Stranded

by Aaron Saunders

  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.

  Designed specifically to handle the unpredictable winter weather of the west coast, Princess Sophia proved her seaworthiness on her delivery run. She set sail from Greenock, Scotland on February 12, 1912, and arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, over three months later, on May 20. Her journey had taken her across the Atlantic Ocean, around Cape Horn and the dreaded Drake Passage, and up the western coasts of South and North America.

  On that cold October evening in Skagway, Princess Sophia arrived like a well-known old friend. Embarking passengers battling for a spot on the gangway were no doubt looking forward to settling in to their staterooms for the voyage south. Thirty-one-year-old Ilene Winchell boarded the Princess Sophia to discover that she was already on the deck where her stateroom was located. She occupied Stateroom 35 on the aft port side of awning deck. It was one of the better accommodations on board, as it had a porthole window that could be opened to let the fresh air in. Her neighbour wouldn’t be so fortunate; immediately adjacent to Ilene’s room was Stateroom 33 — a small interior room with no natural daylight. To make her journey more comfortable, Winchell had booked a room with a view. Her room was also conveniently located: the shared water closet that held toilet and showering facilities was located in the small alcove that housed her stateroom, along with Staterooms 33 and 37. But although there were two berths in her cozy Stateroom 35, she would need only one.

  Winchell had left her husband, Al, behind in Iditarod, Alaska — a small town of barely fifty inhabitants situated along the Iditarod River to the northwest of Anchorage. Gold had been discovered in nearby Flat, Alaska, in 1910, and Al Winchell was employed — suitably — by the Yukon Gold Company. But his wife’s journey south wasn’t because their marriage was crumbling; it was due to Ilene’s prolonged ill health that would surely be exacerbated by the coming winter. Rather than suffer through another brutal Alaskan winter that could only leave her in an increasingly weakened state, Al had suggested that Ilene travel south to recuperate in the warmer California climate. Paying $37.50 for her ticket, she had booked passage to Seattle aboard Princess Sophia. From there she would transfer to her connections to California. In the spring, when temperatures had improved, she would return north to Iditarod and her husband.

  Parting for an entire season would have been difficult in normal circumstances, but Ilene Winchell’s personal circumstances were anything but ordinary. In addition to her illness, which sapped her energy and left her weak, she had spent the better part of the days and weeks leading up to her journey to Skagway obsessing over premonitions of her impending death. She was so convinced she would die that she even told her husband, “I can’t tell you how I know it, but you will outlive me.” Hoping to reassure his wife, Al Winchell reminded her that she was travelling on one of the newest Canadian Pacific steamships, and that her entire journey from Iditarod to California would be a perfectly safe one. Unsatisfied, Ilene Winchell made her husband promise that if the worst should happen he would find and bury her remains next to her mother. Hoping to calm his wife’s irrational fears, Al Winchell agreed.

  By the time she had reached Skagway, Ilene Winchell was so weak from the journey that she was personally escorted to Stateroom 35 by a member of the ship’s crew. It had a white slatted door with a small brass number plate with her stateroom number pressed into it above the door. Opening the door, Winchell found the electric lights burning brightly, glinting off the highly polished woodwork on the two berths and illuminating the smart-looking white walls. Exhausted after the long journey to Skagway, Winchell likely settled into an uneasy sleep; one punctuated by the sounds of footsteps in the corridor as the rest of Princess Sophia’s passengers embarked for the voyage south.

  By and large, Princess Sophia was a very comfortable ship; a sort of transatlantic ocean liner in miniature. Although her public rooms lacked the grandeur of Canadian Pacific’s much larger steamers, they were akin to staying in a fine, boutique hotel. When she was launched in 1912, the Paisley G
azette of Paisley, Scotland, raved about the new ship their town had produced:

  Last Saturday, the new steamer “Princess Sophia” left the Clyde on her voyage across the Atlantic to take up her place in the Canadian Pacific Railway company’s fleet. Reference was made in the “Town Talk” column last week to the majestic appearance of the vessel as she left the Cart to engage in her trials, and a correspondent’s regret that a photograph of her was not published in the “Gazette” has resulted in several snap-shots coming to hand this week. A full account of the launching ceremony and speeches, with photo-graphs, was published here at the time the vessel took to the water in the month of November. The Princess Sophia is the largest-engined vessel that ever was built on the Cart. She is 245 feet long and has cost between £50,000 and £60,000, of which some £40,000 went in wages in Paisley. She is specifically designed for passenger service on the Pacific coast.[4]

  Although designed for the less-glamorous runs of the Pacific, Princess Sophia’s interior spaces were noteworthy for their connection to the sea: nearly all featured windows that looked out onto the vessel’s promenade decks or out onto the landscape of the ocean beyond the hull. Even the ship’s main staircase featured an attractive skylight designed to filter natural light down into the deeper recesses of the hull.

  The social hub of life on board the Princess Sophia was the aptly named social hall on awning deck. Located at the forward end of the ship, adjacent to many of her passenger accommodations, the social hall was attractively panelled in white with dark wooden accents. At its after end the social hall was bookended by the ship’s main staircase, or what would be called the grand staircase on a much larger ocean liner. An attractive wooden staircase lined with ornately carved railings, it led up to the ship’s promenade deck, which featured additional passenger accommodations, outdoor deck space, and an attractive observation room, finished in maple, located all the way forward. From the lounge, passengers aboard the Princess Sophia could admire the view over her bow; one that was not all that dissimilar from what her officers would see one deck above in the ship’s bridge.

  Meals aboard the Princess Sophia were taken in several sittings in the ship’s dining room, which was lined with oversized windows and decorated with the finest mahogany and maple. Up to one hundred guests could be seated here at a single time, at long tables featuring wooden chairs with leather backings. Unlike some of the newer ocean liners, these chairs were of the “old-school” variety: they were still bolted to the floor to keep them from sliding around in inclement weather, and swivelled atop a brass pedestal.

  All the way at the stern on promenade deck was the ship’s clubby smoking room. Situated in a deck house separated from the main structure of the ship, the smoking room was the domain of the first-class gentlemen on board the Princess Sophia, and her interiors reflected that masculine ideal. Like the dining room, the smoking room was finished with mahogany and maple accent panels, and adorned with a variety of leather-backed chairs and couches. It oozed the smell of leather, scotch, and tobacco.

  Passengers typically stayed in one of a handful of accommodation types. First-class passengers were all accommodated in cabins situated on promenade deck and awning deck, with additional cabins situated high up on the boat deck, just aft of the ship’s wheelhouse. Unlike their counterparts on promenade and awning decks, these boat deck staterooms had no interior corridor access; passengers had to walk outside onto the open deck, cross down to promenade deck, and re-enter the ship there.

  Even these guests still did better than Princess Sophia’s second-class passengers, twenty-seven of whom were relegated to a common accommodations area on main deck, the lowest passenger-accessible deck on the ship.

  Fares for the passage south were far more uniform, with first-class guests paying $37.50 per person for passage to Vancouver, Victoria, or Seattle; and $20.00 to travel as far as Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Employees of the White Pass & Yukon Route were given a sizeable discount of $12.50 per person, which brought individual fares down to an even $25.00 . In modern currency, $37.50 is approximately $595.38 — the cost of a domestic transcontinental flight.

  Second-class passengers paid far less. With all but four guests continuing on to Seattle, most passengers paid $22.00 per person, while the three individuals who were only travelling as far as Prince Rupert paid just $11.00 a head. With first class full up, it’s likely that some of those booked in second class might have travelled first class under normal circumstances. With berthing spaces so scarce, and winter closing in, few would-be travellers had the luxury of being particular.

  In command of Princess Sophia on her last southbound voyage from Skagway was Captain Leonard Pye Locke. A capable and competent mariner, the sixty-six-year-old Locke joined the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company in 1901, after what could best be termed a lifetime at sea. Born in 1852 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Locke had joined his father — also a mariner — at sea in 1868, when he was just sixteen years old.

  His early days with Canadian Pacific seem to have been successful, at least financially. In 1906 Locke and his wife, Emily, had a new house constructed for them in Victoria, at 1005 Cook Street. [5] The one-and-a-half-storey Edwardian front-gabled house was typical of the style at the time, with large bay windows on the main level that looked out onto a wraparound porch. With a red-brick chimney slowly dispersing smoke into the air from the household fireplace, the home was warm, cozy, and inviting for Emily and her five children. Locke, however, was seldom there to enjoy it.

  Stout in appearance, Leonard Locke was a man of average height, with a prominent face sporting a large, bushy moustache beginning to show the first signs of grey. That he wore a toupée is the most colourful piece of information that survives about him. Like most competent mariners who successfully sail their vessels from one port to another, Locke’s career up until October 1918 had been largely un-remarkable. Pressed later, crew members who had served under him could only come up with the most basic of statements to describe his personality. Some said he was strict — perhaps unsurprising for an early twentieth-century sea captain. Others simply remembered him as being fastidious. A few close friends remarked that the captain bore a great fondness for the poetry of Robert Service.

  Despite having served nearly eighteen years with the company, there is only one anecdote that offers the most fleeting glimpse of Leonard Locke, the man. J.L McPherson of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce sailed aboard one of Princess Sophia’s northbound voyages in 1917, and he kept as a memento a copy of a poem that Locke had written for a young girl who was on board. The girl had been upset that no one had come to see her off when the ship sailed from Vancouver, and that she had no friends on board. Locke wrote the poem specifically for her, and ensured it was placed next to her dinner plate that evening.

  Little moments like that, however, were far from Locke’s mind as Princess Sophia finally came alongside in Skagway. The aging sea captain was acutely aware that the ship’s scheduled departure time of 7:00 p.m. was looking increasingly unlikely. The voyage north had presented Locke with several pressing concerns, and he set his mind on solving them.

  After arriving in Skagway at 1:00 p.m., the crew hurried about the business of turning the ship around for her voyage south to Vancouver. During this time Captain Locke, clad in his uniform, personally trudged through the rain to the offices of Lewis Johnston, Canadian Pacific’s agent in Skagway. Located on Broadway, adjacent to the bizarre driftwood-clad building that housed the Fraternal Order of the Arctic Brotherhood, Locke’s visit was for an unusual reason: four of Princess Sophia’s deckhands and two stewards had come down with influenza, an epidemic of which was sweeping through North America in 1918. This was, Locke hoped, the last in a long line of problems, delays, and minor annoyances that had beset the ship since she sailed from Vancouver on October 17.

  When Princess Sophia arrived at Alert Bay, her first port of call on the voyage north, Captain Locke received an SOS from the Alaskan Steamship Company vessel A
laska. As she made her way south, the Alaska had run aground near Swanson Bay, stranding her complement of three hundred passengers on board. Since Swanson Bay was en route to Princess Sophia’s next port of call in Prince Rupert, Locke left Alert Bay early and steamed rapidly toward the scene. As if to demonstrate just how changeable the tides and weather conditions were in the area at the time, when Princess Sophia arrived on the scene the Alaska had already managed to free herself. Indeed, upon their arrival in Prince Rupert, the Alaska could be seen at dock, smoke drifting lazily from her single funnel while throngs of passengers disembarked like ants running through a maze.

  Time lost to this diversion was made up on the way to Juneau, where Princess Sophia arrived on the evening of Tuesday, October 22, 1918. Thick clouds obliterated the treeline of Mount Roberts, which was situated near the docks. A steady rain fell, and the Princess Sophia, her lights aglow, came alongside a sleepy town tucked in for the evening. Up until then the ship had been almost entirely empty for the voyage north. With winter approaching, only the heartiest — or craziest, depending on who you talked to — folks were actually heading up north.

  The Arctic Brotherhood Hall. Built in 1899, it now houses the Skagway visitor’s centre. The Canadian Pacific Steamship Company offices were located just next door in 1918, in the blue-and-white building that now houses one of Skagway’s many jewellery stores.

  One man, however, did come in out of the rain and step onto the brightly lit decks of the Princess Sophia while she was docked in Juneau. Customs Collector John Pugh was travelling as a non-revenue passenger up to Skagway, where he planned to assist with the crushing mob of people looking for passage south. As bad as it was, the issue of the passengers was almost secondary to the issue of cargo; with Christmas just around the corner, Pugh knew the task ahead would be gargantuan on both fronts. He was scheduled to sail with the Princess Sophia back to Juneau, where he would disembark on Thursday.