Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class SYMHC Classics: SS Princess Sophia About this episode This 2018 episode covers the sinking of the SS Princess Sophia, a massive tragedy for both Canada and the United States. But it was also really overshadowed by the end of World War I and the flu pandemic.
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1:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Happy Saturday. Our episodes this week were about Walter Harper, who died in the SS Princess Sophia disaster. We have a previous episode about that disaster, which is today's Saturday classic. This episode talks about what an enormous tragedy this was for the people of the area beyond the deaths of Walter Harper and his wife Frances.
1:27 Holly Frey? This episode originally came out on October 15, 2018.
1:34 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
1:49 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
1:50 Tracy V. Wilson? We're coming up on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Princess Sophia, which sank in the Lynn Canal in southeastern Alaska on October 25 of 1918.
2:01 Tracy V. Wilson? This was a massive tragedy for both Canada and the United States. It had a huge impact on Alaska, British Columbia, and Yukon. But it was also really overshadowed by the end of World War I and the flu pandemic that was going on by that point. So it has been nicknamed the unknown Titanic of the West Coast.
2:21 Holly Frey? In 1918, the primary way to get to many parts of Alaska and Yukon was by water. Ships carried passengers, cargo, and mail to ports along the coast of Alaska and British Columbia, and people traveled by river inland from there. And to some extent, this continues to be true today. Although there are more roads and airplanes going to and from these places, boats still continue to be a major way to travel.
2:47 Tracy V. Wilson? One of the companies that was providing passenger and cargo service along the coast of Alaska and British Columbia was Canadian Pacific Railway Company, which is often abbreviated as CPR. It still exists today as Canadian Pacific. CPR started a steamship business, which was called Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, in the late 1800s. Their first routes were trans-Pacific, and they connected Vancouver, British Columbia, with Asia. Soon, the company started offering transatlantic service from the East Coast of North America as well.
3:20 Holly Frey? In the early 20th century, Canadian Pacific Steamship Company started providing service up and down the coast of the Pacific Northwest. To that end, CPR purchased Canadian Pacific Navigation Company in 1901. The newly purchased company had been carrying passengers and cargo along the coast of British Columbia, as well as through Alaska's Inside Passage. So the Inside Passage is a collection of fjords, channels, and straits that stretches more than 1,000 miles, that's about 1,600 kilometers, from Seattle, Washington, north through British Columbia to Skagway, Alaska.
3:57 Tracy V. Wilson? The vessels that CPR operated along these routes were nicknamed the Princess Fleet, and all the ships had the word Princess in their names. The Princess Fleet grew really quickly during the first two decades of the 20th century, and the company was supporting the tourism industry in addition to carrying the workers, families, cargo, and mail that needed to get around that area.
4:18 Holly Frey? This growth didn't really slow down during World War I, although some of CPR ships were requisitioned for the war effort. People still needed to get to and from all these places, and the best way to do it was still by water. People from the US and Canada who had the means to travel for fun were also choosing to do it in North America rather than visiting increasingly war-torn Europe. During the war, the Princess Fleet also started carrying troops, including people who had enlisted and were reporting for duty.
4:48 Tracy V. Wilson? The SS Princess Sophia was, of course, part of this fleet. It was built by Beau McLaughlin and Company. It was launched on November 8th of 1911 and took its maiden voyage on June 7th of the following year. The Princess Sophia had been commissioned specifically for running these routes along the Inside Passage during the May to October season. In the off-season, the ship operated as a ferry between Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia.
5:15 Holly Frey? The Princess Sophia was built to be a modest but comfortable vessel, suited for both passengers and cargo in these northern waters. It was 245 feet or 75 meters long with a maximum speed of 13 to 14 knots. Its typical running speed was 11 knots. Under normal conditions, the Princess Sophia carried between 250 and 350 passengers, but that number could be increased all the way up to 500 in special circumstances and with special permission.
5:46 Tracy V. Wilson? The ship's typical route had four stops in British Columbia and four in Alaska. From north to south, these were Victoria, Vancouver, Alert Bay, and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and Rangel, Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway, Alaska.
6:01 Tracy V. Wilson? The stops in Juneau and Skagway were also really important to communities in Yukon since they were connected to the Yukon interior by water.
6:09 Holly Frey? Even with an experienced and capable crew, this route could be really treacherous. The SS Princess Sophia had a number of incidents before sinking in 1918, some of them serious. The ship collided with something underwater in November of 1913, which broke its stern post, and it also ran aground twice, once in April of 1913 and again in January 1914. And there were also many more minor incidents over the years.
6:38 Tracy V. Wilson? One particularly treacherous stretch of the route that the Princess Sophia was usually taking was the Lynn Canal. In spite of what its name suggests, the Lynn Canal isn't an artificial waterway. It's a fjord that's part of the inside passage. Captain George Vancouver named it after his birthplace of Kings Lynn.
6:58 Holly Frey? The Lynn Canal is very narrow. It ranges from about 3 to 13 miles, or roughly 5 to 20 kilometers wide. And it is also very windy. The shape of the canal funnels the wind, so wind speeds of 70 to 80 knots are not uncommon. On top of that are willowas, which are sudden violent squalls and winds that blow in off the surrounding glaciers.
7:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Making the Lynn Canal even more dangerous than all that wind and the squalls is the Vanderbilt Reef, which is a stretch of about 7 miles or 11 kilometers of rock that's right in the middle of the fjord. The tides create a huge variation in how deep the water is around the reef. Most of the time, it is just under the surface, but during very low tides, it can be as much as 12 feet or about 3 and 1/2 meters above the surface.
7:50 Holly Frey? Obviously, this reef has been there for thousands of years, and people knew that it existed. But in terms of being a hazard to commercial shipping, it was first noted in 1880, when J.M. Vanderbilt of the Northwest Trading Company charted it and named it after himself, and then spread the word to other captains about it.
8:10 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1918, the Vanderbilt Reef wasn't well-marked at all. The nearest lighthouse was the Sentinel Island Lighthouse, which is about 4 miles or 6 and 1/2 kilometers away. The reef itself was marked with a buoy that was only visible by daylight. CPR had asked the US government to install a light on the reef in 1917. Although Canadian vessels were in and out of this area all the time, the reef itself was part of Alaska Territory, and therefore it was the responsibility of the United States and not Canada to put a light there. But because of the war, funding wasn't set aside to do it.
8:46 Holly Frey? The SS Princess Sophia departed Skagway, Alaska, at the end of the Lynn Canal on October 23, 1918, for the last run of the season. And this was a big trip every year. The ship was sold out, and the company had prepared for a big crowd.
9:02 Tracy V. Wilson? But even in spite of the advanced preparations, boarding and loading that evening had been particularly chaotic. There were people who had made their way to the region during the Klondike Gold Rush. Skagway itself had been founded during the Gold Rush. By this point, the Gold Rush was over, and this departing crowd included people who had decided, finally, to leave Alaska in the North entirely. It also included seasonal miners, whose jobs were ending for the winter, but who planned to come back again in the spring.
9:31 Holly Frey? Miners weren't the only seasonal employees leaving Skagway that day. The Yukon River connected Skagway, Alaska to Dawson, Yukon, and the steamship operators who traveled that route were shutting down for the season, too. Other passengers included government officials, business travelers, and families. And there were also new recruits aboard, reporting for duty in World War I.
9:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Because this was the last run of the season, the mood at the dock was really festive. It was basically a big "see you in the spring" party, with the people who were staying put getting ready to hunker down for the winter. A lot of people were also bidding what they thought was a temporary farewell to friends and family who were planning to come back once all the waterways thawed in the following spring.
10:16 Holly Frey? Probably because of all the busyness and chaos, the SS Princess Sophia left Skagway, Alaska at about 10:00 PM on the 23rd. That was about three hours behind schedule. Captain Leonard Locke was at the helm, and most of the Princess Sophia's crew had plenty of experience on this route, and Locke was no exception. He had been working in the waterways in this part of the Northwest for 25 years.
10:41 Tracy V. Wilson? But not long after departing, the weather really started to turn sour. We will get to that after a quick sponsor break.
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11:21 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?
12:06 Holly Frey? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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13:22 Tracy V. Wilson? About an hour after leaving Skagway, Alaska, the SS Princess Sophia rounded Battery Point and met a terrible storm. Winds were blowing at about 50 knots and a heavy snow and fog had rolled in. Under normal procedures, Locke would have slowed his speed from the typical running speed of about 11 knots down to 7 knots. But instead, possibly because they were running so late, he kept the ship running at 11 knots.
13:50 Holly Frey? Many of the technologies used for navigation and avoiding collisions today did not exist yet or they were in their infancy. The first passive sonar system for detecting submerged objects was developed in 1916 and the first active sonar system was created in 1918. So this technology was still brand new and was being used to detect submarines and military vessels, but it really wasn't in use in civilian vessels at all yet. Practical radar systems were still a couple of decades away.
14:21 Tracy V. Wilson? By daylight, ships navigated the Lynn Canal by taking compass readings while sighting known points on the land. In the dark and in bad weather, what they would do is sound the ship's horn and then count the time until they heard the echo off the surrounding cliffs and glaciers.
14:38 Holly Frey? That's one of those things that when people describe it, I know people use this all the time very safely. To me, this is terrifying.
14:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Well, and I mean, that was an imprecise way of doing it, even under good circumstances.
14:52 Holly Frey? Yes, and of course, as the storm got worse, it probably became harder and harder to hear those echoes. And soon, the Princess Sophia was blown off course. Rather than to one side of the canal where they were supposed to be, they were right in the middle.
15:09 Tracy V. Wilson? The Princess Sophia struck the Vanderbilt Reef at about 2:00 a.m. on October 24th, traveling at their usual speed of 11 knots.
15:18 Holly Frey? The ship came to a total halt almost instantly, with sleeping passengers being thrown from their berths and crew being thrown from their stations.
15:27 Tracy V. Wilson? At first, the situation seemed to be extremely inconvenient, but not all that perilous. The ship was firmly jammed on the rocks, but didn't seem to be badly damaged. Once everyone recovered from the shock and the physical effects of being thrown around, most of the passengers really remained calm. People who had minor injuries were patched up and some damage within the ship was repaired. At first Captain Locke thought they might be floated off of the rocks the next high tide and just continue on their way. That is actually what had happened when the Princess Sophia had run aground in April of 1913, which had also happened on the Vanderbilt Reef.
16:06 Holly Frey? Passenger Aris McQueen wrote a letter during these relatively calm hours, which said, quote, "She is a double bottom boat and her inner hull is not penetrated, so here we stick. She pounds some on a rising tide and it is slow writing, but our only inconvenience is, so far, lack of water. The main steam pipe got twisted off and we were without lights last night and have run out of soft sugar. But the pipe is fixed, so we are getting heat and lights now and we still have lump sugar and water for drinking."
16:38 Tracy V. Wilson? If you have the energy to note that they're out of soft sugar.
16:42 Holly Frey? Right, things seem fine.
16:44 Tracy V. Wilson? They don't seem that bad at that point. So of course, after hitting the Vanderbilt Reef, the ship's wireless operator had sent out a distress call. There weren't any other vessels in the area that were large enough to accommodate all the Princess Sophia's passengers and crew, though. So four fishing vessels were sent to try to assist. These were the Estebeth, the Amy, the EA Heg, and the Peterson. Soon, a fishing schooner, called the King and Wing, came to assist, as well as the Cedar, which was a lighthouse tender from the US Lighthouse Service.
17:18 Holly Frey? As these vessels started to arrive on the morning of the 24th, though, the weather got worse. The other vessels couldn't get close to the Princess Sophia without endangering themselves. And it became clear that a crosswind was grinding the ship onto the rocks. And that was making a visible hole in the outer hull.
17:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Captain Locke thought it would be more dangerous to try to put people into lifeboats than it would be to just stay put and wait for the weather to turn. And the barometer was rising, so he was hopeful that better weather was on the way. High tide also came and went without shifting the boat off the rocks. The wind was blowing the water so hard, the tide appeared to be several feet lower than it really was. They weren't hoping to be lifted off the rocks anymore, now that it was clear that the hull was damaged. But with all that having happened, it didn't seem like they would be. So with all that in mind, it seemed safer to just wait.
18:15 Holly Frey? The captain's decision may have also been influenced by the 1904 wreck of the SS Clallum, which found her just outside of Victoria Harbour. And on that ship, the captain ordered all of the women and children to be evacuated into lifeboats, along with some of the men, and every lifeboat either capsized or was wrecked. Everyone who had been evacuated died. Captain Locke also would have been familiar with the 1910 stranding of the Princess May on nearby Sentinel Island, from which all the passengers and crew were evacuated safely.
18:49 Tracy V. Wilson? It turned out that barometer reading was deceptive, though. The barometer started falling rapidly at about 3:00 PM on the 24th, and the weather suddenly got a whole lot worse. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police report that was written after the disaster called it, quote, "The worst storm in progress ever known in the Lynn Canal."
19:09 Holly Frey? During all of this, the Princess Sophia was communicating with all these other vessels by radio, megaphone, and radiogram, which is a telegram that's sent by radio rather than over wires. Radiograms were sent back and forth to CPR headquarters as well.
19:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Captain Locke sent a radiogram to the Cedar at 4:45 PM on the 24th. "Impossible to get passengers off tonight as sea is running too strong. We'll probably be able to get them off early morning, strong tide."
19:40 Holly Frey? Captain Ledbetter aboard the Cedar replied, quote, "If Sophia in no danger slipping off, and passengers safe until daylight, would like to drop anchor under Sentinel Island, be in touch by wireless if you think necessary, we'll remain underway all night."
19:56 Tracy V. Wilson? By this point, the passengers, who had been waiting for more than 12 hours, were becoming increasingly apprehensive.
20:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Passenger John R. Maskell, known as Jack, wrote a letter to his fiancee Dorothy Burgess, which ended, quote, "We are expecting the lights to go out at any minute. Also, the fires. The boat might go to pieces for the force of the waves are terrible, making awful noises on the side of the boat, which has quite a list to port. No one is allowed to sleep, but believe me, dear Dory, it might have been much worse. Just hear there is a big steamer coming. We struck the reef in a terrible snowstorm. There is a big buoy near marking the danger, but the captain was to port instead to starboard the buoy. I made my will this morning, leaving everything to you, my own true love, and I want you to give 100 pounds to my dear mother, 100 pounds to my dear dad,
20:47 Tracy V. Wilson? 100 pounds to dear wee Jack, and the balance of my estate, about 300 pounds, to you, Dory dear. The Eagle Lodge will take care of my remains. In danger at sea, Princess Sophia, 24th October, 1918."
21:00 Holly Frey? In the face of the treacherous weather, the rescue ships left to seek shelter, and the Princess Sophia spent the night on the rocks.
21:09 Tracy V. Wilson? On the morning of October 25th, the rescue ships returned to try again. The captain of the Cedar proposed making a britches buoy, which she might also say as a breeches buoy. To do this, the Cedar would drop an anchor and run a line over to the Princess Sophia. People would then use it like a zip line, sliding from the Princess Sophia over to the Cedar, one at a time. The name of this comes from the practice of slinging a pair of canvas britches over the line to hang on to.
21:37 Holly Frey? We can do historical zip line tours this way. I think we have a business venture in our future. But the water was still so rough that the Cedar's anchor simply would not hold. At 11:00 a.m. on the 25th, Ledbetter sent a radiogram, quote, "I can't make anchors hold. Could not rowboat to you at present. Believe your passengers are perfectly safe until wind moderates. We'll stand by until safe to make transfer with safety."
22:05 Tracy V. Wilson? As the violent storm continued, the rescue ships were once again driven away to take shelter, but kept in touch with the Princess Sophia.
22:13 Holly Frey? What had been a tedious but relatively safe wait became terrifying after all the rescue vessels were gone. The wind was howling and pounding the ship into the rocks. The power went out about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, which meant most of the passengers were in total darkness with a screaming violent storm going on around them.
22:35 Tracy V. Wilson? E.M. Miller of the King and Wing later sent the summary of what happened by a radiogram. Quote, "Talked with Sophia several times between 2 and 3 P.M. Their dynamo went out and lost power about 3 P.M. Called the Sophia several times between 4:30 and 4:45 P.M. No answer. 5:45, talking to SS Atlas, gave him seven messages for Juno. 4:45 P.M., Sophia, sending SOS, said, 'Taking water and foundering. For God's sake, come and save us.' Replied, saying, 'Coming full speed but cannot see. Account thick snow and taking heavy seas.'
23:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Told SS Atlas better come and tried to get Juno and then kept on with Sophia until 5:20, when his battery was so weak it was almost impossible to understand him. Told him to quit talking except for what was absolutely necessary. He replied, 'All right, but for God's sake, hurry. Water coming in room.' No more was heard from him."
23:38 Holly Frey? The SS Atlas, which had left Juno at about 4 P.M. to try to help, also sent a telegram to the Cedar at 5:30 P.M. on the 25th, describing their progress to try to join the rescue as, quote, "Feeling our way in blinding snowstorm."
23:54 Tracy V. Wilson? It was just too dangerous for any of these other ships to stay with the Princess Sophia. That's why they had all, once again, gone away to seek shelter.
24:03 Holly Frey? The weather finally cleared overnight. And at 9:15 on the morning of October 26th, a lighthouse superintendent from Sentinel Island sent a radiogram saying he had arrived at the scene at 8:30, and only the Princess Sophia's foremast was visible above the surface of the water.
24:21 Tracy V. Wilson? We're going to take another quick moment for a brief sponsor break.
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24:58 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?
25:43 Holly Frey? Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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26:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Sometime between 5:30 and 6:30 PM on October 25th, 1918, after all the rescue ships had gone to try to take shelter, the high wind and the tide had combined to twist the SS Princess Sophia completely around on top of Vanderbilt Reef, causing it to point north instead of south. In the process, it tore the bottom completely out of the ship. The ship slid into the water. Tanks ruptured and covered the water's surface in a thick layer of oil. An order was apparently given to abandon ship, and some lifeboats were deployed, but none of them were deployed successfully.
27:07 Holly Frey? Only one person seems to have gotten away from the actual sinking. Frank Gossey, the ship's second officer. He was found on shore, but he had died of exposure.
27:18 Tracy V. Wilson? The wreck's only confirmed survivor was a dog, an English setter who was found covered in oil about 20 miles or 32 kilometers to the south two days later.
27:29 Holly Frey? The exact death toll for this wreck is unclear. There were probably between 280 and 290 passengers onboard and 55 to 65 crew. A list of known passengers includes 360 people, but there were definitely stowaways onboard, as well as people who boarded in Skagway, planning to work for their passage, but who weren't written down. Babies in arms also weren't necessarily on the passenger list.
27:58 Tracy V. Wilson? The victims included more than 100 residents of Dawson, Yukon, which only had a population of about 800 at that time. Approximately 8% of the white population of Yukon died. Similar numbers for the indigenous population of Canada and Alaska aren't really known, but Walter Harper, who was an Athabaskan guide and the first person to summit Denali, was killed along with his wife Frances.
28:26 Holly Frey? Some writers have made the argument that this was economically catastrophic for Yukon and led to a serious decline for the territory and for all of the Canadian North. But really, there was a lot of other stuff going on at the same time as well, including the flu pandemic and changes to the mining industry. So this was definitely a tragedy that had a real impact, but it was not the only factor.
28:49 Tracy V. Wilson? John F. Pugh, who was district collector of US Customs for Alaska, was also onboard. Along with Walter J. O'Brien, who was a CPR company agent from Dawson. He was on the ship with his wife and five children and was found with his arms around one of his sons.
29:05 Holly Frey? The passengers also included 85 members of riverboat crews that operated out of Skagway, which destroyed the riverboat company's workforce for that route completely.
29:15 Tracy V. Wilson? So, after it was discovered that the ship had sunk, what had been a rescue effort immediately turned to recovery. More than 100 bodies were recovered in the first hour. Many of the people had drowned or died of exposure, but another major cause of death was asphyxiation, either because people got caught up in the oil slick and couldn't breathe, or because of the buildup of gases inside the vessel as its operating systems blew. The oil slick also caused wildlife deaths, including the deaths of flocks of ducks.
29:48 Holly Frey? The SS Princess Sophia itself was quickly determined not to be salvageable, or at least not salvageable until spring, but the effort to recover bodies went on for weeks. A total of 180 bodies were eventually recovered, some of them many miles away from the wreck itself. Initially, the bodies were housed in an empty warehouse in Juneau that was used as a temporary mortuary, with members of the community cleaning the oil from the bodies. Divers were also sent to recover a safe full of gold that had been on board, and they returned with a body as well.
30:23 Tracy V. Wilson? The bodies of Canadian residents were sent to Vancouver aboard the Princess Alice, which was nicknamed the Ship of Sorrow because of the sad duty. But the Princess Alice arrived in Vancouver on November 11, 1918, which was Armistice Day. So, the mood in Vancouver, when the ship actually got there, was exuberant because of the end of the war. The mayor had the flags flown at half-staff for an hour on the 12th.
30:48 Holly Frey? Thomas Riggs Jr., territorial governor of Alaska, issued a statement after learning the news of the wreck. Quote, "Wreck of the Princess Sophia has cast a great shadow over all of Northland." Alaska grieves with the Yukon. And he also sent a message to the US Secretary of the Interior, calling it the, quote, "most ghastly incident in the history of the territory."
31:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Of course, this is a massive tragedy and there were immediate calls for an inquest. But there were also a lot of questions and complications because of the international nature of the disaster. It had happened in Alaska and virtually everyone involved in the rescue attempt was American. But it was a Canadian ship and many of the people who died aboard were Canadian, most of them from Yukon. There was also the question of how and what exactly to investigate because everyone who could have been questioned about what happened aboard the Princess Sophia was dead.
31:43 Holly Frey? The first official inquiry was held January 6, 1919, at Bastion Square Courthouse in Victoria, British Columbia. Witnesses from the rescue vessels offered testimony about how treacherous Lynn Canal was. But some also raised doubts about whether Locke had made the right decisions.
32:02 Tracy V. Wilson? A big point of contention was the Safiyahs traveling at 11 knots rather than at 7. The other was the decision not to evacuate. Captain Cornelius Stidham aboard the Peterson and Captain Miller of the King and Wing both said that the evacuation would have been possible during a very brief window of time before the wind really picked up. Captain James Davis of the Estebeth and Edward McDougall of the Amy backed them up in this opinion.
32:30 Holly Frey? These judgments, though, were made with the benefit of hindsight and knowing how the weather progressed after that call was made to stay put. And everyone agreed that even if some people had been rescued in this window of relatively less treacherous weather, many others would still have died.
32:47 Tracy V. Wilson? There were also other captains who had the opposite opinion. According to one inspector from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, quote, "I have interviewed several deep sea captains and they are all of the same opinion that, given similar conditions and circumstances, they would have acted exactly as did Captain Locke. It is considered that he acted as any level-headed seafaring man would have done. And while his error of judgment caused the loss of so many lives, it is considered simply an act of providence."
33:17 Holly Frey? The inquiry was closed on March 10, 1919, and taken to Parliament on April 23. In the end, no blame was placed on Locke or on CPR. The US vessels that came to assist were compensated for their time and efforts, and a small payment was given to families.
33:35 Tracy V. Wilson? American relatives of the victims filed a class action suit in the United States, and that dragged on for 14 years. At first, a US District Court judge found that CPR was negligent, and CPR was fined $2.5 million to be paid to the families of the passengers and crew, plus $1 million of court costs. But the judge reversed this decision a couple of weeks later, saying that this tragedy fell under the Limited Liabilities Act of 1851. So all CPR was responsible for was the cost of fares and baggage.
34:11 Holly Frey? The Limited Liabilities Act of 1851 was crafted to mimic limited liability laws that were already in effect in other countries. There wasn't any such thing as comprehensive insurance for shipping companies. And because American companies had no limits to their liability in the event of a disaster, they faced much higher potential costs.
34:32 Tracy V. Wilson? So, a law was drafted to try to make shipping companies operating out of the United States more competitive with similar businesses operating out of other countries. This law limited a company's liability to the value of the ship and the cargo after a disaster. So if the ship was a total loss, that value might actually be zero. This law, by the way, is still in effect. It was used in an attempt to get the damages of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster capped at $27 million.
35:03 Holly Frey? The Princess Sophia case was appealed all the way to the Ninth Circuit Court, and the Supreme Court declined to hear it. In the end, CPR settled for $643.50, which was less than $2 for each victim.
35:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Meanwhile, the company did get a payment of $250,000 from its insurer.
35:23 Holly Frey? The Lynn Canal is still overwhelmingly how people get to and from Skagway, Alaska, although there is a year-round highway connection and small plane service today. But the canal is also much safer today than it was in 1918, and it is a popular route for Alaska cruises. The buoy that had been visible only by day was replaced with a light, and of course, navigation and sonar technologies are far more advanced than they were 100 years ago.
35:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Ultimately, the SS Princess Sophia was a total loss, and the wreck is still there in the Lynn Canal. Today, it's a popular dive site, with some divers saying that it's haunted. Keepers at the nearby Sentinel Lighthouse have also attributed ghostly noises to the Princess Sophia's passengers.
36:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected] . And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
36:37 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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