Sofia was communicating with all these other vessels by radio, megaphone and radiogram, which is a telegram that's sent by radio rather than over wires. Radiograms were sent back and forth to CPR headquarters as well. Captain Locke sent a radiogram to the Cedar at four forty five pm on the twenty fourth, quote, impossible to get passengers off tonight as sea is running too strong. Will probably be able to get them off early morning strong tide. Captain Ledbetter aboard the Cedar replied, quote, if Sofia in no danger slipping off and passengers safe until daylight, would like to drop anchor under Sentinel island, be in touch by wireless if you think necessary, will remain under way all night.

00:16:26
Speaker 2: By this point, the passengers, who had been waiting for more than twelve hours were becoming increasingly apprehensive. Passenger John R. Maskel, known as Jack, wrote a letter to his fiance Dorothy Burgess, which ended quote, we are expecting the lights to go out at any minute. Also, the fires the boat might go to pieces for the force of the waves are terrible, making awful noises on the side of the boat, which has quite a list to port. No one is allowed to sleep, But believe me, dear Dory, it might have been much worse. Just here there is a big steamer coming. We struck the reef in a terrible snowstorm. There is a big buoy near marking the danger, but the captain was to port instead to starboard the buoy. I made my will this morning, leaving everything to you, my own true love, and I want you to give one hundred pounds to my dear mother, one hundred pounds to my dear dad, one hundred pounds to dear Wee Jack, and the balance of my estate about three hundred pounds to you, Dori. Dear the Eagle Lodge will take care of my remains in danger at sea. Princess Safaiah twenty fourth October nineteen eighteen.

00:17:31
Speaker 1: In the face of the treacherous weather, the rescue ships left to seek shelter, and the Princess Safaia spent the night on the rocks.

00:17:39
Speaker 2: On the morning of October twenty fifth, the rescue ships returned to try again. The captain of the Cedar proposed making a breeches buoy, which she might also say as a breeches buoy. To do this, the cedar would drop an anchor and run a line over to the Princess Sofaia. People would then use it like a zip line, sliding from the Princess Sofaia over to the cedar one at a time. The name of this comes from the practice of slinging a pair of canvas bridges over the line to hang on to you.

00:18:07
Speaker 1: We can do historical zipline tours this way. I think we have a business venture in our future. But the water was still so rough that the cedar's anchor simply would not hold. At eleven am on the twenty fifth, Leadbetter scent to a radiogram quote, I can't make anchors hold, could not rowboat to you at present. Believe your passengers are perfectly safe until wind moderates. We'll stand by until safe to make transfer with safety.

00:18:35
Speaker 2: As the violent storm continued, the rescue ships were once again driven away to take shelter, but kept in touch with the Princess Afaia. What had been a tedious but relatively safe weight became terrifying. After all the rescue vessels were gone, the wind was howling and pounding the ship into the rocks. The power went out about three o'clock in the afternoon, which meant most of the past were in total darkness with a screaming, violent storm going on around them. E. M. Miller of the King and Wing later sent the summary of what happened by radiogram quote. Talked with Sofia several times between two and three pm. Their dynamo went out and lost power about three PM. Called the Sofia several times between four thirty and four forty five pm, no answer. Five forty five talking to ss Atlas, gave him seven messages for Juno. Four forty five pm. Sofia, sending SOS, said taking water and foundering. For God's sake, come and save us. Replied saying coming full speed, but cannot see account thick snow and taking heavy seas. Told ss Atlas better come and tried to get Juno, and then kept on with Sofia until five twenty when his battery was so weak it was almost impossible to understand him. Told him to quit talking except for what was absolute necessary. He replied, all right, but for God's sake, hurry water coming in room. No more was heard from him. The ss Atlas, which had left Juno at about four pm to try to help. Also sent a telegram to the Cedar at five thirty pm on the twenty fifth, describing their progress to try to join the rescue as quote, feeling our way in blinding snowstorm. It was just too dangerous for any of these other ships to stay with the Princess Sophia. That's why they had all once again gone away to seek shelter.

00:20:33
Speaker 1: The weather finally cleared overnight, and at nine fifteen on the morning of October twenty sixth, a lighthouse superintendent from Sentinel Island sent a radiogram saying he had arrived at the scene at eight thirty and only the Princess Sofia's foremast was visible above the surface of the water.

00:20:51
Speaker 2: We're going to take another quick moment for a brief sponsor break, sometimes between five point thirty and six thirty pm. On October twenty fifth, nineteen eighteen, after all the rescue ships had gone to try to take shelter, the high wind and the tide had combined to twist the SS Princess Sofia completely around on top of Vanderbilt Reef, causing it to point north instead of south. And the process it tore the bottom completely out of the ship. The ship slid into the water, tanks ruptured and covered the water's surface in a thick layer of oil. An order was apparently given to abandoned ship and some life boats were deployed, but none of them were deployed successfully.

00:21:40
Speaker 1: Only one person seems to have gotten away from the actual sinking, Frank Gaussie, the ship's second officer. He was found on shore, but he had died of exposure.

00:21:51
Speaker 2: The rex only confirmed survivor was a dog an English setter, who was found covered in oil about twenty miles or Third Tarty, two kilometers to the south, two days later.

00:22:03
Speaker 1: The exact death toll for this wreck is unclear. There were probably between two hundred eighty and two hundred ninety passengers on board and fifty five to sixty five crew. A list of known passengers includes three hundred and sixty people, but there were definitely stowaways on board, as well as people who boarded in skagway planing to work for their passage but who weren't written down. Babies in arms also weren't necessarily on the passenger list. The victims included more than one hundred residents of Dawson, Yukon, which only had a population of about eight hundred at that time. Approximately eight percent of the white population of Yukon died. Similar numbers for the indigenous population of Canada and Alaska aren't really known. But Walter Harper, who was an Athabaskan guide and the first person to summit Dnali, was killed along with his wife Francis. Some writers have made the argument that this was economically catastrophic for Yukon. It led to a serious decline for the territory and for all of the Canadian North, but really there was a lot of other stuff going on at the same time as well, including the flu pandemic and changes to the mining industry. So this was definitely a tragedy that had a real impact, but it was not the only factor.

00:23:23
Speaker 2: John F. Pugh, who was District Collector of US Customs for Alaska, was also on board, along with Walter J. O'Brien, who was a CPR company agent from Dawson. He was on the ship with his wife and five children and was found with his arms around one of his sons.

00:23:39
Speaker 1: The passengers also included eighty five members of riverboat crews that operated out of Skagway, which destroyed the riverboat Company's workforce for that route completely.

00:23:50
Speaker 2: So after it was discovered that the ship had sunk, what had been a rescue effort immediately turned to recovery. More than one hundred bodies were recovered in the first hour. Many of the people had drowned or died of exposure, but another major cause of death was asphyxiation, either because people got caught up in the oil slick and couldn't breathe, or because of the build up of gases inside the vessel as its operating systems blew. The oil slick also caused wildlife deaths, including the deaths of flocks of ducks. The SS Princess Sofia itself was quickly determined not to be salvageable, or at least not salvageable until spring, but the effort to recover bodies went on for weeks. A total of one hundred and eighty bodies were eventually recovered, some of them many miles away from the wreck itself. Initially, the bodies were housed in an empty warehouse in Juno that was used as a temporary mortuary, with members of the community cleaning the oil from the bodies. Divers were also sent to recover a safe full of gold that had been on board, and they returned with a body as well. The bodies of Canadian residents were so to Vancouver aboard the Princess Alice, which was nicknamed the Ship of Sorrow because of this sad duty. But the Princess Alice arrived in Vancouver on November eleventh, nineteen eighteen, which was Armistice Day, so the mood in Vancouver when the ship actually got there was exuberant because of the end of the war. The mayor had the flags flown at half staff for an hour. On the twelfth.

00:25:21
Speaker 1: Thomas Riggs, Junior Territorial Governor of Alaska, issued a statement after learning the news of the wreck, quote wreck of the Princess Sofia has cast a great shadow over all of Northland. Alaska grieves with the Yukon. He also sent a message to the US Secretary of the Interior calling it the quote most ghastly incident in the history of the territory. Of course, this is a massive tragedy and there were immediate calls for an inquest, but there were also a lot of questions and complications because of the international nature of the disaster. It had happened in Alaska, and virtually everyone involved in the rescue attempt was American, but it was a Canadian ship, and many of the people who died aboard were Canadian, most of them from Yukon. There was also the question of how and what exactly to investigate, because everyone who could have been questioned about what happened aboard the Princess Sophia was dead. The first official inquiry was held January sixth, nineteen nineteen, at Bastion Square Courthouse in Victoria, British Columbia. Witnesses from the rescue vessels offered testimony about how treacherous Lynn Canal was, but some also raised doubts about whether Locke had made the right decisions.

00:26:35
Speaker 2: A big point of contention was the Sofia's traveling at eleven knots rather than at seven. The other was the decision not to evacuate Captain Cornelia Stidham aboard the Peterson and Captain Miller of the King and Wing both said that the evacuation would have been possible during a very brief window of time before the wind really picked up. Captain James Davis of the Estabethan Edward MacDougall of the Amy backed them up in this opinion. These judgments, though, were made with the benefit of hindsight and knowing how the weather progressed after that call was made to stay put, and everyone agreed that even if some people had been rescued in this window of relatively less treacherous weather, many others would still have died. There were also other captains who had the opposite opinion. According to one inspector from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police quote, I have interviewed several deep sea captains and they are all of the same opinion that given similar conditions and circumstances, they would have acted exactly as did Captain Locke. It is considered that he acted as any level headed seafaring man would have done, and while his error of judgment caused the loss of so many lives, it is considered simply an act of providence.

00:27:50
Speaker 1: The inquiry was closed on March tenth, nineteen nineteen, and taken to Parliament on April twenty third. In the end, no blame was placed on Locke or on CPR. The US vessels that came to assist were compensated for their time and efforts, and a small payment was given to families.

00:28:09
Speaker 2: American relatives of the victims filed a class action suit in the United States, and that dragged on for fourteen years. At first, a US district court judge found that CPR was negligent and CPR was fined two point five million dollars to be paid to the families of the passengers and crew, plus a million dollars of court costs, But the judge reversed this decision a couple of weeks later, saying that this tragedy fell under the Limited Liabilities Act of eighteen fifty one, so all CPR was responsible for was the cost of fares and baggage. The Limited Liabilities Act of eighteen fifty one was crafted to mimic limited liability laws that were already in effect in other countries. There wasn't any such thing as comprehensive insurance for shipping companies, and because American companies had no LANs limits to their liability in the event of a disaster, they faced much higher potential costs. So a law was drafted to try to make shipping companies operating out of the United States more competitive with similar businesses operating out of other countries. This law limited a company's liability to the value of the ship and the cargo after a disaster, so if the ship was a total loss, that value might actually meet zero. This law, by the way, is still in effect. It was used in an attempt to get the damages of the twenty ten Deep Water Horizon disaster capped at twenty seven million dollars.

00:29:37
Speaker 1: The Princess Sofia case was appealed all the way to the Ninth Circuit Court, and the Supreme Court declined to hear it. In the end, CPR settled for six hundred forty three dollars and fifty cents, which was less than two dollars for each victim. Meanwhile, the company did get a payment of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from its insurer. The Lynn Canal is still overwhelmingly how people get to and from Skagway, Alaska, although there is a year round highway connection and small plane service today. But the canal is also much safer today than it was in nineteen eighteen, and it is a popular route for Alaska cruises. The buoy that had been visible only by day was replaced with a light, and of course navigation and sonar technologies are far more advanced than they were one hundred years ago.

00:30:25
Speaker 2: Ultimately, the SS Princess Safaia was a total loss and the wreck is still there in the Lynn Canal today. It's a popular dive site, with some divers saying that it's haunted. Keepers at the nearby Sentinel Lighthouse have also attributed ghostly noises to the Princess Safaia's passengers. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and you can subscribe to the show on the ie heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.