Digital Bob Archive

The Rajah's yacht was one description of the little steamer Cutch because that had been her original service. But the people of Douglas more often referred to her simply as \"the wreck\" during the winter of 1900 and the following spring and summer when it appeared that she might become a permanent fixture on the beach inside Mayflower Island.

The Cutch had been built at Hull, England, in 1884 for the Rajah of Cutch.
She was 185 feet in length and had two funnels and a speed of 17 knots. About the time the Klondike Rush started and vessels of all kinds came into demand on the Pacific Coast, the Cutch was offered for sale in Bombay, India. She was purchased by the Union Steamship Company of Vancouver, B.C., and was brought to that port. Just how much refitting was done is not known but when she sailed for Skagway for the first time, in June, 1898, she was licensed to carry 150 passengers. She had steam heat, electric lights, and some unusually large and comfortable staterooms.

The Cutch was bound for Skagway - she did not call at Juneau - at 10 p.m. on Friday, August 24, 1900, when she piled onto Horse Shoal, just east of Horse Island in Stephens Passage west of Douglas Island. Although the evening was clear, she was considerably off course, but it was said that had she been 12 feet to the right she would have missed the reef.

Word of the wreck was brought to Juneau by the City of Topeka the following day and a number of local boats went to the scene. The Flosie of the Juneau Ferry & Navigation Company took the passengers on to Skagway. The crew of the Cutch, in an effort to lighten her, was throwing her cargo overboard. Much of it floated and some local boats were said to have made good hauls.

Even after the cargo was jettisoned and a soft patch put on her hull, the Cutch failed to float at high water and the owners soon abandoned her to the insurance underwriters. It was October 11 before she was pulled off the reef, towed to Juneau by the local steamer Rustler and beached inside Mayflower Island. She would remain there for eleven months before being towed to Seattle.

The Cutch had the unfortunate distinction of being the first of five Canadian steamers that would be wrecked, during a 52-year period, within 30 miles of Juneau. Two of the five, Cutch and Princess May, were salvaged; Islander, Princess Sophia and Princess Kathleen went to the bottom.

The Dirigo of the Alaska Steamship Company towed the Cutch to Seattle where she was overhauled in the Moran shipyards and was renamed the Jessie Banning. She was then sold to a New York firm which in turn sold her to the government of Columbia which refitted her as a gunboat and renamed her Bogota. She left Seattle under Captain Harry Marmaduke, said to have been a former officer in the Confederate Navy. Her life under the flag of Columbia was very short; she ran ashore on the coast of South America during a storm at the end of 1902 and became a total loss.