Sinking of the Princess Sophia: 1918 autumn events reveal community resilience leading up to disaster
- Laurie Craig
- 24 hours ago
- 4 min read
Steamship collision with reef north of Juneau 107 years ago killed more than 350 people aboard at a time the town was dealing with other tragedies
By Laurie Craig
Juneau Independent
This is the first of a three-part series about the 1918 wreck of the Canadian Steamship Princess Sophia on Vanderbilt Reef. The sinking remains the West Coast’s greatest loss of life in a maritime disaster. The other articles in the series will be published Saturday and Sunday.
One hundred and seven years ago this week the Canadian Pacific Railway Steamship Princess Sophia ran aground on Vanderbilt Reef, a rocky pillar protruding from Lynn Canal between Juneau and Berners Bay. Hope turned to despair as the ship slipped off the rock after 40 hours wedged even-keeled in a wild October storm.
Considered one of the greatest losses of life on the West Coast, the Princess Sophia wreck killed more than 350 souls in 1918. Recovered bodies were coated in heavy oil that came from the ship. Juneau volunteers cleaned, identified and returned the deceased victims to loved ones far away. Only one Juneau resident was among the dead.
Commemoration ceremony for Sophia victims on Saturday
At noon on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church will hold a public commemoration ceremony at the grave of Walter Harper and his wife Frances Wells Harper at Evergreen Cemetery. The couple are among more than 350 passengers who died when the ship sank on October 26, 1918. Forty-five victims are buried in Juneau’s downtown cemetery.
Context sets the stage for this 1918 event. The passengers who boarded the Sophia in Skagway were departing on the last ship of the season. The northern winter was setting in as rivers froze and inland transportation ceased. Yukoners and Alaskans had to either exit the Interior country or settle in for long months of darkness and freezing temperatures. Work shut down. People departed the north for medical reasons, vacations, family visits or just because they were ready to leave a harsh life. It had been 20 years since the eruption of the Klondike Gold Rush lured 30,000 stampeders within months to Dawson City, Yukon. In the ensuing years life had become more tame and stable as placer gold claims were consolidated by dredge company operations.
Autumn departures were like a sweep of the northland, gathering people in similar patterns to flocks of Sandhill cranes and geese migrating to warmer climates. Yukon River steamboats filled with southbound passengers who concentrated in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, where they boarded the only transportation to tidewater: the narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon Route Railway to Skagway. There, they stepped onto steamships for the easy voyage through the Inside Passage to Vancouver or Seattle.
Beyond the Alaska-Yukon Territories, the global world of 1918 was consumed by two terrifying events: World War I and Spanish Influenza. Together, these events were responsible for a massive number of deaths: 16 million from war and 50 million from the flu, according to the National Archives.
Closer to home, a natural disaster occurred in the autumn of 1918. Juneau endured severe flooding after 6.32 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. Between Sept. 25 and 26, 1918, torrents washed out bridges across the Mendenhall River (built in 1915 downstream of today’s Brotherhood Bridge Glacier Highway location), Gold Creek, Lemon Creek, 9th Street downtown, the AELP flume, flooded and carried away homes in the flats, and took out power poles that left Juneau without electricity for three days.
The heavy rain caused landslides on Basin Road and Thane and flooded the lower floor of the Alaska Native hospital. A slide on Gastineau Avenue destroyed four homes and shoved one of them against the Gastineau Hotel (site of Franklin Street’s outdoor food court today). A second slide caused mud and water to flush into the hotel windows and through the halls, “coming down the stairway like a waterfall carrying Glen Bartlett and Cash Cole on top of it,” reported the Alaska Daily Empire on Sept. 28, 1918. Mine trestles were damaged and railroad track for the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mine was taken out in six places.
Oct. 24, 1918
A month later, while Juneau was still cleaning up from the floods and landslides, a small front page story in the October 24, 1918, Alaska Daily Empire declared, “Sophia Ashore and Passengers To Be Brought Here.” The sub-headline stated, “Vessel Touches on Vanderbilt Reef and Believed That She Will Float at High Tide.”
“Ashore” is a misleading term. Reality was significantly different.
The news story begins:
“In a blinding snowstorm, the steamer Princess Sophia of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, Capt. J.P. Locke in command, went ashore on Vanderbilt reef four miles west of Sentinel Island at 2 o’clock this morning. She had aboard 268 passengers taken on at Skagway. The calls of the Princess Sophia’s wireless were received here about 2:15 this morning. The passengers are all safe, and, as far as is known, the boat is not badly damaged.”
The optimistic news article estimated that two rescue boats, which set off from Juneau for the accident site at 7 a.m. Oct. 24, would return with passengers at 3 to 4 p.m. that afternoon. Other rescue boats were also en route. The tone sounded casual and matter-of-fact. Perhaps the reporter thought of the similar grounding of the Princess May eight years earlier when all passengers and crew safely evacuated and waited for pickup at Sentinel Island lighthouse.
Later that afternoon, an update said the grounded ship’s captain reported the “Princess Sophia was resting easily but that none of the passengers had been taken off on account of the heavy sea running.”
• Contact Laurie Craig at lauriec@juneauindependent.com.
