Digital Bob Archive

JANUARY 1918 - PART 3:

Travel to and from Juneau in the year 1918 involved riding a boat - the ferry to Douglas, the mailboat to Hoonah or Tenakee Springs, or one of the many steamboats that came to Gastineau Channel with some regularity. Even during the winter months there were few days when there wasn't at least one steamer in port, bound either north or south.

A favorite with Channel residents who were heading south was the Princess Sophia of the Canadian Pacific Line. She had been built for the Alaska trade and had been coming north since the summer of 1912. She made a round trip every two weeks. There was, in January, no hint of the tragedy that would befall her before the year's end.

The Pacific Steamship Company, which had been formed in 1916 by an amalgamation of the old Pacific Coast Steamship Company and the Alaska-Pacific Navigation Company - known as the Admiral Line - had the Admiral Evans on the westward run to Cordova, Valdez and Seward, and the City of Seattle on the run to Panhandle ports as far north as Skagway.

Because it carried copper ore from the Kennecott and other mines to the smelter at Tacoma, the Alaska Steamship Company was able to send three steamers on the westward route. In January they were the Alameda, Alaska and Northwestern. The company also had the Jefferson on the Southeastern route. The Grand Trunk Pacific Company, which later became the Canadian National Line, had the Prince John on a shuttle route between Juneau and Prince Rupert. From there passengers could go east by railroad or transfer to the fast three-funnel steamers Prince Rupert or Prince George for the trip to Vancouver, Victoria or Seattle.

People who were not in a rush to get to Seattle could take the little steamer Despatch of the Seattle Steamship Company. She was a comfortable enough little steam schooner, but she was slower than the larger ships and she called at some of the small, out-of-the-way ports that were passed up by the larger vessels. An advantage was that first class passage on the Despatch was only $22.50, meals included, or about half the rate of the big boats.

The locally-owned Juneau Steamship Company had held the mail contract between Juneau and Sitka from 1904 until 1916 and had operated the comfortable little steamer Georgia on the route. But the company was underbid by a Ketchikan man in 1916 and the much smaller Prince of Wales was placed on the run. She had trouble with the weather in the winter months, and her gasoline engine gave trouble at all times. In consequence, the mail boat was so often late that she earned the nickname \"Prince of Snails.\"

Juneau business firms which did a good deal of trade, via the mail boat, with such places as Hoonah, Angoon, Tenakee Springs and Gypsum, began to get complaints from the customers at those places and the Juneau Commercial Club held a couple of special meetings to discuss the possibility of getting a better mail boat.