Digital Bob Archive

The Juneau Steamship Company was organized in the summer of 1903 after Henry Shattuck was awarded a contract to carry the mail from Juneau to Sitka and wayports every six days. This represented a considerable increase in service between the two terminal ports since it replaced a contract held by the Juneau Ferry & Navigation Company and served by its steamer Flosie twice each month.

Henry Shattuck had arrived in Juneau in 1897 from Portland, Oregon, and worked for a year as bookkeeper for the C.W. Young Company, a predecessor of Ace Hardware. He then organized Shattuck & Company which engaged in the insurance and brokerage business and was agent for the fledgling Alaska Steamship Company. With him in the Juneau Steamship Co. were C.H. Black as president, Willis Nowell as vice president and Shattuck as secretary-treasurer and manager. A.S. Dautrick was a major stockholder.

The steamboat Rustler, owned by the Nowell Gold Mining Company, was placed on the Sitka run while Shattuck went below to find a suitable freight and passenger vessel. At Seattle he picked the Georgia, built at Tacoma in 1902, 110 feet in length, with a 200-horsepower triple expansion engine. She was said to have been one of the fastest boats of her size on the Sound. She had 12 staterooms and a large dining salon, the best accommodations of any of the small vessels operating out of Juneau.

On September 14, 1903, the Georgia sailed for Sitka, the beginning of a 12-year career as probably the most popular mail boat ever to run out of Juneau. Ports of call included Funter Bay, Hoonah, Hoonah Hot Springs (now known as Tenakee Springs), Killisnoo, Chatham cannery, Rodman Bay where a railroad was being built to a mountaintop mine, a logging camp at Salisbury Sound, and Sitka. In October of that year the Georgia took over the Skagway mail route also, making two round trips each week to that port via Jualin, Comet, and Haines, in addition to the Sitka trip. It was a tight schedule and it was a rugged route in the winter months. The Georgia proved equal to it.

Captain of the Georgia during most of her mailboat years was Ed Thornton of Juneau. With him for many years were Charles Carlson, mate; Frank Joslin, chief engineer, and Fred Cliff, a longtime Juneau resident, purser and mail clerk.
Thornton lived at the top of the stairs on Franklin Street, across from the Wickersham House. When he was ashore he wore a tall \"stovepipe\" hat, although presumably he did not wear it on deck of his vessel. The captain had another peculiarity; at least, it was peculiar for Alaska: he liked mint juleps, made with fresh mint. At Sitka, where the Georgia stopped for several hours on each trip, he planted mint along the creek that flows from Swan Lake and harvested a supply on each trip. Whether he also had a mint bed in Juneau has not been ascertained.