The longer the investigation of the maiden voyage of Clara Nevada continued the more damning evidence came to light. Before the vessel arrived in Port Simpson, British Columbia, it was reported that “she blew out three boiler tubes.” Between Fort Wrangell and Juneau, “her bunkers caught fire.” Hardly encouraging were the words of Captain Lewis, who was alleged to have declared that had the Clara Nevada been twenty more minutes in reaching Juneau, “all would have gone to hell.”
Captain Lewis must have been quite concerned as to the safety of his ship, particularly with such a rambunctious crew on board. In addition to plowing into the Revenue cutter and striking the dock at Port Townsend, the boilers were causing trouble, as were the crew and passengers. The ship’s internal communications system was down, and when the vessel arrived in Skagway, Lewis “yelled his orders to a man on the deck who yelled to the first engineer who yelled to the second engineer.” For good reason, the maiden voyage of the Clara Nevada caused the captain to lose sleep. He was apparently so worried that he “did not dare go to bed. He was up day and night and always on the bridge.”
The weather compounded human proclivity and error. Going north, the Clara Nevada fought the wind. Passage was slow, and at times, the ship made no headway at all. “On one occasion,” one passenger recalled, the ship “did not make a mile in six hours.”
Since there had been an explosion, the investigation naturally focused on the boilers. Suspicion of the boilers deepened when a former worker on the Clara Nevada claimed that while he was working on board he knew the “boilers were unsafe. Had I known the condition of them prior to sailing I would not have allowed my wife to sail on the ship, nor would I have done so, either.”
Even the passengers knew there were difficulties with the boilers. This was corroborated by three passengers—T.L. Cockrill of Seattle, A. Boskey of Texas and Frank S. Duff of Marysville, Montana—who “said the engineer was having troubles with the boilers, and at Juneau the steamer was detained overnight while repairs were being made.” One of the McGuire brothers, the owners of the Clara Nevada, was interviewed by the Post-Intelligencer and asked if this was an accurate statement. McGuire confirmed that it was.
McGuire further stated that he had received a letter from the engineer in Juneau, who stated that he had “found it necessary to put packing around certain tubes but this was a trifling matter and should occasion no uneasiness whatever regarding the steamer’s condition.” In the previous day’s edition, the Post-Intelligencer had given a lengthy discussion of the state of the boilers. They had been examined by United States steamboat inspectors. One of the inspectors, Cherry, had even gone “into the boilers and inspected each thoroughly from top to bottom.” McGuire also revealed that the Clara Nevada had been “carefully inspected by Captain Burnes and Captain Cliff, marine surveyors,” before a $30,000 insurance policy was approved. According to H.P. McGuire, the Clara Nevada was insured at “1¼ percent, less than any other steamer running north, which is positive evidence of their entire satisfaction as to the Clara Nevada’s good condition.”
Colonel Alden Blethen, publisher and editor of the Seattle Times, did not see it that way. On February 21, the Seattle Times reprinted a letter from “Observer,” who was alleged to have been employed on the Hassler before she was transformed into the Clara Nevada. Observer stated that the “machinists who gave [the Clara Nevada] the overhaul freely expressed their opinion to the other workmen aboard that the Hassler’s boilers would never pass an official inspection, as she was liable to blow up at any moment if she was allowed to go into service.” Competent firemen clearly knew this, according to an unnamed source quoted in the Victoria Daily Colonist, for they refused to serve on the ship, fearing being “scalded to death.”
By the end of February, another matter came to the attention of the reading public. According to a number of sources, it was estimated that about $165,000—$13 million in 2011 dollars—in untraceable raw gold had gone down with the Clara Nevada. (For a real-world understanding of how much money this was in 1898, consider that a miner making $0.50 a pan was a worthwhile take.)
There were a number of published sources for the statement. The first was the February 25 Seattle Times, which estimated the gold at “$90,000 to $120,000.” The June 5 Post-Intelligencer listed the gold as amounting to “$100,000.” A Seattle Times article even indicated that one passenger was carrying $165,000 on him. The Victoria Daily Citizen (Victoria, British Columbia) did not list an amount but noted that “there is good reason to believe that a considerable sum in treasure was received on board at Skagway.”18 Other articles in the Seattle papers listed the amount of gold as high as $300,000. For the purposes of this book, the figure “$165,000 in gold dust and certified checks” was chosen as the amount as it comes from a reliable source and is between the highest or lowest estimates.
The thought of gold being on board is intriguing, but it was unusual as well. First, it was the wrong time of year for gold to be coming out of Skagway. Miners worked the Klondike while the rivers were running, and if they were heading south, they would have left when the rivers began to freeze in the fall. The Clara Nevada sank in February, long after freeze up. Further, most of the gold from Dawson was shipped out via the Yukon and St. Michael and not hiked to Skagway or Dyea and then sent out on a gypsy steamer.
Second, if indeed there was gold onboard, it was not institutional gold. In other words, it was gold owned by individuals—Klondike miners who had struck it rich—and not banks or corporations like Wells Fargo or the Canadian Bank of Commerce. These companies would not have risked sending their gold on what was, in essence, a tramp steamer. They would have depended on a more reliable ship with a schedule, like the Queen, Islander, Tees or the Amur. Further, the fact that no official showed up after the Clara Nevada went down is a good indication that the gold was owned by individuals, not a corporate entity.
Chapter 3
The Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer Do Battle
The wreck of the Clara Nevada was unquestionably a disaster, but the tragedy was not without its silver lining. More than a few mariners in Seattle were appalled at what was happening to the reputation of their city generally and their industry specifically. Dollars were there for the reaping, and scoundrels were lining up to fleece the unsuspecting stampeders who packed the docks. Anyone with a few thousand dollars who found a derelict vessel could enter the shipping business. More than a few did. Unsavory crews of questionable ability were easy to find, and passengers were standing in line to pay for passage north. The maritime business had sunk so low that how long companies remained in business depended more on weather than the ability or competence of the captain and crew.
While there were Steamboat Inspection Service inspectors in Seattle, there were none covering Alaskan waters specifically. The Alaskan branch of the service began its work in May 1898, but by then, more than a dozen ships had already gone to the bottom of the Inside Passage. Conditions continued to be intolerable, and transportation north to the Klondike continued to be uncertain. By the end of the year, so many gold rush ships had gone down that the Post-Intelligencer was recording maritime disasters as fillers rather than front-page features.
Even with the Alaskan branch of the service in operation, the state of the shipping industry in Alaskan waters did not improve much. It did not affect the Seattle to Skagway traffic at all. The first commissioner concentrated on the maritime fleet into and out of “Yakutat, Nutchek, Virgin Bay, Valdez, Kodiak, Unga, Unalaska” and St. Michael. The Skagway area was not even visited until April 28, 1901, more than three years after the Clara Nevada had gone down.
In Seattle, the slowness with which the Steamboat Inspection Service was moving was not missed by the Seattle Times, and the continuing disasters in the shipping industry led to more than just recriminations. They precipitated an all-out journalistic war between the two powerful Seattle papers, the Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times.
The more opinionated of the two
papers was the Seattle Times, published and edited by the acerbic colonel Alden J. Blethen. Described as both brilliant and controversial, Blethen had come to Seattle in 1896 and began his publishing career with the acquisition of a bankrupt paper, the Press-Seattle Times. He dropped the first half of the title, removed the old editor and, within six months, had more than doubled the paper’s circulation.
But he had competition. When he had bought the Press-Seattle Times, there had been no other viable newspaper in Seattle. The Post-Intelligencer had been around since 1867 under a variety of names and publishers. In 1898, it had an institutional Republican bent, as opposed to Blethen’s populist views, and the two came to journalistic blows frequently.
A rather large and juicy bone of contention between the two papers was the United States Steamboat Inspection Service. The Post-Intelligencer may have started the battle by commenting favorably on the service. Or maybe the Post-Intelligencer just needed to comment on the service to get a reaction from Blethen. Regardless of who lit the fuse, the powder keg blew. A significant milestone in the confrontation was published on January 22, 1898, in the Post-Intelligencer.
With all of the vessels now in Puget Sound, most of them on their way to Alaska, the Post-Intelligencer noted that
the weight of labor and responsibility borne by the board of inspectors has greatly increased. It is contended that it would be strange if some of those who have embarked in the Alaska transportation business did not overlook in their desire to reap a harvest from the Klondike trade the weakness or defects of some of their vessels.
The article concluded with a quote by Captain W.J. Bryant, one of the two inspectors, stating that the policy was to be “strict and exacting but within the bounds of reason.” Two weeks later, the Clara Nevada was at the bottom of Lynn Canal, and Colonel Blethen had a crusade.
It should not be surprising that the Clara Nevada became the center of a journalistic showdown between the two Seattle papers. It was grist for the editorial mill. The acid pen of Blethen quickly seized on the sinking of the Clara Nevada as an excuse to attack the Steamboat Inspection Service. The hidden motive for his continuing editorial diatribes was to embarrass the state of Washington’s Republican administration, which was receiving favorable press in the Post-Intelligencer, his editorial archenemy. Though his attack may well have been journalistically motivated, the board of inspectors was a fair target, and Blethen’s facts were accurate.
Moreover, many in the shipping business were probably more than pleased with Blethen’s attack. They felt just as Blethen did, though they were by no means as vocal. Fearful that the good name of their city, a growing maritime power, was being tarnished by fly-by-night operators, Blethen’s editorial opinions were welcomed. After all, those familiar with economics and reputations knew that the gold rush boom in shipping goods and passengers would pass and probably quickly. Once the brouhaha was over, they feared Seattle would be saddled with a reputation for placing profit before safety. That would leave a bitter taste in the mouth of serious shippers who would be doing business long after the gold rush was a dim memory.
Blethen was quick to the bulwark in charging that Seattle was acquiring a reputation as a “haven for decrepit and unsafe ships” and men who were more interested in profits than human lives. The flood of humanity to the gold fields seemed to bring out the wolf in some maritime companies, and more disasters were destined to follow the Clara Nevada incident, numerous Blethen columns claimed. The New York Times agreed with Blethen and noted that the Clara Nevada incident “simply emphasizes the conditions that prevail in Northern waters. Ships of all sorts and conditions are being pressed into the service to carry crowds to the gold fields.”19
When the story of the Clara Nevada first broke, Blethen’s vitriolic point of view was clear from the first paragraph of the first story. His editorializing was at its finest. Commenting on the trip north, he stated that 150 passengers and “an immense amount of valuable merchandise left this port in an unsafe vessel and in charge of a drunken and blasphemous crew…That she ever reached her destination is one of those modern miracles which God sometimes works in spite of men’s failings, avarice, incompetence and greed.”
Blethen further charged that a “blush of shame” should come upon the cheeks of the owners of the Clara Nevada and bring the “righteous indignation of an outraged public upon the heads of the culpable inspectors of the port.” Here then was Blethen’s call to arms against the inspectors and, consequently, the Post-Intelligencer.
If this was a glancing blow, Blethen finished with a barrage:
Once more the [Seattle] Times demands that the inspectors speak. You, Mr. Cherry, and you, Mr. Bryant. You who permitted that vessel to leave port—what have you to say? The public want[s] to know. The children, wives and mothers of those who were so suddenly ushered into eternity because you appear to have neglected your sworn duty want to know. Speak, men, speak or else by your moody silence you admit that there is some foundation for the odious suspicions now hurled toward you by the public you once swore to serve faithfully as well.
Have you fulfilled that oath?20
Throughout the spring, as hearings were held into the circumstances of the destruction of the Clara Nevada, Blethen charged the Steamboat Inspection Service with incompetence. The Seattle Times withstood a “vicious attack” by the Post-Intelligencer for its “expos[ure] of the manner in which the local inspectors have been conducting or, rather, neglecting the inspection of vessels at this port.” Then, in the same article, it gave a laundry list of deficiencies, listed by ship, allowed to pass by the inspectors. Those ships included the Clara Nevada, Eliza Anderson, Al-Ki, Mexico, Corona, North Pacific and the Alice Blanchard.21 On March 5, the Seattle Times went so far as to suggest the steamboat inspectors “decorate the end of an elevated rope.” The head of the agency was accused of being “as fit for his office of Inspector General as a chimpanzee is to run a dime store.”
If the Seattle Times had been looking for journalistic fodder, the investigation into the unsavory facts of the last trip of the Clara Nevada brought many to light. Incredulously, it was revealed, some life preservers placed on the Clara Nevada had been ones that had been on the Hassler and had been made of “grass.” Though the McGuire brothers claimed that all grass life preservers had been removed and cork ones added, they could not account for the grass preservers that were found twisted in the wreck’s debris.22 In this, at least, the Seattle Times gloated. A government official had actually done his job! “The Custom House officials…refused to give [the Clara Nevada] clearance papers until she was provided with sufficient life preservers.”
A week later, the Seattle Times was again attacking the “ex-fireman and his burly associate who permitted that floating coffin to leave this port.” In a reprint from the Victoria Colonist, Fred Emery, supposedly one of the crew members who had gone down with the Clara Nevada, turned up alive. He was living in Dyea, where he was working with a Boston party to build a hotel. According to Emery, the majority of the crew was “drunk and fighting the greater part of the time, the rowdy element being so conspicuous that the steward, Dan O’Connell, would have been thrown overboard on the up trip had not the captain interfered.”23
Since witnesses reported seeing a fireball, it was generally assumed—and confirmed—that dynamite had been transported along with passengers, a clear violation of good sense not to mention maritime law. When the Seattle Times heard of the transportation of dynamite on a passenger ship, its journalistic acid was unrestrained. In a news article, Blethen proselytized that
the Seattle Times is not willing to believe that any creature made by God in the image of man could so harden his conscience as to load dynamite upon a vessel upon which many passengers were booked and send them all out of port with a full knowledge on his part that the slightest accident would land them all in eternity.24
The dynamite on board the Clara Nevada had been destined for the Treadwell Mine in Douglas, across the Gastineau
Channel from Juneau. Apparently it had been loaded first in Seattle and was thus at the bottom of the hold. To have offloaded the dynamite in Juneau would have required the crew to remove all the cargo for Skagway and Dyea before it could reach the shipment for Douglas. However, since no one was available in Juneau to receive the dynamite when the ship docked, it must have been decided to steam on to Skagway and Dyea, a day away, and then drop the dynamite off two days later when the ship had landed its Skagway cargo.
There is another theory, however, as to why the dynamite was not loaded. At least one witness felt that the dynamite had been “smuggled aboard and covered with the cargo.” This was probably done because the captain and company owners knew full well that the transportation of dynamite with passengers was illegal. Then, when the vessel arrived in Juneau, the crew did not unload the dynamite because of the presence of a customs inspector on the docks. In any case, the dynamite was left on board when the ship headed north to Skagway and Dyea.
But there was more. That the Clara Nevada was poorly renovated, there was no dispute. It had been an old ship when it was sold for scrap, and the refitting had done little to ensure the seaworthiness of the vessel. But, as more and more details of the renovation came out, many mariners had cause to wonder how the vessel floated at all. Latty Boyce, the ship’s carpenter who had fortuitously gotten off the ship in Skagway, wrote that “the ports and deadlights were not at all [caulked] before we left port and some never were [caulked] at all, while others had no threads in the bolts to screw them in so, had to be ‘tomed’ or blocked in with a brace of wood [sic].”
The Clara Nevada: Gold, Greed, Murder and Alaska's Inside Passage Page 3