Stranded (5 page)

The Arctic Brotherhood Hall. Built in 1899, it now houses the Skagway visitor's centre. The Canadian Pacific Steamship Company
offices were located just next door in 1918, in the blue-and-white building that now houses one of Skagway's many jewellery stores.

One man, however, did come in out of the rain and step onto the brightly lit decks of the
Princess Sophia
while she was docked in Juneau. Customs Collector John Pugh was travelling as a non-revenue passenger up to Skagway, where he planned to assist with the crushing mob of people looking for passage south. As bad as it was, the issue of the passengers was almost secondary to the issue of cargo; with Christmas just around the corner, Pugh knew the task ahead would be gargantuan on both fronts. He was scheduled to sail with the
Princess Sophia
back to Juneau, where he would disembark on Thursday.

Then there was the issue of the flu outbreak on board. But Locke needn't have worried about finding suitable applicants willing to leave Skagway on a moment's notice at this time of year. As quickly as he had arrived at the Canadian Pacific office in Skagway, the portly sea captain found himself walking briskly back up Broadway toward his ship with ten new men in tow. For the new hires, it's highly probable that this was a spirited walk filled with hollers and calls out to friends; six of Locke's newest recruits had been poached right from the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad's complement of waiters, and the small group would have had to walk across the tracks laid down the centre of Broadway and straight past the WP&YR's offices to get to the piers and their new home on board
Princess Sophia
. They weren't merely leaving Skagway for good: they were moving up to bigger and better things, and likely weren't shy about letting the townspeople know.

Juneau, Alaska, in the early 1900s. This is where Customs Collector John Pugh embarked
Princess Sophia
on the evening of Tuesday, October 22, 1918, and where she was destined to arrive on the morning of Thursday, October 24, 1918.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02102.

Broadway Street in Skagway, facing the cruise ship docks. In 1918 the WP&YR tracks would have run clean down the centre of the street, but many of the buildings remain largely unchanged.

Now fully crewed, Captain Locke also took the time to visit Dr. William Gardner Gabie at his office in the White Pass Hospital on Broadway and 11th, at around 4:00 p.m. that afternoon.
[6]
Dr. Gabie's official title was city health officer, which is the polite way of saying he was the only man in town to consult on medical issues.
[7]
Dr. Gabie had been summoned to the
Princess Sophia
when she had arrived in Skagway to determine the extent of the possible influenza outbreak on board, but was stopped at the top of the gangway by Second Officer Frank Gosse, who refused to let Dr. Gabie embark. Not wishing to risk potentially spreading the disease to the residents of Skagway with winter closing in, Second Officer Gosse offered to orally describe the symptoms of the six ill crewmembers, who were mostly stewards, to Dr. Gabie. “They all took sick about the same time,” Gabie would later recall. “They had all taken down with chills and fever and prostration.”
[8]

Dr. Gabie “gave the officers instructions on how to take care of those patients.” Before going back uptown to have influenza treatments prepared by the town druggist and left at the Canadian Pacific offices on Broadway for pickup, he requested Second Officer Gosse “see the Captain,” and asked that he be sent up to Gabie's office to discuss the situation on board the
Princess Sophia
.

Gabie had known Captain Locke for many years, and the doctor now welcomed Locke into his office warmly. Their half-hour conversation, however, revolved mainly around the crewmembers who had fallen ill. Locke wasn't particularly frightened of the prospect of an influenza outbreak on board his ship, and Dr. Gabie would later testify that he seemed “just as he always was”
[9]
during their brief visit. Satisfied that Captain Locke had the situation under control (and reassured that he kept a small provision of “medicinal” rum on board at all times, tucked away under lock and key), Dr. Gabie said goodbye to Captain Locke, who returned to his waiting ship.

Locke himself wasn't immune to health issues. During the winter of 1917 Canadian Pacific Captain Arthur Slater was unexpectedly called in to relieve Captain Locke of his command on board the
Princess Sophia
. Locke had been complaining of ill-health, and head waiter Wolfe Templeman had overheard the captain mention his general discomfort while dining with several passengers at his usual table. Templeman waited on Captain Locke's table from June 30, 1917, until he signed off in April of 1918. He would have the good fortune to not be present on board during
Princess Sophia
's last trip.

What was causing Locke such difficulty during the winter of 1917 is not known, but it seems to have been temporary. Templeman records that Captain Locke resumed command of
Princess Sophia
from Captain Slater on the following voyage. If his illness the previous winter troubled him at all now, Captain Locke never let on.

When Locke arrived back at his ship, Second Officer Frank Gosse and Third Officer Arthur Murphy seemed to have a handle on the cargo situation. The two men had been working diligently ever since
Princess Sophia
had arrived in Skagway to supervise the offloading of her cargo that was to remain in the north. Now they were in the midst of trying to manoeuvre thirteen horses belonging to Herb McDonald across the dock apron and onto the ship via her exterior shell doors. McDonald had been a fixture in Dawson City for as long as most folks could remember, but he too was heading south for the last time, intending to transport his horses and burgeoning freight business to Vancouver. He looked on with his wife, Emma, as his strong equines were loaded onto the ship under the direction of James Kirk. A pioneer of the 1898 gold rush, Kirk had been hired by McDonald to oversee the transportation of his horses south. Unlike McDonald, however, Kirk fully intended to return to Dawson City at the next available opportunity in order to be with his wife. Even at fifty years of age, Kirk still wasn't finished with the Klondike, and no doubt saw McDonald's offer as a good chance to make some additional money before the lean winter months hit.

Cargo is loaded onto a ship in Cordova, Alaska, in the early 1900s. The scene on the Skagway docks would have been much the same, with cargo and passengers coming and going.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02263.

McDonald's thirteen made up the majority of the twenty-four horses that would be loaded onto the
Princess Sophia
, but there was one horse that had already attained almost mythical status by that night. Walter Barnes, a Dawson-area miner for nearly two decades, was making the trip south solely to accompany his loyal horse, Billy, to a farm in southern British Columbia where he would live out his last days. For eighteen years, the pure-white horse known fondly as “Old Billy” had served Barnes well, pulling carts loaded with gravel and gold through a 1,
700-foot
-long tunnel day in and day out. The resulting haul of gold had made Barnes a wealthy man, but Billy was now too old to work. Rather than have him sent to the slaughterhouse — or simply left to die on his own, which was not at all uncommon when animals had outlived their usefulness in the north — Barnes arranged to have Old Billy put aboard the
Princess Sophia
. He would make the journey south with his beloved companion and winter at his home in Vancouver before returning to Dawson City the following spring.

Canadian Pacific's Skagway agent, Lewis Hellett Johnston, had also placed five dogs on the cargo manifest. Along with the twenty-four horses they were the only living cargo placed aboard
Princess Sophia
that evening. The animals would turn out to be far less problematic than the other pieces of cargo waiting in the brightly lit sheds. With so many passengers looking upon this voyage not as a journey south but as an
exodus
, the cargo manifest was more varied than usual. Passengers were literally bringing their whole lives with them, regardless of what that entailed. Those who were staying behind to brave the winter in the north were also using
Princess Sophia
as a mail system; she carried with her several tons of Christmas presents destined for friends and relatives down south.

In all, five tons of cargo of varying shapes and sizes would be loaded on board
Princess Sophia
for her southbound voyage, along with passenger baggage marked “Not Wanted On The Voyage” that would be stowed below until arrival in their port of disembarkation. With the late arrival of the White Pass & Yukon Route “boat train” from Whitehorse at 5:30 p.m., the simple act of loading all the baggage the passengers streaming off the train had brought with them and processing it for sailing would take a full hour and a half. Double-checking everything on the manifest was left up to
twenty-year
-old David Robinson,
Princess Sophia
's young wireless officer. With little for him to do while his ship was moored, Robinson moonlighted as the ship's freight clerk when she was not at sea.

The scene that would have greeted those making their way to Skagway from the north aboard the WP&YR “boat train” was a bleak one. Outside of small towns like Carcross, civilization wouldn't be seen until they pulled into town.