Digital Bob Archive

In the matter of passenger popularity it is probably that none of the many mail boats that operated out of Juneau over a period of some 60 years came up to the steamer Georgia. In the pre-World War I years, from late in 1903 until mid-summer in 1916, the Georgia ran on two routes: Juneau to Sitka via wayports, and Juneau to Skagway via wayports. The number of wayports on each route varied from year to year as canneries, mines and timber operations opened or closed.

The Georgia's dozen comfortable staterooms, plus a large \"glory Hole\" bunk room below decks accounted in part for the vessel's popularity. In addition, the Juneau Steamship Company, owner of the Georgia, paid a good deal of attention to what came out of its galley and to the man who presided there. He was called the steward but actually he combined that with cooking and with the purser, who doubled as mail clerk, looked after the care and comfort of the passengers.

Contributing to passenger comfort was the fact that the Georgia was an easy-riding vessel on routes that were not always smooth. On the Sitka run she crossed Chatham Strait at least six times in all, and Lynn Canal could be particularly rugged during the winter months. There were a few times, in fact, when the little steamer could not buck the weather on either route. There were some bitter winters in the early years of the century, with Taku winds of a ferocity that, we can be thankful, have not been felt in recent time.

During winter months it was not uncommon for the Georgia - and for her successors on the routes - to spend several days at a time at Adams Anchorage, off the south end of Shelter Island, waiting for the winds to abate enough to permit a rounding of Point Retreat or a buck up Lynn Canal. After one winter trip to Skagway the Georgia pulled into Juneau carrying an estimated 40 tons of ice on her decks and house and with her crew asserting that they had chopped away at least an equal quantity.

One of the Georgia's best patronized passenger stops was Tenakee Springs. Those were the years when hundreds of placer miners worked in the Yukon and Interior Alaska during the summers, then came \"outside\" to coastal towns to spend the winters. Some went on \"down below\" to Puget Sound or California, but many wintered in Alaska. The hot springs on Tenakee Inlet were a great attraction and many a miner, some of them racked with rheumatism, boarded the Georgia at Skagway and stayed aboard until she was tied to the Tenakee wharf. Ed Snyder, the principal entrepreneur of the little town, accommodated them. He ran a well-stocked general store and he built dozens of small cabins for rent to the miners.

By 1916, when the Juneau Steamship Company was underbid on the mail contract, the Georgia had traveled more than half a million miles on the two routes.
She was sold and disappeared from the local scene, but she was long remembered by those who had traveled on her.