Princess Sophia
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The Princess Sophia was a passenger ship of the Canadian Pacific Railway put into service in 1912 , which was used on the Canadian west coast as a so-called Coastal Liner . These types of ships carried passengers , cargo, and mail between cities on the Pacific coast of British Columbia and Alaska on a route called the Inside Passage .
In the early morning hours of October 24, 1918, the Princess Sophia hit a reef in a storm in the Lynn Canal in Alaska and ran aground. The incapacitated ship remained stuck there for 40 hours without help getting through to him. The storm and high waves pushed the Princess Sophia back into the water, killing all 343 passengers and crew members. It is the largest shipping disaster to date on the North American west coast and the greatest tragedy in the history of Canadian civil shipping after the sinking of the Empress of Ireland .
Equipment and construction
In May 1911, was Princess Sophia of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the shipyard Bow, McLaughlan and Company ordered the Scottish Paisley. She was one of four sister ships that the CPR put into service in 1910 and 1911. The other three were the Princess Alice (3,099 BRT), which was built by Swan Hunter , the Princess Adelaide (3,061 BRT, Fairfield Shipbuilders ) and the Princess Mary (2,155 BRT), which was also built by Bow, McLaughlan and Company. These steamers belonged to the so-called Princess Fleet. This was the unofficial name of the CPR coastal steamers in the first half of the 20th century.
On February 19, 1912, the finished ship left Scotland for Victoria (British Columbia) . The steamer was christened by the daughter of Arthur Piers, manager of the Lake Steamship Department of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The construction of the ship cost 250,000 pounds sterling (after's then monetary value). The transfer trip went around Cape Horn and was led by Captain Lindgren, who had already led several of the shipping company's ships on this route.
The 2,320 GRT ship had a steel hull, a double outer skin, a radio device for wireless telegraphy and electric light . The Princess Sophia's blueprints called for coal as fuel, but shortly after the ship arrived in British Columbia, it was converted to oil. The dining room of the Princess Sophia offered space for 112 guests and had large picture windows through which one could watch the coastal landscapes during meals. There was also a maple- paneled observation lounge for this purpose . The comfortable social hall was equipped with a concert grand piano.
Service as a Coastal Liner
From 1901 the Canadian Pacific Railway had a regular service of steamers on the west coast of Canada and the southeast coast of Alaska. These ships carried passengers, cargo and mail to and from the major cities on this coastline such as Prince Rupert , Alert Bay , Wrangell , Ketchikan , Juneau and Skagway . This important trade route that still exists today is called the Inside Passage. The first coastal liners were still made of wood, but after repeated accidents with the relatively unsafe wooden ships on the Inside Passage, the Canadian Pacific Railway switched to steel hulls.
Many different types of ships were used on this route, but the predominant one was the coastal liner. This type of ship was intended for traffic in protected coastal waters, but was also designed so that the ships could withstand severe weather conditions in the open sea. Coastal liners were often the only connection to the outside world for some remote locations. As a ship of this type, the Princess Sophia was allowed to travel no more than 50 miles from the coast if she was carrying passengers. Its general passenger capacity was 250 people in two classes, but with a special permit the ship could take up to 500 travelers on board.
In the beginning the Princess Sophia operated the route Victoria - Prince Rupert, but from the summer of 1913 the ship made a trip from Victoria to Skagway every two weeks with a stopover in Prince Rupert. On this route, she ran the Princess Mary on a regular line service. From November 1914 she was temporarily used as a troop transport in the First World War.
The last ride
beginning of the journey
On Wednesday, October 23, 1918 at 10:10 p.m., the Princess Sophia left the port of Skagway (Alaska) with 268 passengers and 75 crew members. 30 women and 18 children were among the travelers. The scheduled departure time of 7 p.m. had been delayed by more than three hours. The planned itinerary was as follows: on October 24th stop in Juneau and Wrangell in Alaska, on October 25th in Ketchikan and Prince Rupert, on October 26th in Alert Bay and arrival on October 27th in Vancouver . The captain on this voyage was Leonard Pye Locke, 66, from Halifax , a Canadian Pacific Coast veteran who had been at sea since he was 16 and had worked for Canadian shipping and railroad magnate James Dunsmuir .
Four hours after departure, the Princess Sophia was steaming south through the Lynn Canal , a bay in the Alexander Archipelago on the south coast of Alaska, when it got caught in a violent blizzard . The thick snow, driven by strong northwest winds, reduced visibility considerably. Strong currents and stormy winds easily took the ship off course.
Stranding
At 2:10 a.m. on the morning of October 24, the steamer ran in the Lynn Canal 54 miles south of Skagway at top speed on the Vanderbilt Reef , the top of an underwater mountain 300 feet high. Captain Locke wired the Canadian Pacific Railway office in Juneau, about 20 miles south of his position, for instructions. At the same time he sent for help by radio.
The ship sat so high on the reef that it was not possible to lower the lifeboats . At high tide, the stormy waves would have carried the boats with them and at low tide they would have crashed onto the rocks. The people on board the Princess Sophia were trapped. Wind and waves pushed the ship further and further onto the cliff.
Several ships in the vicinity responded to the distress call and arrived at the scene of the accident, but the Princess Sophia could not be evacuated due to the strong winds and heavy seas . Captain Locke wanted to wait for the situation to calm down. He also assumed that the next tide would carry his ship off the rocks.
Rescue attempts
The first ships to appear were the fishing boats Estebeth and Amy , whose captains wanted to bring them close to the stranded Princess Sophia . Locke told them by megaphone that his ship was safe and that they should seek shelter from the storm in a nearby harbor. In the evening the fishing vessel King and Winge and the navigation craft Cedar arrived. In the meantime, the shipping company had also heard about the accident over the radio, but was optimistic. The management assumed that the passengers would be rescued shortly.
On the evening of October 24th, the electricity on board broke down. Numerous passengers wrote farewell letters and wills. Locke and the rescue ship captains planned to begin evacuating at 5:00 a.m. on October 25, as the next high tide was expected and at least a few feet of water would slosh around the Princess Sophia's hull . So the boats could be lowered and the passengers could be picked up by the other ships. On the night of October 24th to 25th, the passengers therefore gathered on deck and some of the lifeboats were swung out. But none was let down, because the storm took on ever greater proportions. Captain Locke thought it safer not to let anyone off the ship for the time being. The idea of bringing the shipwrecked over with ropes and lifebuoys was soon abandoned because of the squalls and the unpredictable swell.
Downfall
On the afternoon of October 25th the situation became more and more hopeless as the snowstorm became more and more dangerous and the ships had to withdraw. They anchored four miles south of Sentinel Island and discussed how to proceed.
At 4:50 p.m. the radio operator of the Princess Sophia , David Robinson , radioed : “Ship capsizes on the reef. Come immediately ”, followed at 5:20 pm by the message“ For God's sake, hurry up, the water is coming in… ”(the transmission stopped). The Cedar knew about the weak aggregates of the Princess Sophia and advised the radio operator to save the reserves. Robinson replied, “Well, I'll do that. Talk to me so that I know that you will come ”. That was the last radio message from Princess Sophia .
The sea lifted the stern and turned it 180 degrees, tearing the hull from the keel . The keel stayed on the rocks while the rest of the ship slid into deeper waters. The boilers exploded, causing parts of the superstructure to collapse and many people were killed. Oil leaked and spread on the water, suffocating the swimmers in the water. The steamer finally lay on its side around 5:50 p.m. and went under. The Princess Sophia sank with all passengers and crew on board, there were no survivors. At the time of the sinking, around 100 people were still below deck, the other people were washed away.
Aftermath
It was still snowing on the morning of October 26th, but the wind had eased. The Cedar , the King and Winge, and other ships returned to Vanderbilt Reef, where only one of the Princess Sophia's masts was sticking out of the water. Numerous dead bodies and two wooden lifeboats floated in the freezing water. After a short time, the search for survivors was stopped. Captain JW Ledbetter of the Cedar telegraphed "No sign of life, no hope of survivors." Only one small dog was found alive.
Months after the sinking, some horrific corpses were washed up on the coast of British Columbia, as well as personal effects of passengers such as handbags, letters and children's toys. Most of the dead were taken to Vancouver, where they were prepared for burial. Many of the dead had to use chemicals to cleanse the oil-smeared bodies. Many could no longer be identified.
Through several diving trips to the wreck (position 58 ° 35 ′ 23.3 ″ N , 135 ° 5 ′ 43.2 ″ W, ) between August and October 1919 about 100 bodies were found inside the ship. 66 of them were buried in Vancouver's Mountainview Cemetery. In 1920 attempts to rescue the Princess Sophia failed . The reef still shows visible traces of the collision with the steamship. The ship's bell of the Princess Sophia was recovered as part of the rescue effort and handed over to the Vancouver Maritime Museum in 2004. It has been officially declared a national asset.
Investigation of the accident
On January 10, 1919, the meetings and hearings of the committee of inquiry began in Victoria, which should clarify the circumstances of the accident. It was chaired by JD Macpherson, the Wreck Commissioner for the Province of British Columbia.
The summoned witnesses included captains and seamen, officers and engineers, radio operators and crew members of the ships that had come to the aid of Princess Sophia . The most important issues were the weather at the time of the disaster, the behavior of Captain Locke and the question of whether it was possible to rescue passengers on the Princess Sophia after the ship was stranded. Above all, the decision of the captain not to evacuate the ship was called into question. The committee came to the conclusion that at least some of the passengers could have been saved.
literature
- Betty O'Keefe and Ian MacDonald. The Final Voyage of the Princess Sophia: Did They All Have to Die? Heritage House Pub, 1999
- Ken Coates and Bill Morrison. The Sinking of the Princess Sophia: Taking the North Down With Her . University of Alaska Press, Alaska, 1991
- Robert D. Turner. Pacific Princesses - An Illustrated History of Canadian Pacific Railway's Princess Fleet on the Northwest Coast . Sono Nis Press, Victoria (BC), 1977
- Gordon R. Newell. The HW McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest . Superior Publishing, Seattle (WA), 1966
Web links
- The Loss of the Princess Sophia on Gare Maritime
- Princess Sophia on Shipwreck Investigations
- Disaster Strikes ... SS Sophia Sinks
- List of crew members
- Discussion at ancestry.com
- Steamships In Trouble: The Princess Sophia
- CP LINER FOUNDERS IN ALASKA GALE - New York Times report of October 27, 1918
- Vancouver Maritime Museum - The Bell of Princess Sophia
- The Princess Sophia on wrecksite.eu