The Clara Nevada: Gold, Greed, Murder and Alaska's Inside Passage
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I believe that Paddy MacDonald was in a perfect position to set the charge. He had access to the boiler room, and his presence there would not have aroused suspicion. The presence of the captain or the purser in the boiler room, on the other hand, would have raised eyebrows on the part of the other boiler room crew.
Traveling to Nome after Dawson was probably a smart move on MacDonald’s part. Dawson was clearing out, and Nome was booming. Like Dawson, Nome had all of the advantages of a gold rush town: lots of sheep to be fleeced and a huge flock into which he could blend. Nome was about two blocks wide by five miles long and, in 1900, had a population estimated at twenty-three thousand. With crowds like this, it would have been very easy to remain anonymous.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE $165,000 IN GOLD?
I could find no news article that indicated the safe had ever been recovered. Thus I believe that the gold never made it to shore. I checked with corporate records in Oregon and Washington and found nothing under any name that was familiar. The records of C.H. Lewis do not indicate a partnership with any former member of that crew.74
If I had to say where I believed the gold could be found, I would say it was fairly close to shore somewhere between Flat Bay and Seduction Point. I am inclined to believe that the gold would be on the western side of the channel, since the Chilkat Peninsula would have given the lifeboat protection from the wind. However, if the gold were to be found on the eastern shore of the channel, I would not be surprised. The lifeboat may have run with the wind, and depending on the angle of the blast, the lifeboat could have been swept eastward.
Of course, where the lifeboat actually swamped is speculative. The thieves quite likely loaded the gold into the lifeboat and made for shore. But I doubt that they made it. They were in an old lifeboat in heavy seas with nine hundred pounds of gold weighing them down. Most likely the weight splintered the boat close enough to shore for the men to swim to safety.
Even if they were in one of the metallic lifeboats, the trip would have been no less treacherous. Those lifeboats were fairly long, and with only two men aboard, it would have been hard to row, much less navigate through fifteen-foot waves. Further, it is quite reasonable to assume that a metallic boat would have been just as sluggish in the pounding surf near the shore as a wood boat.
Depending on where the gold went down, it could be in water as shallow as thirty feet or as deep as three hundred. But, I suspect, the gold is in fairly shallow water. Whoever was in that lifeboat had to be able to make it to shore through twelve- to fifteen-foot waves and ninety-mile-an-hour wind. Had the lifeboat swamped too far from shore, the thieves would never have made shore.
While the newspaper says that the gold was in dust form, I am fairly certain that it was boxed. If a man was coming onboard with $30,000, for instance, he would not have walked on board with 125 pounds of gold in a canvas bag. He would have brought his bounty aboard in several wooden crates. That would have made it easier to carry. Even more likely, the gold would have been in doré bars, crude bullion.
With regard to the physical size of the boxes, the larger ones were about two feet long, a foot high and possibly six to nine inches wide and bound with steel hoops. I am making this estimate based on an examination of such boxes in a front-page photograph, perhaps the first half-tone ever published in the Post-Intelligencer, on July 19, 1899.75 Smaller amounts would have been placed in smaller boxes.
But the important consideration is that the gold dust would not have been loaded loose. It would have been loaded in boxes that would have made it easier to handle. When the lifeboat sank, the gold in the boxes sank as well. I’m also inclined to believe that when the gold went down, all of it hit the bottom in the same general area.
From an examination of the nautical chart, I would say that the area where the lifeboat sank could best be described as a ledge above the steep slope of a submarine mountain range. The Chilkat Inlet is, after all, an underwater fjord. But it does have a lip. There appears to be a shelf of about 100 yards in width down to about 15 fathoms (90 feet), running along the side of the Chilkat Peninsula for the 4 miles between Flat Bay and Seduction Point, but that shelf is very narrow, possibly no more than 100 yards wide. Then there is an abrupt drop-off into water that is 80 to 100 fathoms (480 to 600 feet) deep. On the east side of the channel, the shelf probably runs about 8 miles and is also no wider than 100 yards.
However, I think the gold is in the shallow water. The lifeboat had to have been within one hundred yards of shore for the survivors to have made it to dry land. I also believe that the waves were probably more vicious in the shallower water and that must have been the deciding factor.
While the boxes may have long since rotted away, the gold is most likely still there, all eleven thousand troy ounces of it, waiting for some lucky skin diver to stumble upon it.
Whoever finds that gold, if it is actually there, will be the one to write the last chapter on the saga of Alaska’s ghost ship, the Clara Nevada.
Appendix
PARTIAL LIST OF PASSENGERS OF THE CLARA NEVADA DRAWN FROM ALASKAN, CALIFORNIAN AND SEATTLE NEWSPAPERS
Banks, Robert Bruce76
Bonicke, F. (Juneau)—also spelled Benicke
Brenneker, A. (Portland)
Hemming, William—probably a stowaway and a survivor
Hill, Thomas R.
Holgate, E.T. (Portland)
Hunt, Harry (Montana)
Kasey, George—probably a stowaway and a survivor
Lee, Dr., and wife
Logsdon, George—probably a stowaway and a survivor
Londer, M.—could also be Lander or Linder
Malloy, William—corpse being transported south77
Mead, Dr. C.A.—reported lost on the Clara Nevada in the Olympia Washington Standard, February 25, 1898, but “returned home on the 23rd;” therefore, he probably was not a passenger or a survivor
Noois, Colonel A.
Novis, A.
Noyes, Al (Juneau)—this man and the two above could be the same man
Ross, A.P., wife and child
Saportas, E.W.
Selang, A.J. (New York)
Smith, ?
Turner, Frank (Colorado Springs)
Whitney, Frank (Seattle)
Wilkins, Jesse (Portland)
Wroe, George—could be George Roe, a crew member
Eskimo baby78
CREW OF THE CLARA NEVADA79
Beck, George Foster, purser—only body recovered (Portland)
Benton, H.M., night watchman
Bowen, Harry, second officer (San Francisco)
Bowman, Frank, mess boy (Connecticut)
Butler, John L., cabin boy and waiter
Carey, Billy, fireman
Cunningham, Dan
Dehm, Earnest “Doughnuts,” porter (Seattle)
Emery, Frank, steward’s assistant80
Finnigan, Arthur, fireman
Gibson, ?, second officer
Hill, George G., steam fitter
Hunt, Charles, assistant steward
Hurley, Bat, quartermaster
Jackson, W.J., steerage steward
Jacobs, W.A., carpenter (Portland)
Kelly, Ed, pilot (Port Townsend)
Kelly, ?, waiter
Lewis, C.H., captain—survivor
MacDonald, Paddy, fireman—possibly a survivor
Moser, ?, assistant engineer (Seattle)
O’Brien, Edward, quartermaster
O’Donnell, Frank, steward—reported to be “on one drunk the whole trip through”81
Perkins, C.E., cabin boy and waiter
Perkins, Walter
Reed, David, engineer (San Francisco)
Roe, George, cabin boy (Tacoma)
Rogers, George, freight clerk—may not have been on boat82
Williams, Thomas, first assistant engineer (San Francisco)
Notes
1. THE MARITIME RUSH TO SKAGWAY AND DYEA
1. Post-Intelligencer, “Balloon is Completed,�
� February 17, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “Reindeer to Carry Mail,” March 30, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “Making Ready for Alaska,” March 15, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “To the Klondike by Canoe,” March 18, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “Camels for Icy Alaska,” February 24, 1898; Terrence Cole, Wheels on Ice (Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, 1985); Post-Intelligencer, “Making Ready for Alaska,” March 15, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “Fatal to Reindeer,” March 28, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “The Famous Tin Boat and her Scandinavian Owners,” November 5, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “Want to Fly to Klondike, January 22, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “Reindeer for the Camps,” August 24, 1897; Post-Intelligencer, “The Aerial Voyager” (with freehand drawings), August 18, 1897.
2. McCurdy, The H.W. McCurdy, 18.
3. Post-Intelligencer, “Say They Were Kidnapped,” September 20, 1899; Post-Intelligencer, “Prayed on the Icy Deck,” July 5, 1899; Post-Intelligencer, “Terrible Tale of the Sea,” February 21, 1899.
4. Post-Intelligencer, “From Inspector Dument,” February 16, 1898.
2. THE WRECK OF THE CLARA NEVADA
5. I could not find a specific location named Seymour Narrows on any current map. Because of similar geographic phrases, I assume it to be in British Columbia, probably in the Queen Charlotte Strait area, between the northern end of Vancouver Island and the mainland.
6. Post-Intelligencer, “Steamer Eugene Is Abandoned,” September 7, 1898.
7. Post-Intelligencer, “Steamer Libeled,” February 9, 1898.
8. Pony Express, “E Clampus Vitus Barnstorms Old San Francisco,” March 1940; Pony Express, “Once Historic Landmark of the Comstock,” June 1940; Pony Express, “The Great Emma Nevada,” April 1941; Pony Express, “Hell-Fire Bill from Gold Hill,” July 1945. William “Billy” Metson’s life was so colorful that it was used as a model for the character Billy Wheaton in Rex E. Beach’s immortal novel The Spoilers.
9. Seattle Times, “Clara Nevada Rumor,” February 15, 1898.
10. Wreck record in the Alaska Packers Association Records, Z.J. Loussac Library, Anchorage, Alaska. For the historian interested in details, the record was signed by H.P. McGuire, president of the Pacific & Alaska Transportation Company. The vessel’s number was 127222. W.W. McGuire, the other half of the McGuire brothers, died in 1937. An obituary for W.W. McGuire can be found in the Oregonian on December 19, 1937. Of passing interest, the Clara Nevada was reported to have “yellow trimmings,” according to the San Francisco Call on February 16, 1898.
11. Seattle Times, “Another Phase of It,” February 23, 1898.
12. Sitka Alaskan, “Loss of Clara Nevada,” February 19, 1898. To be consistent with current maps, all references to the community of Seward City will be listed as Comet.
13. Deputy Collector C.S. Hannum to Collector of Customs, Sitka, February 18, 1898, letter, Alaska State Library, Juneau. Of passing interest, the debris was still on the shores of the canal the next year because a portion of the ship’s rail was turned into a walking cane, (Seattle Daily Times, “Moran Fleet,” April 4, 1899).
14. San Francisco Call, “Fruitless Search for Survivors,” February 16, 1898.
15. Post-Intelligencer, “Saw Nevada at Juneau,” February 15, l898.
16. Seattle Times, “Divers Find the Hole,” February 25, 1898.
17. Newspaper accounts of the actual number of passengers varies. The official wreck report, filed April 25, 1898, lists passengers as “from 30 to 40” and crew of “about 42.” The wreck report can be found in the Alaska Packers Association Records, microfiche, Z.J. Loussac Library, Anchorage, Alaska. The San Francisco Call noted in “Vain Quest for Bodies of the Lost” on March 5, 1898, that “it is the rule that bodies of people drowned in Alaska seas are never recovered. Once drowned they never rise to the surface. It is impossible to tell into what subterranean cavern the deep undertow and currents take them and then the waters are filled with sharks which swim in both depths and shallows.” However, according to the United States Coast Guard on April 20, 1993, the primary reason that corpses in Alaskan waters are not recovered is that “cold water doesn’t allow them to decompose. Decomposition creates gases which bloat bodies and make[s] them buoyant enough to float to the surface.”
18. Victoria Daily Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia), “Shipwreck and Death,” February 22, 1898.
3. THE SEATTLE TIMES AND THE POST-INTELLIGENCER DO BATTLE
19. New York Times, “Klondike Steamer Lost,” February 15, l898.
20. Seattle Times, “A Tale Most Terrible,” February 18, 1898.
21. Seattle Times, “A Most Cowardly Attack,” March 1, 1898.
22. Seattle Times, “NEVADA,” February l5, 1898.
23. Seattle Times, “Divers Find the Hole,” February 25, 1898.
24. Seattle Times, “Pathetic and Startling,” March 10, 1898.
25. Seattle Times, “Clara Nevada Rumor,” February 15, 1898.
26. Seattle Times, “About the Clara Nevada,” April 5, 1898, and April 7, 1898.
27. Scientific American, October 15, 1898, 251. This number is suspect; however, some sources show as many as sixty boats operating on the Yukon River in 1898.
28. Post-Intelligencer, “Solving Mystery of Clara Nevada,” March 13, 1908.
29. Gordon Newell to Steven C. Levi, personal correspondence, University of Alaska, Anchorage, archives.
30. James L. Nelson, conversations with the author, September 6, 1991 and May 26, 1992.
4. “CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER”
31. Daily Alaska Dispatch, “Relics from Clara Nevada Brought Here,” June 28, 1916.
32. Dyea Trail, “The Clara Nevada,” March 11, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “Boilers did not Explode,” March 3, 1898.
33. Daily Alaska Dispatch, “Skull Found May be from Burned Boat,” May 7, 1918. In an earlier article—Dyea Trail, “Body Found,” March 11, 1898—it had been stated that the mother of George Foster Beck was “bearing the expense of the search” for Beck but not that there was a reward for recovery of the body. Of absolutely no historical significance but for a passing note of humor, the man who made the discovery of the skull was William Swimlyornam.
34. Legend has it that the Seaolin was supposed to have been named “Sea Lion” but the painter had visited a few saloons on his way to work. Boehm, Glacier Bay, 40.
5. THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS
35. Anchorage Times, “Miner Killed at Denali Mine,” May 31, 1935. This Paddy McDonald’s real name was Patrick Joseph McDonald. He was born in April 1874. It is doubtful that this is the same Paddy MacDonald of Teller, for the Teller News referred to him as an “old timer.” In 1903, this McDonald would have been twenty-nine years old, hardly an old-timer.
36. Post-Intelligencer, “Rosalie from the North,” February 15, 1898.
37. The signature was found on the legal papers with regard to the William H. Evans.
6. WHAT HAPPENED TO C.H. LEWIS?
38. Shipping Articles in RG21, USDC-Alaska, Civil #859, Alaska Packers v. Steamship William H. Evans at the National Archives–Alaska Region. For no known reason, it is located in the Third District Court Civil Records, circa 1946.
39. Ibid.
40. Lewis Klondike Exploration Company incorporation papers, state of West Virginia. The firm was involuntarily dissolved in 1947 because no request was made to extend the life of the corporation.
41. Wreck report, Alaska Packers Association Records; National Archives to Steven C. Levi, correspondence, October 3, 1990, Clara Nevada files, Steven C. Levi papers, University of Alaska, Anchorage, archives.
42. Post-Intelligencer, “Eugene in Courts,” May 25, 1898. The copy of the paper in which this story appeared was so faded that it was virtually unreadable.
43. Post Intelligencer, “On Two River Steamers,” June 22, 1898.
44. Post-Intelligencer, “Twelve River Steamers,” May 27, 1898; Post-Intelligencer, “Today’s Alaska Fleet,” June 20, 1898.
45. Post-Intelligencer, “Yesterday’s Big Exodus,�
� June 22, 1898.
46. Post-Intelligencer, “Strange Tale of the Seas,” August 21, 1898.
47. Arthur E. Knutson, “Evans” (unpublished, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, 1990).
48. Seattle Times, “Yukon River Boats,” August 31, 1898; Seattle Times, “At the Ocean’s Bottom,” July 20, 1898; Seattle Times, “Trouble with Tows,” July 7, 1898.
49. Post-Intelligencer, “Strange Tale of the Seas,” August 21, 1898.
50. Knutson, “Evans.” His source of information is listed as the Post-Intelligencer for August 26, 1898, and September l7, l898. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of these quotes, but I could not find articles in the paper on those days. However, on the microfilm I was researching, the paper was illegible. Assuming that Knutson read the stories from a bound volume, the stories would be easily identifiable. Knutson’s other references to articles, allow me to add quickly, are accurate, though they may be a day or two off.
51. Post-Intelligencer, “Along the Yukon River,” July 15, 1898. I do not know why the newspaper referred to the “low water line” rather than a high water mark. Equally mystifying is the article “Yukon River Falling,” in the August 27, 1898 edition of the Post-Intelligencer.
52. Baltimore City Directory; Melinda K. Friend, assistant manuscripts librarian, Maryland Historical Society, to Steven C. Levi, personal correspondence, August 2, 1990, University of Alaska, Anchorage archives.
53. United States Bureau of the Census, 1900.
54. Advertisement in the Daily Astorian, October 15, 1880. I could not locate a “Nestucca Bar,” but I was able to find a Nestucca River; I presume the bar is at the mouth of the waterway. The Nestucca River enters the Pacific Ocean at Pacific City and crosses Highway 101 between Hebo and Beaver.
55. Post-Intelligencer, “What Steamer Is This?” February 15, 1898; Lewis & Dryden’s, 290; San Francisco Call, “A Horror at Sea,” December 22, 1887; Sacramento Daily Record, “Awful Disaster,” December 22, 1887.