Sinking of the Sophia: A futile search for survivors and ongoing efforts to remember those who perished
- Laurie Craig
- Oct 26
- 8 min read
Global attention after 1918 shipwreck was on end of WW I and Spanish flu epidemic, but annual memorial and other tributes recall victims of West Coast’s worst marine disaster
By Laurie Craig
Juneau Independent
This is part of the final installment 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.
At first light on Saturday, Oct. 26, the fate of the Princess Sophia was revealed.
“On Saturday morning we were underway early,” described Mr. Readman in a newspaper article published later that day. He was a witness aboard the power-schooner King and Winge that had sought refuge behind an island Friday night. “…but made slow progress out to the reef owing to the unusually heavy head wind. The (lighthouse tender) ‘Cedar’ had preceded us, and we found her lying-in, close to the reef. Looking beyond her, we were simply dumbfounded to see no sign of the Sophia except 15 or 20 feet of her masts sticking out of the water, close to the buoy. Our feelings were hardly describable.”
Sinking of the Sophia series
Part One
• 1918 autumn events reveal community resilience leading up to disaster
Part Two
• ‘For God’s sake hurry, the water is coming into my room,’ final radio dispatch pleads
Part Three
• A futile search for survivors and ongoing efforts to remember those who perished
• Princess Sophia victims remembered at sinking anniversary in Evergreen Cemetery
Following the direction of the strong northwest wind, the vessel motored toward Shelter Island where they found an overturned life boat on the beach. Inside it they discovered a woman’s body. Due to the storm, they were unable to recover the body.
Other rescue boats joined in the search for the 245-foot-long steamship that had struck a reef about 30 miles north of Juneau in a blinding snowstorm at about 2 a.m. Oct. 24. Rafts of thick crude oil, debris and bodies had been driven south by the northwest gale.
“Most of the bodies were found in the drift of oil from the steamer just north of Admiralty Island and west of Douglas Island. They were clothed and encircled with life belts,” Readman added.
The Alaska Daily Empire’s Oct. 26 front page declared, “PRINCESS SOPHIA SINKS AND 350 SOULS PROBABLY PERISH.”
The sub-headline reads “Terrific Storm Drives Princess Sophia Over Reef on Which she had spent Two Days, and She Sinks with All On Board; Empty Life-Boats Indicate That Chance That Any Survive The Disaster Is Very Remote—One Body Found”
Headlines from the Alaska Daily Empire on Oct. 26 and Oct. 28, 1918.
Detailed news filled two pages along with the names of the passengers. The grim work of recovery began.
The Oct. 28, 1918, headline reads “158 of Princess Sophia’s Dead Recovered; All Hope that Any survive is Abandoned.”
Recovered victims’ bodies were taken aboard many rescue boats then transferred to a warehouse in downtown Juneau, most likely the C.W. Young Hardware and Undertakers’ property where Sealaska Heritage’s Walter Soboleff Building and City Hall stand today. Young’s had a long dock and warehouse as seen on the 1914 Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map of downtown.
On Oct. 29, the Empire described the careful work of volunteer teams who met the boats at the dock and removed the bodies for care at Young’s warehouse. Guards watched over the deceased day and night. The heavily oiled bodies needed to be cleaned with gasoline, their clothing removed and valuables secured in B.M. Behrends Bank vaults. With collaborative effort the difficult work of identifying and cleaning victims was done by local volunteers. Women cleaned the women’s and children’s bodies and men cleaned the men’s bodies. The victims were prepared for coffins en route from Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific Railway’s sister ship Princess Alice.
While reports of recovered bodies made headlines, some rescuers stated they could have gotten close enough to the Sophia to remove passengers but were prevented from doing so by the Sophia’s captain. Alaska’s governor disputed that option. He had been on board the lighthouse tender Cedar observing recovery efforts and thus had firsthand knowledge of the immense effort given by Juneau citizens.
On Oct. 29, the Alaska Daily Empire published a report by Territorial Gov. Thomas Riggs. It was compiled from interviews he conducted with lighthouse keepers, ship captains and others. In defense of the Sophia’s captain, he wrote:
“I am confident that no blame for the catastrophe to the Princess Sophia can be attached to Capt. Locke of that vessel or any of the commanders of the Cedar or of any of the gas boats which were in the vicinity at the time of the disaster. The records of the (Sentinel Island and Eldred Rock) light keepers show that at 3:10 a.m. when the Princess Sophia struck Vanderbilt Reef there was a strong northwest gale blowing and a blinding snowstorm, obscuring every landmark…It seems probable that if such transfer (to other vessels) had been attempted it would have been accompanied by a loss of life.”
The controversy regarding removing passengers while the ship was aground would continue for years as Canadian maritime investigators conducted an official inquiry.
The world outside Juneau did not stand still despite the local tragedy. Headlines hinted that the end of war in Europe was near while desperate fighting persisted.
Global influenza was edging nearer. Juneau officials quarantined the town on Oct. 29. Within a week, Douglas-to-Juneau ferries required passengers wear face masks and inspectors checked for signs of illness. Ferry stops at Treadwell were suspended and cross-channel trips were reduced to two per day. The planned Alaska Native Brotherhood convention advertised for Hoonah was postponed.
On Nov. 1, a front-page story in the Empire instructed readers how to make masks. A few days later a Juneau doctor reported 100 cases of influenza were diagnosed in Juneau and one person had died. “The disease is spreading like wild fire,” said Dr. Sloane.
By Nov. 9, two weeks after the Sophia’s sinking, the Princess Alice departed for Vancouver with the coffins of the victims. None of the Alice’s crew were allowed in Juneau due to influenza cautions.
While reading contemporary newspaper accounts provides readers with a sense of tragic immediacy, history gives a more thorough perspective. Two Canadian historians Bill Morrison and Ken Coates wrote a well-researched book titled “The Sinking of the Princess Sophia: Taking the North Down with Her” in 1991.
In the book, the writers state, “On November 9 the Princess Alice, dubbed the ‘ship of sorrow’ by the press, left Juneau quietly, without whistle or sound except for the Captain’s command, ‘Let go.’ It carried 156 bodies — 62 destined for Vancouver, 25 for Victoria and the rest mainly for Seattle.”
Plans had been made for solemn reception of the dead, but the ship arrived in Vancouver on Nov. 11. “It was Armistice Day — a day of general rejoicing,” the authors note. A public holiday was declared and celebrations ensued. The Princess Alice’s cargo of coffins had to wait.
Governor Riggs suspended the search for bodies on Nov. 9. Few additional bodies had been found by that time and the weather threatened efforts. Springtime of the next year revealed more victims on area beaches. One remnant has lingered with this writer since first learning of the Princess Sophia tragedy from funeral records in the 1970s. A woman’s gray calf-skin heeled boot was recovered. Its owner was never identified.
Later Impacts
Not all Princess Sophia victims left Juneau. Forty-six of them are buried in Evergreen Cemetery. The one Juneau death was Customs Collector John Pugh. He is buried with his Masonic brethren.
Of the more than 350 passengers who died from the Princess Sophia disaster one young couple deserve special attention: Alaska Native Walter Harper, Athabaskan and Irish, and his wife of five weeks Frances Wells Harper. Walter was the son of Arthur Harper, a key person in the decades-long hunt gold in Alaska and the Yukon. Twenty-five-year-old Walter was guide and companion of Episcopal Archdeacon Hudson Stuck. Walter Harper had been the first person to stand atop Denali, the tallest peak in North America, as a participant in the 1913 climbing party with Harry Karstens and Stuck. He had met nurse Frances Wells in 1917 at Fort Yukon. When Harper contracted typhoid fever she devoted herself to his care among her other hospital duties. They fell in love. They married on Sept. 4, 1918.
They were traveling south so Walter could join the war effort, but learned en route that the Great War was nearly done. Their plans for him to attend college to become a medical missionary replaced their intention of Harper joining the air corps.
There is irony and perhaps foreboding in the journey that awaited the couple. Five years earlier in August, 1913, Harper and Archdeacon Stuck had boarded the new Princess Sophia in Skagway for the trip to Northfield, Massachusetts, where Harper would attend St. Hermon School. Biographer Mary F. Erlander, in her 2017 book “Walter Harper, Alaska Native Son,” writes on page 82:
“As they waited to board the ship, passengers heard the dreadful news that the steamship State of California had foundered ninety miles south of Juneau three days earlier. The ship had struck an uncharted jagged pinnacle that cut a gash the whole length of its hull. It sank within minutes. Thirty-one of the people aboard drowned…”
Unlike 1918, the August 1913 voyage through the Inside Passage was in “perfect weather,” Erlander writes.
The deaths of both Walter and Frances Harper were mourned in Fort Yukon and beyond. They are buried in Juneau’s Evergreen Cemetery. A metal frame around their large grave marker was added so the 100-year-old lettering could be read.
Ben Patterson, CBJ Parks and Recreation Department landscape supervisor, said in an phone interview on Tuesday, Oct. 22, that 46 victims of the Sophia rest in Evergreen Cemetery graves. He provided copy of a historic ledger page listing names.
Centennial commemorations in Juneau
When the 100th anniversary occurred in 2018, Juneau again demonstrated its special ability to care for others. The Orpheus Project produced an opera recreating the Princess Sophia voyage and fateful demise. Singers, actors and dancers portrayed some of the colorful characters that were aboard the ship and the lives that were lost on that stormy October night. Locally crafted artwork provided the scenic backdrops.
In October 2019, Canadian author Ken Coates presented a lecture at the Alaska State Museum based on his and co-author Bill Morrison’s research for “The Sinking of the Princess Sophia.” A video can be found on KTOO’S YouTube channel titled “At the APK: Author Talk with Ken Coates.”
More recently a statue has been erected at the end of a trail in Tee Harbor commemorating the rumored survival of a dog thought to have come from the Sophia.
Since the anniversary of the disaster, Juneauites have a new sense of the impacts of an influenza outbreak when COVID-19 shut down the community in 2020 and much of the world to prevent spreading the virus. Making masks has a new reality compared to reading 1918 headlines.
The year 1918 was a difficult despite armistice on Nov. 11. Many lives were lost due to war and influenza. In Juneau, citizens stepped up to aid their neighbors who suffered from September floods and landslides. A month later they devoted extraordinary efforts for the victims of the Princess Sophia sinking. Through books, newspapers, photos and local commemorations, the ill-fated passengers live on in history.
• Contact Laurie Craig at lauriec@juneauindependent.com.
