An officer peers out the window of the Princess Adelaide’s wheelhouse. Note the drop-down windows; the wheehouse of the Princess Sophia would have been very similar in layout and design.
City of Vancouver Archives AM1545-S3-: CVA 586-530.
At age thirty-six, First Officer Shaw was half as old as Captain Locke. He also took home half the pay — roughly $160 per month compared with Locke’s relative haul of $300. He’d been with Canadian Pacific for twenty years, and was both well-liked and well-respected. The year 1918 hadn’t been the best for the young officer, though. In April, while commanding the 165-foot long Canadian Pacific salvage vessel Tees, Shaw found himself caught up in rapidly changing currents near Sidney, British Columbia, just southeast of the provincial capital of Victoria. Making twelve knots at the time, the small Tees was rapidly pushed off-course by the fast-moving water.[1] Before Shaw or the other officers on her bridge could react, she ran aground on a submerged reef near Zero Point. Both passengers and mail were successfully taken off, and the Tees was pumped out and towed into port. The experience, however, clearly rattled Shaw. As he would later tell the Victoria Daily Colonist newspaper, the entire event “was entirely unexpected.”[2]
Satisfied that the accident was unavoidable, Canadian Pacific put their trust in Shaw again. This was his second trip on the Princess Sophia, and his last run south before being transferred to another vessel for the winter months. The events of April aboard the Tees, however, were not lost on Shaw as he watched the weather outside the warm wheelhouse turn increasingly nasty. He glanced over at Locke, who stared straight ahead into the darkness. The experienced sea captain didn’t seem ruffled in the least by the weather. Princess Sophia continued to steam south at twelve knots, her whistles sounding at regular intervals throughout the night.
Several other men joined them in Princess Sophia’s increasingly cramped wheelhouse. Canadian Pacific’s regulations mandated that in adverse weather no less than two officers would be present on the bridge, and two lookouts were to be stationed. The job of actually steering the ship fell to one of two quartermasters, thirty-three-year-old W. Evans and twenty-five-year-old W.K. Liggett. History hasn’t recorded who was actually at the helm of the Princess Sophia that night, but the regular change of watch occurred at midnight. Regardless of which quartermaster came on duty during the blinding snowstorm, he would have been fresh and ready for his four-hour stint from midnight to 4 a.m.
Outside on deck, exposed to the elements, was an eighteen-year-old boy named L. Smith. On this trip south he had the unenviable role of being Princess Sophia’s sole lookout. The other lookout scheduled to be on board for the sailing was Walter Gosse — brother of Second Officer Frank Gosse. Prior to departure from Vancouver, the two brothers had attended a dance. Like most young men attending dances with pretty girls, they’d pushed their exit from the dance floor until the very last second and had to sprint to Princess Sophia’s berthing location at Vancouver’s Pier D. Frank Gosse made it, but Walter was left standing pierside. The lack of a second lookout was inconvenient but not unsolvable; in all likelihood, Locke and Shaw had stationed an able-bodied seaman out on deck to assist young Lookout Smith.
In the darkness of the wheelhouse an oversized poster was mounted to one of the bulkheads. Under the direction of Canadian Pacific’s British Columbia manager, Captain James Troupe, every vessel in the coastal fleet was fitted with such a poster in the wheelhouse. It detailed “right-of-way” rules for passing vessels within the coastal waterway system. Troup had reasoned that, if in doubt, officers could quickly and easily consult the chart without having to go to the chart room and look through booklets filled with information, thus wasting valuable and perhaps precious time.
Vancouver harbour as it would have appeared in 1918.
City of Vancouver Archives AM1495-: CVA 1495-8.
Located at the foot of Granville Street, Vancouver’s Pier D is shown here in 1914. It would burn to the ground in a spectacular fire on July 27, 1938.
City of Vancouver Archives AM358-S1---: CVA 152-1.097
The chart room aboard Princess Sophia held the vast majority of information sources that the officer of the watch would likely need. Buried in amongst the papers and booklets that filled this room were two directives from Canadian Pacific headquarters to all captains. The first of these notices was over three years old, dated August 12, 1915:
To ALL Masters and Officers:
Now that the foggy season is approaching, I must caution you regarding the necessity of extreme care in the navigation of your ship in thick weather. Strict attention must be paid to the Company’s printed Rules and International Rules of the Road regarding safe navigation.
Neglect to carry out the caution — “Stop the Engines” — contained in the second paragraph of Article #16, will not be excused.
Remember that the responsibilities for the protection of life and property under your charge are very great, and that the strictest observation of Rules and Regulations laid down, are the best safeguards for your passengers, the Company, and yourself.
OBEY THE RULES. TAKE NO CHANCES.
APPROVED: J.W. Troup, Manager. C.D. NEROUTSOS. Marine Superintendent.[3]
The second directive was less than a year old. It was issued on November 20, 1917, and said mainly the same thing as the 1915 missive, with one important addition: “Remember that at the present time it is practically impossible to replace a vessel, and that all repairs cost from two to three times what they did before the war.” [4]
The message was clear: masters were to avoid accidents and incidents at all cost.
Princess Sophia’s whistles cut through the midnight blizzard again, rattling the decking as they sounded. The deep-throated sound reverberated off the high mountain faces surrounding the ship. Viewed from above, she was but a brightly lit speck travelling alone down one of Alaska’s most dangerous stretches of water. Although she continued to steam south at twelve knots, with three men in her wheelhouse and two lookouts positioned on deck, she was literally feeling her way through.
Despite the foul weather directives from the company — which he surely must have seen and no doubt remembered — Captain Locke was unperturbed by the storm that greeted him in the early morning hours of Thursday, October 24. As he had on past voyages, the experienced sea captain was planning to take a mostly straight course through Lynn Canal from Eldred Rock to Point Sherman. Once he was one and a half miles off Point Sherman, he would plot a straight course past Sentinel Island that would take him between Sentinel Island and Vanderbilt Reef. Even with the relatively modern conveyances of 1918, successfully navigating Lynn Canal was still as touch and go as the earliest days of sail.
Running for more than 140 kilometres between the Chilkat River north of Skagway to Chatham Strait and Stephen’s Passage near Juneau, Lynn Canal’s chief claim to fame is being North America’s deepest fjord. Beneath the churning surface lies 610 metres of water, all of which is guarded by a series of immense mountain ranges that seemingly rise straight out of the depths. During the daytime it’s a gorgeous sight, and in the twenty years since the gold rush, navigation here had improved significantly. In November 1887 J. Bernard Moore, one of the founding settlers of Skagway, left the small settlement that was then known as Mooresville and sailed south for the winter. He didn’t get far — within hours his small ship ran into the same kind of weather that was now bearing down on the Princess Sophia, and he was forced to turn back. After nearly six days of dodging storms and seeking shelter in anchorages tucked into the mountains, he successfully reached Juneau.[5] Three decades later, Princess Sophia could perform the same feat, in the same fearsome weather, in a matter of hours.
As southbound ships neared Juneau the workload on their masters and officers increased exponentially. Instead of the north end’s relatively comfortable width of eight to ten miles, the southern end of Lynn Canal is a maze of islands, reefs, and obstacles with a shipping lane that at the time was not much more than three miles a
cross. After southbound ships passed Berners Bay to the east and entered the aptly named Favorite Channel in order to reach Juneau, they’re met with a triple threat to the west: Lincoln Island, Shelter Island, and Lena Point.
Before ships reach any of these islands, however, there are two more obstacles to face as Lynn Canal is traded for Favorite Channel: the frequently submerged rocky outcrop that is Vanderbilt Reef and its smaller cousin to the south, Poundstone Rock.
Vanderbilt Reef was named not for the famous Vanderbilt family, but for J.M Vanderbilt, who had discovered it five years prior while acting as master of a small vessel doing survey and mapping work on behalf of the United States Navy. When his ship, the Favorite, came across the reef, Captain Vanderbilt determined that it was spread across the surface of the water for about half an acre. More troubling, he found it was nearly completely covered at high tide, and regularly obscured altogether if inclement weather produced large swells that helped to mask its rocky shores. At the most extreme low tide, in calm seas, approximately twelve feet of Vanderbilt reef would poke above the surface of the water.[6] Maps were drawn up, and the reef was eventually named for Vanderbilt by a fellow captain, Lester Anthony Beardslee, who spent many years in Alaskan waters as commander of the USS Jamestown.
Canadian Pacific had, like many shipping lines, tried to petition the American government to place a warning light on Vanderbilt Reef. Their most recent attempt, in 1917, had not brought about any substantial change. The Americans determined that with the Great War still raging on in Europe, putting a warning light on Vanderbilt Reef was simply un-economical. Steamship traffic through Lynn Canal wasn’t what it had been during the gold rush twenty years earlier, and there were more high-priority locations in Alaska deserving of lighthouses and warning lights. As a concession, a small buoy was installed, anchored on a submerged ridge of the reef. In bad weather, the buoy was frequently obscured by heavy seas. At night it couldn’t be seen at all.
Even during daylight hours, the navigational aid on Vanderbilt Reef turned out to be a meaningless concession. Most mariners sailing Lynn Canal had been doing so, completely unaided, since the days of the gold rush. A few had even sailed these waters prior to 1897, when no one except for a few lone prospectors had any real interest in travelling here.
Given the heavy seas, high winds, and driving snow that night, it’s highly unlikely that any of the men in the wheelhouse of the Princess Sophia were actively looking for the Vanderbilt Reef buoy. With the ship pitching and rolling with the heavy seas and the heavy snow and high winds obscuring visibility, their focus was likely concentrated on finding the safest route through the storm to Juneau.
The Canadian Pacific steamship Princess May aground on Sentinel Island on August 5, 1910. All passengers and crew were rescued, and the ship was eventually salvaged.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62 -133388.
Poundstone Rock, on the other hand, lies in a most inconvenient place, nearly dead centre in the entrance to Favorite Channel. When only one ship is passing toward Juneau, with Poundstone Rock to their port side, it presents no navigational challenge. If two vessels are approaching at the same time, the margin for error narrows considerably.
That danger was not lost on the men on the bridge of the Princess Sophia that night. Just a few years earlier, in August 1910, the Canadian Pacific steamer Princess May was sailing these very waters when she ran into trouble. Departing from Skagway with eighty passengers, sixty-six crew members, and a hold full of gold, she was heading on a southerly course through Lynn Canal. Instead of a snowstorm obscuring the view of her officers, it was a thick, soup-like fog that impeded their ability to see ahead of their ship that night. By the time they realized they were headed for Sentinel Island, it was too late to stop the massive ship. At a speed of ten knots, she drove bow-first into Sentinel Island. The force of the collision, coupled with the forward momentum of the enormously heavy vessel, drove her up onto the rocks, where she sat at a peculiar angle, bows high in the air, screws completely out of the water. It was as if she was on some magnificent sloping dry dock that was slowly sinking stern-first into the sea.
Complicating matters was the fact that the ship had the latest in wireless technology, but it was completely dependent on the vessel’s dynamos that provided electrical power to the ship; no battery backup had been installed. Wireless operator W.R. Keller had just enough time to tap out a single message, but it was a powerful one that saved the lives of those on board:
S.S. PRINCESS MAY SINKING SENTINEL ISLAND; SEND HELP[7]
While all those aboard the Princess May had been successfully rescued, Canadian Pacific was less than pleased with the damage inflicted to their ship. Refloated in September 1910, repairs to the Princess May would continue until the spring of 1911, when she finally resumed service. In all, one hundred twenty steel hull plates had to be completely replaced. The largest hole in the ship’s hull had measured over fifty feet in length, and was just one of dozens that had to be repaired before the ship could sail again. The cost to Canadian Pacific was enormous for the time: $115,000 U.S. dollars, plus the cost of compensation to her passengers and the revenue lost while she was out of service.
Eight years later, the men on the bridge of the Princess Sophia are eager to avoid a repeat of that career-ending performance.
Princess Sophia’s whistles sounded again. The snowstorm had lent the night skies a surrealistic orange hue, and increasingly large snowflakes continued to whip past the curved windows of the wheelhouse. Captain Locke and First Officer Shaw stood on opposite sides of the wheelhouse, quietly looking into the darkness. Except for the howling of the wind and the creaking of the ship as she drove through the night, the two men remained silent for the most part. The odd exception was made for commands given to the quartermaster, who would repeat each command as it was given and then confirm to the two senior officers once the ship had reached her desired heading.
Both men were acutely aware that they would soon pass Point Sherman. Once they were there, Locke could take a compass reading to determine the exact course that would allow him to pass between Vanderbilt Reef and Sentinel Island. That is, if he could see the point. With the snow still obscuring visibility, he used an old mariner’s trick. He ordered Princess Sophia’s whistle to be sounded once again. As it cried out into the darkness, the old sea captain slowly shifted his weight from his left foot to his right and back again. Quietly, under his breath, he began to count: One thousand and one. One thousand and two …
The grounding of the Tees would weigh heavily on First Officer Jerry Shaw, who was eager to avoid a repeat of that accident the night Princess Sophia sailed from Skagway.
City of Vancouver Archives AM54-S4 -: Bo P325.1
Locke waited for the echoes from the ship’s whistle to reverberate back from the high mountain peaks of Lynn Canal. When they finally returned, he could gauge — more or less — where she was in relation to the canal itself.[8] Noting the ship’s position, he had either First Officer Shaw or the quartermaster sound the ship’s whistles again. Again, he shifted his feet. “One thousand and one. One thousand and two …”
Satisfied with his findings, Locke now ordered a change in course. Princess Sophia began slowly swinging around to port, lining up on a heading that the men on the bridge believed would lead them safely into Favorite Channel and on to Juneau. First Officer Shaw entered the time and heading into the ship’s log book. It was a little after two in the morning on October 24, 1918.
Exactly what happened in the wheelhouse during those lonely hours after departure from Skagway remains unknown. The thick log books kept in the chart room aboard the Princess Sophia that recorded every change of watch, every course correction, and every anomaly encountered on the journey south were headed for the same fate as her passengers, crew, and cargo. What is known is that the officers on watch that night were certainly not lacking in experience. They drew on that experience to navigate through Lynn Canal just as t
hey always had in inclement weather. If Captain Locke was overconfident in his abilities, it’s reasonable to assume First Officer Shaw’s shakeup in April on board the Tees made him wary of what he could not physically see. He would have been aware of every perceived increase or decrease in the severity of the weather, sensitive to every wayward creak and groan in the ship’s superstructure. He probably hovered near the ship’s compass, taking whatever readings he could.
The real question, though, is whether First Officer Shaw — at half the age, half the rank, and half the pay of his commanding officer — had the courage to pass along any doubts he had that evening to the higher-ranking, more experienced Captain Locke.
In most maritime accidents there is a striking moment of clarity, just before trouble is encountered. The crew of the RMS Titanic experienced this on the evening of April 14, 1912, when they had only seconds to identify the iceberg that lay directly in their path. Orders were given: the ship’s helm was put “hard-a-starboard” and the engine telegraphs forcefully rung to signal “Full Astern.”
Aboard the RMS Lusitania in 1915 fog had prevented the officers on her bridge from seeing much of anything on the morning of May 7th. By the time lunch was underway in the ship’s dining room, the fog had been replaced by a brilliant, sunny afternoon. That sunshine allowed a lookout stationed on the bow to see the wake of a torpedo racing through the water. It took only seconds to reach the ship, but in those few moments clarity came through with surprising force.
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