Digital Bob Archive

Fire is as great an enemy of wooden boats as it is of wooden houses, and the little steam ferry Lone Fisherman was a fire victim during the early morning hours of August 4, 1902, as she lay at the float next to the Pacific Coast Steamship Company wharf. It was about 4 a.m. when the alarm sounded and according to the Daily Alaska Dispatch the fire \"gave chief W.W. Casey and two hose companies a hard tussle and it looked like the boat and wharf were both doomed.\"

They did get the fire out and there was only minor damage to the hull, which was towed across to Douglas Island and beached behind Mayflower Island where carpenters went to work building a new pilot house and passenger cabin. J.
Montgomery Davis, who was then manager of the Juneau Ferry & Navigation Company, announced that the old Julia, which had been pretty much retied, would take the ferry run, aided at times by the much newer Flosie.

The Flosie had been built late in 1898 and was the first of several vessels the Juneau Ferry & Navigation Company would have built for service out of Juneau. There is some discrepancy in the record as to whether she was built at Seattle or Tacoma but whatever yard it was did a good job and she had a long life under four different names.

The new vessel was named for the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Duncan of Treadwell, where he was superintendent of the mines, and it was pronounced as though spelled with a \"z.\" Some 80 feet in overall length with 18 feet of beam, the Flosie's specifications called for a speed of 12 knots and she exceeded that on her trial runs in February, 1899. She had such refinements as electric lights, including an electric searchlight, and could carry as many as 125 passengers without overcrowding.

The Flosie arrived on Gastineau Channel on March 8 and company president F.D. Nowell immediately began to show her off with a series of excursion runs to Grand Island with Douglas and Juneau business people and officials as guests.
When the Flosie went in service on the ferry run, the schedule was increased from seven trips a day to eight, starting at Juneau and going to Douglas and Treadwell, then reversing the run. On two trips each day the ferry continued from Treadwell to Sheep Creek, then back to Treadwell, Douglas and Juneau. And on Wednesdays and Saturdays there was an additional trip, at midnight, to all ports.

The Flosie's speed was a real asset on the ferry run, but her size was not. She required a larger crew than the other boats but there were not enough riders to pay the extra expense. About that time the Post Office Department established some new mail routes and the ferry company bid on two of them. Before long the Flosie was making two trips each week between Juneau, Haines and Skagway and two trips each month from Juneau to Sitka, with some intermediate stops. She carried mail, freight and passengers and the company's profit and loss statement took a turn for the better.