The Loss of The Princess Sophia

At around 1 a.m. on October 24, 1918, the gold miners and the crews from the 10 Yukon River paddle-wheelers aboard the Sophia were probably still celebrating. They’d left Skagway a few hours earlier, the rivers freezing up, their season over, the bright lights ahead.
Upstairs in the pilothouse, the atmosphere was anxious. The captain had seen Eldred Rock Light, mile 994, at midnight through the snow but navigation on such a night relied on something called “time and compass.” The skipper would calculate from the engine revolutions how fast his vessel was traveling. Taking his course line from the chart and making allowances for the wind and the tidal currents, he would steer until his time ran out, that is, when he should be at the next point of reference.
On that bitter night in 1918, with blowing snow and limited visibility, the next checkpoint after Eldred Rock was Sentinel Island Light, 28 miles away. Over such a distance, a steering error of one degree would put the vessel a half-mile off course. Sometime around 2 a.m., as her skipper was groping through the snow and trying to see the Sentinel Island Light, the Sophia drove her whole length ashore on Vanderbilt Reef. Fortunately the rocks cradled her, and there was no need to try and launch lifeboats on such a rotten night.

By first light a rescue fleet was standing by: the Cedar, King and Winge, Estebeth, Elsinore, and others. But it was decided to wait until better weather to evacuate the passengers and crew.
It proved to be a tragic mistake. In the late afternoon, the northerly began to blow with renewed fury, and the rescue fleet was forced to seek shelter in a nearby harbor. Darkness came with driving snow and bitter wind. Roaring down the canal, the wind caught the Sophia’s high exposed stern, driving her off the reef, ripping open her bottom, and sending her into the deep water beyond. There was time for one desperate radio call: “For God’s sake come! We are sinking.” In the morning only her masts were above water, her 343 passengers and crew drowned in the northwest coast’s worst maritime disaster.