SYMHC Classics: SS Princess Sophia

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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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Our episodes this week were about Walter Harper, who died
in the SS Princess Sofia 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 Francis. This episode originally came out

(00:24):
on October fifteenth, twenty eighteen. Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vee Wilson.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
And I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
We're coming up on the one hundredth anniversary of the
sinking of the SS Princess Sofia, which sank in the
Lynn Canal in southeastern Alaska on October twenty fifth of
nineteen eighteen. 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

(01:08):
by the end of World War One and the flu
pandemic that was going on by that point. So it
has been nicknamed the Unknown Titanic of the West Coast.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
In nineteen eighteen, 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

(01:38):
from these places, boats still continue to be a major
way to travel.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
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 can Pacific Steamship Company in
the late eighteen hundreds. Their first routes were trans Pacific

(02:06):
and they connected Vancouver, British Columbia with Asia. Soon the
company started offering transatlantic service from the East coast of
North America as well. In the early twentieth century, Canadian
Pacific Steamship Company started providing service up and down the
coast of the Pacific northwest. To that end, CPR purchased

(02:26):
Canadian Pacific Navigation Company in nineteen oh one. 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 a thousand miles that's
about sixteen hundred kilometers from Seattle, Washington, north through British

(02:50):
Columbia to Skagway, Alaska. The vessels that CPR operated along
these routes were nicknamed the Princess Fleet, and all the
ships had the word princess and their names. The Princess
Fleet grew really quickly during the first two decades of
the twentieth century, and the company was supporting the tourism
industry in addition to carrying the workers, families, cargo, and

(03:11):
mail that needed to get around that area. This growth
didn't really slow down during World War One, although some
of CPR's 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

(03:32):
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.
The SS Princess Sofia was, of course part of this fleet.
It was built by Beau McLaughlin and Company, was launched
on November eighth of nineteen eleven, and took its maiden

(03:54):
voyage on June seventh on the following year. The Princess
Sofia 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.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
The Princess Safaiya was built to be a modest but
comfortable vessel, suited for both passengers and cargo in these
northern waters. It was two hundred and forty five feet
or seventy five meters long, with a maximum speed of
thirteen to fourteen knots. Its typical running speed was eleven
knots under normal conditions, the Princess Safaia carried between two

(04:32):
hundred fifty and three hundred fifty passengers, but that number
could be increased all the way up to five hundred
in special circumstances and with special permission.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
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 British Columbia, and wrangel Ketcan, Juno
and Skagway, Alaska. The stops in Juneo and Skagway were
also really important to communities in Yukon since they were

(05:02):
connected to the Yukon interior by water. Even with an
experienced and capable crew, this route could be really treacherous.
The SS Princess Sofaia had a number of incidents before
sinking in nineteen eighteen, some of them serious. The ship
collided with something underwater in November of nineteen thirteen, which
broke its stern post, and it also ran aground twice,

(05:25):
once in April of nineteen thirteen and again in January
nineteen fourteen, and there were also many more minor incidents
over the years. One particularly treacherous stretch of the route
that the Princess Sofia 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 fiord that's part of

(05:47):
the inside passage. Captain George Vancouver named it after his
birthplace of King's Lynn.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
The Lynn Canal is very narrow. It ranges from about
three to thirteen miles or roughly five to twenty kilometers wide,
and it is also very windy. The shape of the
canal funnels the wind, so wind speeds of seventy to
eighty knots are not uncommon. On top of that are willowwaws,
which are sudden, violent squalls and winds that blow in

(06:16):
off the surrounding glaciers.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Making the Lynn Canal even more dangerous than all that
wind and the squalls is the Vanderbilt Reef, which is
a stretch of about seven miles or eleven 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

(06:40):
can be as much as twelve feet or about three
and a half meters above the surface. 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 eighteen eighty
when J. M. Vanderbilt of the Northwest Trading Company charted
it and named it after himself, and then spread the

(07:03):
word to other captains about it. In nineteen eighteen, the
Vanderbilt reef wasn't well marked at all. The nearest lighthouse
was the Sentinel Island Lighthouse, which is about four miles
or six and a half 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

(07:23):
on the reef in nineteen seventeen. 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.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
The ss Princess Sofia departed Skagway Alaska at the end
of the Lynn Canal on October twenty third, nineteen eighteen,
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.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
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

(08:17):
to leave Alaska and the North entirely. It also included
sezonal miners whose jobs were ending for the winter, but
who planned to come back again in the spring. 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

(08:39):
the season. Two other passengers included government officials, business travelers,
and families, and there were also new recruits aboard reporting
for duty in World War One. Because this was the
last run of the season. The mood at the dock
was really festive. It was basically a big Sea in
the Spring party, with the people who were staying getting

(09:00):
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 thought in the following spring.
Probably because of all the busyness and chaos, the SS
Princess Safaia left Skagway, Alaska at about ten pm on
the twenty third. That was about three hours behind schedule.

(09:23):
Captain Leonard Locke was at the helm, and most of
the Princess Safaia'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 twenty
five years. But not long after departing, the weather really
started to turn sour. We will get to that after
a quick sponsor break. About an hour after leaving Skaguay, Alaska,

(09:55):
the SS Princess Sofaia rounded Battery Point and met a
terrible storm. Winds were blowing at about fifty 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 eleven knots down to seven knots, but instead,

(10:16):
possibly because they were running so late, he kept the
ship running at eleven knots.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
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 nineteen sixteen, and the first active sonar system
was created in nineteen eighteen, so this technology was still
brand new and was being used to detect submarines and

(10:42):
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. By daylight ships navigated the Lynn
Canal by taking compass readings while siting known points on
the land and the dark and in back weather, what
they would do is sound the ship's horn and then

(11:03):
count the time until they heard the echo off the
surrounding cliffs and glaciers. That's one of those things that
when people describe it, I know people used this all
the time very safely. To me, this is terrifying well.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
And I mean that was an imprecise way of doing it,
even under good circumstances. Yes, And of course as the
storm got worse, it probably became harder and harder to
hear those echoes, and soon the Princess Safaya was blown
off course. Rather than to one side of the canal
where they were supposed to be, they were right in

(11:38):
the middle. The Princess Safaia struck the Vanderbilt reef at
about two am on October twenty fourth, traveling at their
usual speed of eleven knots. The ship came to a
total halt almost instantly, with sleeping passengers being thrown from
their berths and crew being thrown from their stations. At first,
the situation seemed to be extremely inconvenient, but not all

(12:03):
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

(12:24):
be floated off of the rocks the next high tide
and just to continue on their way. That is actually
what had happened when the Princess Sofia had run aground
in April of nineteen thirteen, which had also happened on
the Vanderbilt Reef. Passenger Arris McQueen wrote a letter during
these relatively calm hours which said quote, she is a
double bottom boat and her inner hall is not penetrated,

(12:46):
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. If you

(13:09):
have the energy to note that they're out of soft sugar.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Right, things seem fine.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
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 Safia's passengers and crew, though, so four fishing
vessels were sent to try to assist. These were the Estebeth,

(13:35):
the Amy, the ea Hegg, 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. As these vessels started to
arrive on the morning of the twenty fourth, though, the
weather got worse. The other vessels couldn't get close to

(13:55):
the Princess Safaia without endangering themselves, and it became clear
a crosswind was grinding the ship onto the rocks, and
that was making a visible hole in the outer hull.
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,

(14:15):
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 that 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,

(14:37):
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.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
The captain's decision may have also been influenced by the
nineteen oh four wreck of the Ssclllum, which foundered just
outside of Victoria Harbor, 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

(15:06):
evacuated died. Captain Locke also would have been familiar with
the nineteen ten stranding of the Princess May on nearby
Sentinel Island, from which all the passengers and crew were
evacuated safely. It turned out that barometer reading was deceptive, though.
The barometer started falling rapidly at about three pm on

(15:26):
the twenty fourth, 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. During all
of this, the Princess Sofia was communicating with all these
other vessels by radio, megaphone and radiogram, which is a

(15:48):
telegram that's sent by radio rather than over wires. Radiograms
were sent back and forth to CPR headquarters as well.
Captain Locke sent a radiogram to the Cedar at four
forty five pm on the twenty fourth, quote, impossible to
get passengers off tonight as sea is running too strong.
Will probably be able to get them off early morning

(16:09):
strong tide. Captain Ledbetter aboard the Cedar replied, quote, if
Sofia 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, will remain under
way all night.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
By this point, the passengers, who had been waiting for
more than twelve hours were becoming increasingly apprehensive. Passenger John R. Maskel,
known as Jack, wrote a letter to his fiance 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,

(16:47):
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 here 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

(17:08):
my will this morning, leaving everything to you, my own
true love, and I want you to give one hundred
pounds to my dear mother, one hundred pounds to my
dear dad, one hundred pounds to dear Wee Jack, and
the balance of my estate about three hundred pounds to you, Dori.
Dear the Eagle Lodge will take care of my remains
in danger at sea. Princess Safaiah twenty fourth October nineteen eighteen.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
In the face of the treacherous weather, the rescue ships
left to seek shelter, and the Princess Safaia spent the
night on the rocks.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
On the morning of October twenty fifth, the rescue ships
returned to try again. The captain of the Cedar proposed
making a breeches 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 Sofaia.
People would then use it like a zip line, sliding
from the Princess Sofaia over to the cedar one at

(17:59):
a time. The name of this comes from the practice
of slinging a pair of canvas bridges over the line
to hang on to you.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
We can do historical zipline 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 eleven am on the twenty fifth,
Leadbetter scent to a radiogram quote, I can't make anchors hold,
could not rowboat to you at present. Believe your passengers

(18:28):
are perfectly safe until wind moderates. We'll stand by until
safe to make transfer with safety.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
As the violent storm continued, the rescue ships were once
again driven away to take shelter, but kept in touch
with the Princess Afaia. What had been a tedious but
relatively safe weight 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 three o'clock

(18:57):
in the afternoon, which meant most of the past were
in total darkness with a screaming, violent storm going on
around them. E. M. Miller of the King and Wing
later sent the summary of what happened by radiogram quote.
Talked with Sofia several times between two and three pm.
Their dynamo went out and lost power about three PM.

(19:20):
Called the Sofia several times between four thirty and four
forty five pm, no answer. Five forty five talking to
ss Atlas, gave him seven messages for Juno. Four forty
five pm. Sofia, sending SOS, said taking water and foundering.
For God's sake, come and save us. Replied saying coming

(19:41):
full speed, but cannot see account thick snow and taking
heavy seas. Told ss Atlas better come and tried to
get Juno, and then kept on with Sofia until five
twenty when his battery was so weak it was almost
impossible to understand him. Told him to quit talking except
for what was absolute necessary. He replied, all right, but

(20:02):
for God's sake, hurry water coming in room. No more
was heard from him. The ss Atlas, which had left
Juno at about four pm to try to help. Also
sent a telegram to the Cedar at five thirty pm
on the twenty fifth, describing their progress to try to
join the rescue as quote, feeling our way in blinding snowstorm.

(20:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
The weather finally cleared overnight, and at nine fifteen on
the morning of October twenty sixth, a lighthouse superintendent from
Sentinel Island sent a radiogram saying he had arrived at
the scene at eight thirty and only the Princess Sofia's
foremast was visible above the surface of the water.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
We're going to take another quick moment for a brief
sponsor break, sometimes between five point thirty and six thirty pm.
On October twenty fifth, nineteen eighteen, after all the rescue
ships had gone to try to take shelter, the high

(21:12):
wind and the tide had combined to twist the SS
Princess Sofia completely around on top of Vanderbilt Reef, causing
it to point north instead of south. And 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

(21:34):
was apparently given to abandoned ship and some life boats
were deployed, but none of them were deployed successfully.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Only one person seems to have gotten away from the
actual sinking, Frank Gaussie, the ship's second officer. He was
found on shore, but he had died of exposure.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
The rex only confirmed survivor was a dog an English setter,
who was found covered in oil about twenty miles or
Third Tarty, two kilometers to the south, two days later.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
The exact death toll for this wreck is unclear. There
were probably between two hundred eighty and two hundred ninety
passengers on board and fifty five to sixty five crew.
A list of known passengers includes three hundred and sixty people,
but there were definitely stowaways on board, as well as
people who boarded in skagway planing to work for their

(22:24):
passage but who weren't written down. Babies in arms also
weren't necessarily on the passenger list. The victims included more
than one hundred residents of Dawson, Yukon, which only had
a population of about eight hundred at that time. Approximately
eight percent of the white population of Yukon died. Similar

(22:47):
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 Dnali, was killed along
with his wife Francis. Some writers have made the argument
that this was economically catastrophic for Yukon. It led to
a serious decline for the territory and for all of

(23:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
John F. Pugh, who was District Collector of US Customs
for Alaska, was also on board, 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.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
The passengers also included eighty five members of riverboat crews
that operated out of Skagway, which destroyed the riverboat Company's
workforce for that route completely.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
So after it was discovered that the ship had sunk,
what had been a rescue effort immediately turned to recovery.
More than one hundred 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,

(24:11):
or because of the build up of gases inside the
vessel as its operating systems blew. The oil slick also
caused wildlife deaths, including the deaths of flocks of ducks.
The SS Princess Sofia 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

(24:34):
total of one hundred and eighty bodies were eventually recovered,
some of them many miles away from the wreck itself. Initially,
the bodies were housed in an empty warehouse in Juno
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

(24:54):
had been on board, and they returned with a body
as well. The bodies of Canadian residents were so to
Vancouver aboard the Princess Alice, which was nicknamed the Ship
of Sorrow because of this sad duty. But the Princess
Alice arrived in Vancouver on November eleventh, nineteen eighteen, which
was Armistice Day, so the mood in Vancouver when the

(25:14):
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 twelfth.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Thomas Riggs, Junior Territorial Governor of Alaska, issued a statement
after learning the news of the wreck, quote wreck of
the Princess Sofia has cast a great shadow over all
of Northland. Alaska grieves with the Yukon. He also sent
a message to the US Secretary of the Interior calling
it the quote most ghastly incident in the history of

(25:43):
the territory. 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.

(26:06):
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. The first
official inquiry was held January sixth, nineteen nineteen, at Bastion
Square Courthouse in Victoria, British Columbia. Witnesses from the rescue

(26:27):
vessels offered testimony about how treacherous Lynn Canal was, but
some also raised doubts about whether Locke had made the
right decisions.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
A big point of contention was the Sofia's traveling at
eleven knots rather than at seven. The other was the
decision not to evacuate Captain Cornelia 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.

(26:57):
Captain James Davis of the Estabethan Edward MacDougall of the
Amy backed them up in this opinion. 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

(27:19):
others would still have died. 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

(27:40):
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.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
The inquiry was closed on March tenth, nineteen nineteen, and
taken to Parliament on April twenty third. 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.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
American relatives of the victims filed a class action suit
in the United States, and that dragged on for fourteen years.
At first, a US district court judge found that CPR
was negligent and CPR was fined two point five million
dollars to be paid to the families of the passengers
and crew, plus a million dollars of court costs, But

(28:31):
the judge reversed this decision a couple of weeks later,
saying that this tragedy fell under the Limited Liabilities Act
of eighteen fifty one, so all CPR was responsible for
was the cost of fares and baggage. The Limited Liabilities
Act of eighteen fifty one was crafted to mimic limited
liability laws that were already in effect in other countries.

(28:53):
There wasn't any such thing as comprehensive insurance for shipping companies,
and because American companies had no LANs limits to their
liability in the event of a disaster, they faced much
higher potential costs. 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.

(29:16):
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
meet zero. This law, by the way, is still in effect.
It was used in an attempt to get the damages
of the twenty ten Deep Water Horizon disaster capped at
twenty seven million dollars.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
The Princess Sofia 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 six hundred
forty three dollars and fifty cents, which was less than
two dollars for each victim. Meanwhile, the company did get
a payment of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from
its insurer. The Lynn Canal is still overwhelmingly how people

(30:00):
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 nineteen eighteen, 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

(30:20):
and sonar technologies are far more advanced than they were
one hundred years ago.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Ultimately, the SS Princess Safaia 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 Safaia's passengers. Thanks so

(30:49):
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