At 8:00 p.m., on board the Peterson, Captain Stidham finally saw the lights of another ship approaching. It was the Cedar; a two hundred-foot United States Lighthouse steamer equipped with a wireless set.[23] With the winds intensifying, and satisfied that his help would not be needed during the night, Captain Stidham sailed the Peterson fourteen miles to Shelter Island, where he spent the night at anchor, protected from the worst of the weather.
Commanded by John Leadbetter, the Cedar was substantially larger than the other rescue ships that had been coming to and from the wreck throughout the day. As the largest tender ever built for the United States Lighthouse Service, her size and four on-board lifeboats could greatly expedite rescue efforts. In an emergency, up to four hundred people — everyone currently on board the Princess Sophia — could be placed aboard this one ship.
Approaching the wreck as close as he dared, Leadbetter shone his searchlights on the Canadian Pacific ship, illuminating her stranded hulk from the darkness that surrounded it. A strong wind from the northwest had picked back up and was whipping the water into little whitecaps that hit Leadbetter’s searchlights, disintegrating into mist as the wind picked the spray up and flung it across the curved windows of the wheelhouse. The snow had also restarted and sporadic flakes joined the spray, obscuring his visibility. Leadbetter switched the searchlights off, and Princess Sophia disappeared momentarily. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, only her running lights and deck lights could be seen.
Since the Cedar was equipped with a wireless apparatus, Leadbetter wired Captain Locke on the Princess Sophia to ask if her passengers were safe. Locke replied that they were. Leadbetter then had his wireless operator, Elwood Miller, ask Captain Locke if would he like the Cedar to standby and remain underway for the duration of the night, ready to assist; or could he anchor the Cedar on Benjamin Island, just a few nautical miles away?
Weary after a long day at the key tapping out emergency messages, the response from wireless operator Robinson was already unenthusiastic:
CAN ANCHOR IF CARE TO. CAN DO NOTHING TONIGHT.
The message had barely reached Miller’s key when the lights on the ship they had been shadowing for a little over half an hour suddenly began to flicker. Without warning, they were completely extinguished. Not even the Princess Sophia’s running lights remained on. Noticing the change, Captain Leadbetter rushed to the windows and peered out into the darkness as Miller frantically began tapping out another message to Robinson. It went answered.
At 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 24, 1918, the 343 passengers and crew aboard the Princess Sophia were plunged into total darkness. It would be their longest — and last — night alive.
0100 HRS, JUNE 23, 1995
ON BOARD STAR PRINCESS IN LYNN CANAL
On the starboard side of the darkened bridge on board Princess Cruises’ Star Princess, Alaska State Pilot Robert Nerup quietly looked up from the radar console where he has been perched since his colleague, Pilot Ronald Kutz, had departed the bridge five minutes earlier. He was disturbed by what he saw on the radar, but a quick scan of the view wasn’t all that helpful in the fading light. Something was amiss; the ship wasn’t where he expected her to be. The mid-channel manoeuvre in Lynn Canal had left Star Princess about one nautical mile off her plotted course. To remedy the situation and bring Star Princess back on her intended track, Pilot Nerup ordered the vessel’s course altered from 143°T to 126°T. The quartermaster complied, and Star Princess once again began to turn.
Fifteen minutes later, at 1:15 in the morning, Nerup put the electronic bearing line (EBL) on his radar. Intended to show the vessel’s eventual track if maintained on any given course, the EBL is a useful tool for lining the ship up against a given radar plot. In this case, Nerup kept the EBL on the radar screen and ordered another course change, this time to 156°T — a heading he kept the Star Princess on until the EBL on his screen had passed over the location of the Poundstone Rock buoy.
Nerup believed that the thirty degree course correction should have placed Star Princess one full cable — six hundred feet — to the east of Poundstone Rock. Still not quite as much clearance as Pilot Nerup would have liked, so he ordered another course correction, this time to 155°T. He wanted Star Princess to pass at least two cables — twelve hundred feet — east of Poundstone Rock, the minimum safe distance Nerup was comfortable with. At this point passing to the west of Poundstone Rock was no longer an option. Star Princess was already crossing Vanderbilt Reef on the east side. “Once you pass Vanderbilt [on the east side],” he would later testify, “I don’t feel that the option to go to west [of Poundstone Rock] is open any longer.”[1]
Having sailed this route so many times in the past, Nerup likely knew about the Princess Sophia accident and the checkered history of Lynn Canal, but his colleagues on the bridge probably didn’t realize their vessel was crossing over the graveyard of Alaska’s worst maritime disaster. The bridge was silent as Vanderbilt Reef glided slowly past the ship’s starboard side at 01:15 in the morning.
Ten minutes later another obstacle cropped up. Ahead of the Star Princess the deck and navigation lights of another vessel suddenly came into view. Pilot Nerup saw it and established that it was heading toward them based on the positioning of the ship’s red and green navigation lights mounted to both the starboard and port-side bridge wings. It was still off in the distance — probably nine and a half miles — and looked to Nerup as if it was abeam of Aaron Island, six miles to the south of Sentinel Island.
The ship approaching them was the Fair Princess — a smaller, older cruise ship belonging to Princess Cruises. She was headed north through Lynn Canal bound for her scheduled port of call in Skagway, where she was due to arrive later on in the morning. As he watched the new ship, Nerup saw her navigation lights “open” — a term for when both the port and starboard navigation lights are no longer visible. Instead, Nerup saw the masthead light of the Fair Princess, along with her red port-side navigation light. The experienced Alaska State pilot assumed that Fair Princess had altered her course to allow for both vessels to pass port-to-port, or left side to left side.
Still, Pilot Nerup wasn’t sure what exactly the Fair Princess intended to do. He couldn’t tell if she intended to pass Poundstone Rock — which lay ahead of the Star Princess — on the east or west side. The previously plotted track for Star Princess called for the vessel to pass to the east of Poundstone Rock. As things stood, Nerup thought Fair Princess might attempt to squeeze through the channel on the eastern side of Poundstone Rock as well. Despite the uncertainty surrounding her intended course and actions, Pilot Nerup made no effort to call the Fair Princess using the ship’s bridge-to-bridge VHF radiotelephone. Nerup assumed that both vessels were taking the appropriate actions to pass each other safely, and that no further clarification was needed. Essentially, he believed an accident was impossible.
Nerup’s decision actually contravened the recommendations of the Bridge-to-Bridge Radiotelephone Act of the United States. Applicable to all vessels operating in navigable waters of the United States, the regulation requires vessels to transmit any and all information necessary for save navigation. Someone on either ship should have picked up the bridge-to-bridge radiotelephone. No one did. A single radio call would have told Pilot Nerup exactly what he needed to know. Instead, he continued to stare out the windows of the bridge, concentrating on what — if anything — the Fair Princess intended to do.
At 01:30, Third Officer Alcaras took another reading of the current position of the Star Princess and plotted it on the ship’s navigation chart. He noticed that the ship is still roughly 0.3 miles west of her intended track, which had been approved by the master at the start of the season. Third Officer Alcaras wasn’t particularly concerned; the deviation was a minor one, and he had sailed with Pilot Nerup before. He glanced over at Nerup, who was staring intently out the window. Satisfied that the Alaska State pilot had the situation under control, Third Officer Alcaras returned to his charts.
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Second Officer Landi also knew that his ship is running due west of where she should be, but he was also not concerned. Later, both Second Officer Landi and Third Officer Alcaras would testify that neither spoke up because Pilot Nerup “… was piloting the vessel. He [was] a professional; he [knew] where we should be. He [had] been [there] before [and] he [was] making the necessary course changes.”[2]
As if to confirm both Second Officer Landi and Third Officer Alcaras’s thoughts, Pilot Nerup ordered yet another course change at 01:35. He had the quartermaster place the Star Princess on a heading of 153°T. The helmsman complied, and Star Princess began to turn. The event is recorded on the ship’s voyage event recorder (EVR), which had been monitoring and noting the ship’s technical performance all evening.
Despite the course correction, the heading still left Star Princess on a course that was closer to the Poundstone Rock buoy than Pilot Nerup would’ve liked. On a heading of 153°T, the vessel will pass the buoy on her starboard side with less than two cables, or twelve hundred feet, of clearance. If the Fair Princess wasn’t there, Nerup would have put Star Princess as much as eight degrees farther to the west, on a course of 145°T. But with the oncoming ship in his way, Pilot Nerup didn’t have that option.
On board the Fair Princess, the pilot was able to visually identify Star Princess. Travelling at 17.5 knots through the darkness, she was travelling on her own constant heading of 336°T. The pilot aboard Fair Princess felt that both ships would pass with about half a mile in between them, at a point just south of Poundstone Rock. He noticed that Star Princess was travelling on a course that would take her very close to the Poundstone Rock buoy, but he did not attempt to call the ship to inquire if that was intentioned. Like Pilot Nerup, the pilot on board the Fair Princess assumed the passage would go smoothly. Still, he made a point of not ordering any sudden or major course corrections that might spook the bridge team aboard Star Princess and give them reason to worry. Slow and steady wins this race.
At 01:40, Pilot Nerup stood up from his chair on the starboard side of the navigation bridge and walked over to the centre of the room. He stared out the window that ran directly along the centreline of the ship, overlooking the exact tip of the bow many decks below him. Fair Princess was two miles away and closing, and Nerup’s attention was divided between the approaching ship and the oncoming buoy for Poundstone Rock.
Second Officer Landi was standing just to the right of Pilot Nerup, on the starboard side of the bridge near the navigation console. Third Officer Alcaras was hunched over the radar screen on the same side of the bridge. As it approached the ship, both Pilot Nerup and Second Officer Landi lost sight of the buoy. The time was 01:42.
Suddenly the routine silence on the bridge was shattered by a low, grinding, rumbling that came from deep within the hull. Second Officer Landi felt the floor shake. Pilot Robert Nerup felt it too and wondered what the problem was. He immediately made his way over to the starboard side of the bridge and opened the door to the exposed bridge wing. Second Officer Landi had also crossed over the wheelhouse floor, and joined Pilot Nerup on the starboard bridge wing. From their vantage point, high above the sea, both men were able to see the Poundstone Rock buoy glide underneath the bridge wing and begin to fall astern of the still-moving ship, which had dropped to a speed of just 3.5 knots in a matter of seconds.
Alaska State pilot Robert K. Nerup immediately realized what had happened. At almost two in the morning, while the majority of her passengers and crew were sleeping soundly, Star Princess had collided with Poundstone Rock. Nerup was sure of that. The real question was: how badly damaged was she?
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1918
ABOARD PRINCESS SOPHIA ON VANDERBILT REEF, ALASKA
When the lights went off aboard the Princess Sophia, everyone immediately assumed the worst. Aboard the Cedar, Captain Leadbetter’s first thought was that the ship had begun to founder. Nearby, on the King & Winge, Captain Davis was thinking along similar lines. He had the engines put on “slow ahead” and gradually crept closer to the wreck, ordering his men to keep a watchful eye for any evacuation efforts.
Finally the lights aboard the Princess Sophia began to faintly flicker. “Every once in a while, we would see a faint light on the vessel, which would flicker and go out,”[1] said Juneau reporter and accountant J. Clark Readman. From his perch on the deck of the King & Winge, Readman tried to discern what, if anything, he was seeing amongst the blowing snow obscuring his vision. “We could not tell whether they were trying to put up rockets, or whether it was a lantern, or what it was. It was quite a faint light … and things remained about in that condition until daylight.”[2]
The sudden plunge into darkness had the same disconcerting effect on Princess Sophia’s passengers and crew. The darkness removed one of the few remnants of safety. Everyone was left fumbling around in the pitch-dark confines of the ship, causing many cries of confusion. Captain Locke quickly sent crew down into the hull to sound the ship. To his relief, they returned with the word that a steam pipe had broken, depriving Princess Sophia of fuel for her electrical generators. Locke and his officers quickly took charge, explaining the situation to the worried passengers crowding the ship’s social hall and ornate staircase that ran between the awning and promenade decks. Lanterns were affixed to her exterior and interior decks until a permanent solution could be found.
Around 10:00 p.m., wireless operator Robinson got the Princess Sophia’s battery set to work long enough to tap out a message to Captain Leadbetter on the Cedar, the only vessel near the stricken ship that is also fitted with a wireless apparatus. The communication reaffirmed Leadbetter’s belief that Princess Sophia was firmly wedged on Vanderbilt Reef. They agreed to attempt to take off passengers at four in the morning. At 11:45 p.m. the message was passed from Juneau Radio to Frank Lowle, Canadian Pacific’s man in Juneau, who had been alternating between work and sleep all evening, along with his assistant, Smeaton. The two settled in to sleep in their offices until the rescue effort began in the early morning hours.
The Cedar, shown here in the mid-1930s, was commanded by the indefatigable Captain John W. Leadbetter at the time of the Princess Sophia’s sinking.
Cutter History File WAGL-207, USCG Historian’s Office, USCG HQ, Washington, D.C.
Few shots of the Princess Sophia’s interior spaces survive, but this shot of the forward lounge and staircase aboard Princess May are a near match in terms of the layout and interior design aboard the Princess Sophia.
City of Vancouver Archives AM54-S4-: Bo P434.2.
On Friday, October 25th, shortly after 4:00 a.m., Captain Leadbetter ordered the Cedar’s anchor raised. While snow squalls still obscured his view periodically, the real trouble was the wind, which had increased substantially since the night before and was whipping the seas into a frenzy. Captain Leadbetter guided the Cedar back toward Vanderbilt Reef, but was unable to see the Princess Sophia. Evidently the steam pipe had not yet been repaired, as her deck lights were still extinguished.
With her lights out and the weather worsening, the planned early morning rescue effort was abandoned before it could even start. At 5:50 a.m. the Cedar messaged Juneau Radio, stating that nothing could be done until daybreak at the very least, owing to the miserable sea conditions. The operator in Juneau passed the message on to Frank Lowle, advising him that the Cedar would provide another update at eight a.m. Lowle leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes; once again he was in the unenviable position of having to break the news to Captain James Troup, Canadian Pacific’s superintendent of British Columbia coastal steamers.
In Victoria, Captain Troup’s demeanour bordered on apoplectic. Wireless communications with Juneau had been unreliable at best, and what few messages were making it down to the provincial capital were almost universally bad news. While some messages made it through in decent time, others were getting garbled up or simply lost in the shuffle. On several occasions, Troup was simply unable to message Juneau due to the amount of
wireless traffic zipping back and forth between the ships and the offices in Skagway, Juneau, and Victoria.
An excellent example of this had occurred the night before. At 7:00 p.m. Lowle sent a message to Captain Troup, advising him that Princess Sophia was resting securely on Vanderbilt Reef and was unable to float off at high tide. He outlined the various vessels that were around the stricken ship, standing by to take on passengers, but emphasized that this wasn’t possible due to darkness and the increasingly poor weather conditions. By Friday morning that message still hadn’t arrived in Captain Troup’s hands. Although Lowle had left it with Juneau Radio, the Juneau office didn’t find time to transmit it until 2:19 p.m., and it was four more hours before Captain Troup laid eyes on it. The total time for this wireless message, bearing Juneau serial number SRS 10825, to travel from point A to point B was a mind-numbing twenty-three hours.
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At daybreak, Captain Leadbetter got his first good look at the Princess Sophia. Her entire bow was still completely clear of the water, and Leadbetter could see right down to her keel. He also noticed that even at almost high tide the water didn’t even come within three feet of the draught marks that indicated the typical position of the waterline on the ship. Even more incredible, he noticed that the ship had managed to wedge herself into a crevasse on the reef, the sides of which rose up over eight feet above her keel.
Nearby, on the King & Winge, Captain James Miller noticed that the weather was vastly worse than the day before. Snow squalls developed and would blow hard for ten to fifteen minutes before disappearing again. Now that day had broken, Captain Miller manoeuvred his ship closer to the Princess Sophia. “I approached her as near as I could,” said Miller. “I got within 200 yards of her — probably not that far — I could see the men on deck, and I could see that they had sailors suits on, so I must have been pretty close to her.”[3]
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