Stranded (10 page)
Authors: Aaron Saunders
Also located on the bridge â albeit further afar â was Quartermaster Hilmi Masdar, who at age thirty-one had been an able-bodied seaman for more than half his life. He'd been with Princess Cruises since 1991, but that night he had the unenviable task of acting as lookout on the port-side bridge wing, which was open and exposed to the force 3 winds that were racing along the channel toward the
Star Princess
at a speed of ten knots. Even though it was the beginning of summer, the chilled air still nipped at Quartermaster Masdar, who shifted back and forth on his feet in an effort to keep warm.
At the ship's helm, back inside the enclosed wheelhouse, was Quartermaster Basri Hasan, a
forty-seven
-
year
-old seaman who had been with Princess since December 1991. He was responsible for turning the ship when one of the officers or the pilot called out a navigational instruction. Each hour on the hour he swapped places with Quartermaster Masdar on the bridge wing to allow his colleague to keep warm.
Not wanting to contend with the unwanted scheduling effects of an early arrival into Juneau, Second Officer Landi strolled over to Pilot Kutz at ten minutes after midnight and told him that the ship was moving too fast. Landi asked Kutz to swing the vessel around in Lynn Canal to burn up some speed and time, a move that Landi had performed â and had seen performed â many times before. At its widest point, Lynn Canal spans nineteen kilometres from side to side; at their current position over eleven kilometres remained, more than enough space to bring the 245-metre
Star Princess
around. Landi reckoned the entire turn should take about thirty minutes to complete, and would put the ship in better shape to arrive in Juneau on time.
Pilot Kutz told Landi that he was leery about performing the mid-channel manoeuvre, and suggested that they simply drop their speed to below eight knots. With the reduction in propulsion power,
Star Princess
should come in closer to her scheduled arrival time.
This was when a brief tug of war occurred between the two men.
On board modern ships an interesting balance of power exists between pilots and the crews of the vessels they're overseeing. Nowhere is this truer than in Alaska, where marine pilots essentially have control over a vessel for the entire duration of its journey due to the unique navigational challenges these waters present. But it also creates a unique double standard whereby pilots have control over the vessel, but the crew â who remain on board for months at a time â know the performance characteristics of their ship better than the pilot.
The senior officer of the watch is responsible for matching up the ship's plotted track with the current position, and for ensuring the navigation orders of the pilot are carried out promptly. If the senior officer of the watch notices something is amiss and the vessel is moving into danger, his duty is to warn the pilot of any navigational or operational hazards that might exist. If the pilot takes no action, watch officers are to notify the master of the vessel.
Second Officer Landi stared out the windows of the navigation bridge and considered the proposal. Turning to Ronald Kutz, he told the experienced pilot that he was reluctant to drop the speed of the
Star Princess
below eight knots because he felt the ship's performance began to seriously degrade at that speed. The
810-foot
-long ship did not steer well at very low speeds, and Landi wanted to keep his options open in the event an emergency manoeuvre was required. Instead, he again recommended that Pilot Kutz simply bring
Star Princess
around in a “slow starboard swing” that would backtrack around on their current position before rejoining their previously plotted course. With no traffic in the canal, Second Officer Landi's idea seems like a safe and ideal solution that would allow them to arrive in Juneau later while keeping the vessel's speed up, in case anything should arise.
As odd as it may sound, turning ships around in Lynn Canal isn't that uncommon. When other marine traffic isn't present, the manoeuvre represents little to no danger to a ship. In fact, the only real notification provided by Princess on the line's Nav.7.2. Pilotage Information Card about swinging a vessel around in pilotage waters reads: “When a ship is being swung in pilotage waters, the position must be monitored throughout the swing by radar ranges and/or clearing bearings or angles.”
[1]
Pilot Kutz once again voiced his preference to simply drop
Star Princess
's speed to below eight knots, but Second Officer Landi put his foot down and quashed the idea. He ordered Kutz to make the turn.
The two men weren't unhappy with each other; far from it. Pilot Kutz was just as happy to make the turn as he was to slow the ship's speed, but completing the turn required an increased amount of work and vigilance from the entire navigation team on the darkened bridge of the
Star Princess
. While Kutz still felt that decreasing the speed of
Star Princess
was the best option, he honoured the wishes of Second Officer Landi and told Quartermaster Basri Hasan, who had been at the helm the entire time, to bring the vessel around to starboard using a maximum turn of five degrees right rudder. Quartermaster Hasan complied, moving the ship's wheel over to the right. In the channel, the massive
Star Princess
began to slowly swing around to starboard. The clock on the bridge read fifteen minutes past midnight.
Halfway into the turn, at 00:30, Pilot Kutz requested that Pilot Nerup be awakened to relieve him. Kutz's five-hour stint on the bridge was coming to a close, and Nerup would take over piloting duties from him until the vessel reached Juneau in the morning. The bridge was quiet, except for the occasional beep or clack from the navigation equipment. At 00:40, satisfied that the turn to starboard had been completed successfully, Pilot Kutz had Quartermaster Hasan put
Star Princess
back on a course of 143°T, bound for their navigational waypoint at Sentinel Island Light.
Just as Quartermaster Hasan was bringing the ship back on course, relief Pilot Robert Nerup emerged on the bridge. As is common practice whenever a change of watch is taking place, he and the outgoing Pilot Kutz spent about fifteen minutes together while Nerup let his eyes adjusts to the darkness before the bridge. The two men made small talk and discussed the recently performed manoeuvre, without involving Second Officer Landi. This in itself was not uncommon; at the time, pilots typically didn't share information with the other officers on watch, and the officers on watch didn't typically ask. When he entered the bridge, Robert Nerup's presence wasn't even formally announced to the bridge team, nor was his assumption of command, at forty-five minutes past the hour. It was as if he and Pilot Kutz were one and the same.
Before departing the bridge for the warmth of his own stateroom, Pilot Kutz showed the incoming Nerup their current position. He led him over to the ship's automatic radar piloting aid (ARPA) unit, located on the starboard side of the wheelhouse. Kutz also showed Nerup visually â as best he could in near total darkness â their location physically by looking out of the wheelhouse windows. Nerup also pointed across the expanse of the bridge to Quartermaster Masdar, who was still acting as lookout on the exposed portside bridge wing.
At 00:55, Pilot Ronald J. Kutz bid his colleague farewell and exited the navigation bridge via the doorway at the aft end of the room, next to the fire control panel. It had been a long day, and Kutz was looking forward to turning in to his comfortable berth on board the
Star Princess
for a few hours of shut-eye.
On the bridge, Second Officer Landi stared into the darkness ahead. Quartermaster Masdar was on the bridge wing. Quartermaster Hasan held the vessel on her current course. With his colleague gone, Pilot Robert Nerup took his eyes off the bridge windows overlooking the bow and adjusted the ARPA radar's twelve-inch view screen to the six-mile scale, offset to provide a larger view of radar coverage in front of the vessel. He bent over in front of its softly glowing screen as the digital clock in the wheelhouse changed from 00:59 to 01:00.
No one noticed that
Star Princess
was actually sailing one mile to the west of her intended track.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1918
ABOARD
PRINCESS SOPHIA
ON VANDERBILT REEF, ALASKA
In the four hours she'd put between her and Skagway, the
Princess Sophia
had managed a rather remarkable feat. Pounded by heavy seas and enveloped by a raging snowstorm that refused to let up, she had nonetheless managed to travel over forty nautical miles through Lynn Canal. That was a respectable distance, which was no doubt aided by the winds that roared into her stern at up to fifty miles per hour.
However, no one noticed she was completely off course.
At ten minutes past two in the morning, on Thursday, October 24, 1918, the 245-foot
Princess Sophia
crashed head on into Vanderbilt Reef. She was making between eleven and twelve knots at the time, and her twin screws thrashed violently at the water around them as her long slender bow rose out of the water. Driven forward by the still-turning propellers, her bow ripped and scraped its way along the sharp reef, popping rivets and crunching the lowest plates of her hull and keel as if they were made of tin. The reef, barely visible above the churning seas, acted as a miniature launch: rather than crumpling her bow and stopping her dead in her tracks, the massive steel hull of the
Princess Sophia
went up and over the top of the reef that she now travelled along. She continued her violent journey until the propellers came clear of the water. Freed of any resistance from the water, they spun wildly on their shafts, screaming into the night air.
Princess Sophia
was aground on Vanderbilt reef.
Up in the wheelhouse, the sudden impact had thrown Captain Locke, First Officer Shaw, and the ship's quartermaster to the deck. The three men picked themselves up and glanced around at the array of papers, pens, booklets, and navigational instruments that had been thrown to the floor. Out on deck the two lookouts rushed to the side of the ship where, through the darkness, they could see the ocean crashing and receding from a stationary object beneath their keel: the rocky skeleton of Vanderbilt Reef.
Feeling the vibration from the wildly spinning screws, Captain Locke immediately rang “all stop” on the engine room telegraph. The comfortable
whump
,
whump
,
whump
of the ship's engines was replaced with the sounds of the wind howling through the rigging and ripping across the decks. But there was another, far more unsettling, noise that quickly filled their ears after the engines stopped: a low, creaking death rattle that came from deep within
Princess Sophia
's hull and reverberated about every space on board. Made up of straining woodwork, scraping steel, and the dull, thunder-like noise of the sea coming in contact with her keel, the sound was the ship literally being twisted around on Vanderbilt Reef like a cork by the swirling seas and relentless winds.
Princess Sophia
's 278 passengers had been fast asleep in their warm staterooms, but were quickly awoken by the collision. Sudden and violent, the impact threw many people from their berths to the floor of their small staterooms. In the darkness they fumbled for the switches that would activate the electric lights. They also sought out the solace of others; doors were quickly opened and heads poked out into corridors. John (Jack) Maskell, a
thirty-one
-
year
-old from England who was travelling to Manchester, looked out from his own stateroom to see that many women had emerged into the corridor clad only in their nightgowns. Some were crying while others stood in the windowless corridor, frozen in an apparent state of semi-shock.
In the age before public address systems, news of the accident travelled solely by word of mouth. Throughout the
Princess Sophia
's passenger corridors, people were conferring as to what, if anything, they should do next. Lifebelts were generally felt to be a prudent idea, and the ship became a hive of activity, with stateroom doors clattering open and shut. United States Army Private Auris McQueen witnessed two women faint in front of him, while another began to change from her night clothes into her best formal black dress in the middle of the corridor, unconcerned as to who, if anyone, might be watching.
Still, despite the tense faces and worried looks worn by his fellow guests, McQueen noted that there was no panic among the passengers of the
Princess Sophia
. Clad in warmer clothing and strapped into their lifebelts, many began to make their way above decks for the evacuation that, surely, was to follow such an unusual occurrence. The ship had developed a slight but perceptible list to port, and heavy seas continued to pound into her stern and sides, shaking her right down to the keel and amplifying the terrible sounds made by her hull as it struggled to cope with this newfound stress.
Around this time Captain Locke immediately ordered the lifeboats swung out and prepared for launching.
Princess Sophia
's uppermost boat deck didn't travel the entire length of the ship; six lifeboats were mounted on the open deck area around the ship's wheelhouse, while an additional four were situated at her stern above the smoking room, which was separated spatially from the rest of the superstructure. This resulted in a cumbersome process of having to descend one deck, then re-ascend the ladders that led to the roof of the smoking room to swing the last two boats out. The spare boats would be placed in davits once the first two were successfully away.
On the roof of the chart room and the officer's quarters, just aft of the wheelhouse, were more lifesaving conveyances. Known informally as “approved buoyancies,” these were largely kept on board as a last resort. Comprised of two copper cylinders filled with air, they could support twenty-six people if needed, and could be launched by simply throwing them down from the ship's uppermost deck into the water. The drawback, particularly in the frigid waters of Alaska, is that these buoyancies were never intended to keep people dry, they were designed to act as a sort of mass flotation device, with ropes fitted to the two copper cylinders that could be held onto by swimmers in the water. Even if there had not been a storm battering the
Princess Sophia
, taking to the water in one of these during the fading days of October in Lynn Canal would have been tantamount to suicide.
High atop
Princess Sophia
's exposed boat deck, wrestling with the lifeboats was cold, difficult exercise for the ship's crew. Near-blizzard conditions continued to obscure visibility, and high winds and heavy seas slammed into the ship with frightening regularity. Still, the crew â many of whom were little more than young men â worked diligently to prepare the boats and swing them out. During this time a few passengers likely wandered up on deck, but most probably retreated into the ship's public rooms, where they would have been sheltered from the elements. A few hearty individuals may have gone one deck down, where a semi-enclosed promenade provided some protection from the driving snow.
While this was taking place, Captain Locke summoned wireless operator David Robinson to send the call for help. Under Locke's direction, Robinson first sent a wireless message to the United States radio station in Juneau via the ship
Cedar
, which was anchored near Juneau harbour. Identifying
Princess Sophia
by her call letters, VFI, the message stated they'd run aground on Vanderbilt Reef and asked any and all ships nearby to stop what they were doing and come to their aid. The time was fifteen minutes past two in the morning.
Even in 1918 the wireless was still in its infancy, and sending a message directly to the line's headquarters in Victoria â over 800 miles to the south â was simply not an option. Instead, Robinson had to rely on the
Cedar
and the wireless station in Juneau to send messages north to Skagway, where Lewis Johnston would soon be roused from his sleep, and south to the Canadian Pacific offices in Victoria.
In the darkened city of Juneau lights started popping on in homes just after three in the morning as the incredible news began to filter in, much of it in quick, informal wireless conversations that would only be recorded in shorthand in the Juneau Radio log book. These initial messages were short and to the point. They also revealed something of the workload on board
Princess Sophia
at a time when it was unclear to what extent she'd been damaged in the collision. Robinson was keeping his words brief. One of the first messages to go out simply stated, “
Princess Sophia
on Vanderbilt Reef calling for help.”
[1]
Over the next hour, Robinson would tap out six separate variations of this message. At 2:55 a.m. the situation on board appeared to be worsening, with Robinson wiring the Juneau office that the ship was “pounding heavily and lowering boats.”
[2]
A Marconi operator at his post aboard the North German Lloyd liner
Grosserkorfurst
. Early shipboard wireless telegraphy was far from an exact science, and prone to dropouts and delays.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-03109.
At least, getting the passengers into the lifeboats was the plan. Slowly, one at a time,
Princess Sophia
's white lifeboats â weighing roughly 1,700 tons apiece â were swung out on their davits so that they extended over the side of the ship. Although their canvas covers remained on to protect them from the elements, they were ready to be embarked and lowered at a moment's notice. But in the face of the storm that raged on unabated, they were beginning to look about as enticing as the buoyancy rafts secured to the roof of the officers' quarters. Enveloped in total darkness and with the jagged rocks of Vanderbilt Reef immediately below the hull of the still-twisting ship, it was quickly becoming apparent that abandoning the
Princess Sophia
was not really an option at all.
On land, Frank Lowle, Canadian Pacific's agent in Juneau, was one of the first people to learn of the tragedy when his phone rang at 2:15 a.m. At first he almost didn't quite believe what he was hearing; a quick look outside his window revealed the weather in Juneau to be overcast but fair. The conditions that the
Princess Sophia
had been battling all night had yet to reach the city.
Hanging up, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and mentally steeled himself for the start of a very long day. With over three hundred souls stranded on board the stricken vessel, Lowle knew that any rescue attempts would have to be mounted by a flotilla of smaller vessels. At this time of year the largest steamers that could have rendered assistance had the accident happened during the summer months had all gone south for the winter. There was one ship, however, that Lowle realized could help: the
eighty-five
-foot
Peterson
. She had just left Juneau the previous evening bound for Haines, Alaska, a small village on the western side of Lynn Canal just south of Skagway. Lowle picked the receiver back up and rang the up the cable office. He requested the operator immediately telegraph the cable office in Haines. Despite the early hour, Lowle had heard a rumour that the Marconi operator there frequently slept in the office, not far from his set.
This innocuous action created yet another bizarre twist in what was already becoming an eventful Thursday morning. As it turned out the Marconi operator in Haines did not spend the night at the cable office, which was completely empty when the message from Juneau started to come in. For some inexplicable reason, at 2:45 a.m. in the morning on a cold October day, a passerby happened to be walking near the Marconi office when the telegraph from Juneau came through. The message coming through was bleak: “
Princess
Sophia
ashore on Vanderbilt Reef, calling help; hasten Peterson to oblige Canadian Pacific Railway.”
[3]
Only twenty-five minutes after Lowle passed the message along from Juneau, the word was out.
Princess Sophia
was in danger of sinking.