Stranded (15 page)

The journey continued to get more darkly comical for Private McQueen; the irony that he was on a steamer that had ground out hard on a reef in the middle of a storm was not lost on him. He and the small party of soldiers he was travelling with were so delayed on their riverboat trip down to Skagway that when they arrived there they missed three consecutive steamers south before Skagway's Canadian Pacific agent, Lewis H. Johnston, secured them passage aboard the
Princess Sophia
. In his letter, McQueen noted they only got on board the
Princess Sophia
“by good luck.”
[6]

Aside from the blackout, McQueen wrote to his mother that the only real inconveniences passengers had suffered up until then were the lack of fresh water on board and that the ship had run out of sugar. “But,” he continued, “we still have lump sugar and water for drinking.”
[7]
He also noted it had taken him a while to pen the letter, owing to the fact that the ship continued to be pounded and whipped about by the seas. He still closed jovially enough. “I'm going to go quit,” he writes, “and see if I can rustle a bucket and a line to get some sea water to wash in.”
[8]
If McQueen did manage to find the bucket and line he sought, he might have thought differently about washing in it: the temperature of the water outside was just above freezing. Still, before he rose from his chair and left the warmth of the lounge, he took the time to fold and tuck the note into his pocket.

In all likelihood, many passengers were either penning letters to loved ones during the morning hours or updating their personal journals with firsthand accounts of their adventures. Their personal stories, thoughts, and feelings will never be known. Jack Maskell and Auris McQueen had no way of knowing it at the time, but the letters they penned would form the only real insight into what was happening on board the stricken
Princess Sophia
— because they had the foresight to place their notes inside their clothing.

With the passengers doing their best to while away the long morning, shortly after 9:00 a.m. Frank Lowle messaged the
Princess Sophia
from Juneau. After having worked around the clock for over twenty-four hours with little to no sleep and under increasing pressure from Captain Troupe in Victoria, he was exasperated that his efforts had yet to yield any real results. Now he was at a loss for what to do:

I SENT OUT YESTERDAY THE GAS BOATS ESTEBETH, AMY, LONE FISHERMAN, ALSO KING AND WINGE AND CANNERY TENDERS EXCURSION AND ELSINORE. AMY CAME BACK THIS MORNING. ARE OTHERS THERE? TWO MEN ON LONE FISHERMAN HAVE NO GRUB. WOULD APPRECIATE ANY INSTRUCTIONS YOU MAY WISH TO GIVE ME. STANDARD OIL TANKER IS HERE. CAN YOU USE HER?
[9]

Because of the continued problems with the steam pipe aboard
Princess Sophia
, it was four hours before the message reached her wireless operator, David Robinson. Having been awake since the accident occurred, Robinson was exhausted. Still, he kept trying to communicate with the
Cedar
using his battery backup.

Meanwhile the weather conditions outside were so awful that any rescue attempt was unthinkable. Winds gusting up to one hundred miles per hour tore through Lynn Canal and slammed into the
Cedar
and the
King & Winge
, which were still standing by to render assistance that was beginning to seem impossible. “I couldn't make my anchors hold,” Captain Leadbetter would later say of the hefty
Cedar
.
[10]
He consulted quickly with Captain James Miller of the
King & Winge
, and both men agreed that it would only be a matter of time before they would have to seek shelter. Before doing so they did come up with a plan of action: fitted with a
three-hundred
-
and
-fifty-fathom anchor chain, the
King & Winge
would anchor near the stern of the
Princess Sophia
while the
Cedar
took up a position to the immediate west of her. From there they would run lines to the stern of the
Princess Sophia
, allowing the
Cedar
's boats to run along this makeshift guideline and eliminating the need to launch
Princess Sophia
's lifeboats. In conversation with Captain Locke, all three captains agreed that the current weather made rescue impossible. The next ideal time, they thought, would be around 4:30 p.m.

For the most part,
Princess Sophia
spent her last afternoon on Vanderbilt Reef alone, whipped by the monstrous gusts of wind that raced down Lynn Canal and pounded by the churning seas. Just after one in the afternoon the snow returned full force. Rather than abating, as Captain Locke had been hoping, the storm intensified with each passing minute. In Sitka the barometer had dropped dramatically by midday, making a major storm all but certain. Reflecting on the intensity of the storm later, Captain Leadbetter would call it “a strong blizzard as I ever saw in Lynn Canal. It was a date earlier than I ever saw before; 8th of November, I think, is the earliest.”
[11]

Nearby on the
King & Winge
, just before 11 a.m. Juneau photographer E.P. Pond mounted his camera on a tripod fixed to the ship's deck. Between the pitching ship he was standing on and the stationary one he was trying to photograph, Pond grasped the camera tightly in an attempt to gain a clear exposure. He rattled off a series of shots of the stricken
Princess Sophia
and hoped for the best. Little did he know that these photographs would show the ship's final hours. Compared to the photograph taken the previous morning by the Davis brothers on board the
Estebeth
, Pond's exposures would show a ship surrounded by a vengeful, angry sea, as if the
Princess Sophia
was about to be swallowed up into the gates of hell.

Around lunchtime the lights aboard the
Princess Sophia
blinked back on. The broken steam pipe had been repaired by the ship's understaffed three-man engineering team, who had worked tirelessly through the night to restore power. Now, smoke once again wafted from her funnel uptake, only to be pushed horizontally across the horizon as it emerges.

With the steam pipe patched up and electrical power restored to the
Princess Sophia
, Captain Locke had wireless operator David Robinson immediately message Captain Troup in Victoria, via Juneau Radio:

STEAMER CEDAR, THREE GAS BOATS STANDING BY. UNABLE TO TAKE OFF PASSENGERS ACCOUNT STRONG NORTHERLY GALE AND BIG SEA RUNNING. SHIP HARD AND FAST ON REEF WITH BOTTOM BADLY DAMAGED BUT NOT MAKING WATER, UNABLE TO BACK OFF REEF. MAIN STEAM PIPE BROKEN. DISPOSITION OF PASSENGERS NORMAL.
[12]

Captain Locke also found the time to return Frank Lowle's earlier message, advising him that any and all rescue efforts were suspended until the weather moderated, and that the
Cedar
and
King & Winge
were standing by. Somewhat glibly, he also asked Lowle how the weather was in Juneau. Lowle didn't respond.

Captain Locke's assessment that the current disposition of his passengers was, as he put it, “normal,” was surprisingly accurate. United States Army Private Auris McQueen's letter to his mother was focused more on the logistical challenges that lay between him and his final destination than on the predicament he found himself in.

As soon as this storm quits we will be taken off and make another lap to Juneau. I suppose after 3 or 4 days there, we can go to Seattle, after I reckon we will be quarantined, as there are six cases of influenza on board. The decks are dry, and this wreck has all the markings of a movie stage setting. All we lack is a hero and a vampire.
[13]

McQueen even closed his letter with a darkly ominous line: “We are mighty lucky we were not all buried in the sea water.”
[14]

Nearby, on board the
Cedar
, Captain Leadbetter perked up as his ship's wireless set crackles to life for the first time in hours with a message from the
Princess Sophia
. Leadbetter asked how the ship was faring; Captain Locke wired back that she was taking on water in her forward compartment, but that the ship's engine room, fire room, and aft cargo hold were dry and intact. Although they were still covered with their canvas toppers, Leadbetter noticed that
Princess Sophia
's lifeboats remain swung out over the sides of her boat deck, ready to be boarded at a moments' notice. One of the
Princess Sophia
's crew members had also opened her aft shell door on the starboard side of the ship's main deck. Presumably passengers would be off-loaded from this lower point as soon as the weather allowed.
If
the weather allowed. Between the snow and the
near-gale
-force winds that were whipping the sea into an angry black froth, putting passengers into the boats looks like certain death. “At no time I was there, from the time I saw her, would it have been safe to lower those boats,” Captain Leadbetter would later say. “If they had lowered into the water, the sea would either have upset the boat, or she would have punctured on the reef.”
[15]

Either way Captain Leadbetter cut it, passengers would end up in the bitterly cold water. Hypothermia would take only minutes to set in. For now the safest place they could be seemed to be on the decks of the stranded
Princess Sophia
. He wired Captain Locke, who agreed, and recommended that Leadbetter anchor the
Cedar
until the tide was lower. Locke hoped that the lowering tide would bring better weather and calmer seas.

For the second time that day, the
Cedar
proceeded to her sheltered anchorage. On board the
Princess Sophia
, passengers shuffled back inside the ship's warm public spaces, a handful grumbling as they did so. Since the disaster began they'd been assembled multiple times. Rescue had seemed imminent — even tantalizingly close — for nearly thirty hours. With each passing call to muster that turned out to be a false alarm the message was becoming less and less effective. As he sailed away, Captain Leadbetter wired the
Princess Sophia
:

The engine room on board the
Princess May
illustrates the kind of working environment that engine officers would have had on board the
Princess Sophia
.
City of Vancouver Archives AM54-S4-: Bo P434.3 .

AM GOING DROP ANCHOR NEAR SENTINEL ISLAND. WILL BE OUT AGAIN BEFORE DARK. IF WANT ME BEFORE, CALL.
[16]

At 1:20 p.m. the
King & Winge
was also forced to seek shelter. Captain James Miller guided his ship approximately five miles from Vanderbilt Reef to Benjamin Island, sheltered by the lee side of Sentinel Island, he dropped anchor at 1:45 p.m. and put his small launch in the water to talk to Captain Leadbetter on the
Cedar
. The two men did not know each other — indeed, at the trial two months later, Captain Miller would refer to Captain Leadbetter as “Captain Lindberg” — but both men would play a very important role in the coming hours.

Captain Miller asked Leadbetter what they should do, and Leadbetter replied that there was nothing the men could do until the weather calmed down. Both men were in agreement about one thing: the
Princess Sophia
had survived a full day up on the reef. A day of being battered by the wind and pounded by the waves, not to mention surviving both high and low tides. If the
Princess Sophia
wasn't firmly wedged atop Vanderbilt Reef, she was certainly doing a good job of fooling everyone.

Captain Miller also recognized another dilemma facing would-be rescuers: even if the storm moderated in the next few hours, they would have the almost impossible task of convincing the passengers and crew of the
Princess Sophia
to abandon their large, seemingly secure ship for a much smaller one bobbing in the sea — and they might have to jump into the sea to do it.

“Judging from the way she looked that morning, if I was on the ship, I don't believe I would have jumped overboard to take a chance in the dorry,” said Miller. “The boat looked so safe … judging by the manner [that] she lay there, I didn't think the boat would [ever] come off there.”
[17]

Instead of obsessing over how to get the passengers off, Miller has a theory bouncing around in his head that might make their temporary home safer: if the
Princess Sophia
were to open her seacocks and let the water flood her double-bottom hull, it would keep the ship firmly rooted to Vanderbilt Reef. That way, if the tide did attempt to wash her off, the weight of the water inside her hull would keep her grounded. It might even stabilize her enough to get the passengers off when the weather let up. It was a risky move though, and the
thirty-six
-
year
-old Captain James Miller eventually decided to keep the thought to himself.