on this warm evening of 14 August 1901, he was compartments separated by heavy steel going back to Seattle with $35,000 in gold dust bulkheads and said to be virtually unsinkable. and nuggets stuffed into his bags. Well into Lynn Canal, Islander worked up to The Islander was a popular ship on the 14-knots and Capt. Foote left First Officer Cyril Alaska run and 110 passengers, as varied and Neroutsos and Pilot Edmund LeBlanc on the colorful as the Kondike itself, were already on bridge while he went below to dinner. The board: Gruff miners, businessmen on their way evening was calm and clear with only a few to Vancouver and Seattle, slick gamblers and a wisps of surface fog as Foote walked aft toward troupe of dance-hall girls, fresh from the the dining saloon. saloons of Dawson City. Eleven stowaways — In the brightly lit saloon, the ship’s orchestra miners for whom the Yukon had only meant played ragtime as waiters cleared the dinner failure — managed to slip aboard and hide in tables. The dance hall girls climbed onto the the coal bunkers below. little stage and did a lively cancan, much to the Captain Hamilton Foote delight of the mostly male passengers. nervously paced the Islander’s Off in a corner table, Charlie Knox bought a bridge, glancing at his gold newspaper from Chu Chow, the ship’s newsboy, When the Canadian Pacific Navigation pocket watch. He didn’t want to and was settling into an evening of poker. lose the ebb tide and ordered the Across him sat F.G. Hinde-Bowker, manager of Company’s popular Klondike steamer gangplank drawn up as the last the British American Corporation on his way miners staggered aboard from home to Victoria; Capt. Charles Harris, skipper went down, immediate rumors about a dockside saloons. The crowd on of a Yukon River stern-wheeler; and Harry fortune gold carried in the ship’s hold the pier cheered and a brass Hart, a Klondiker with $40,000 in gold strapped band struck up “Hail in a money belt under his shirt. began to circulate. In a treasure hunt Columbia” as Capt. Foote eased It was well past midnight by the time the his steamer into the strong Islander cleared Juneau after a stop for mail that carries on today, Islander’s gold current of the Lynn Canal. and cargo. Most of the passengers, including continues to surface The 13-year-old Glasgow- Capt. Harris, for whom the cards had been built Islander was a sleek, unlucky, retired to their cabins. Knox, Hinde- steel-hulled steamer. Two Bowker, and Hart opened a fresh bottle of Some 245-feet long and 1519-tons, Islander was completed BY IVAN BULIC during 1888 by Napier, hundred forty-five feet long whiskey and dealt another hand. Shanks, and Bell of and displacing 1500-tons, Captain Foote, who had a weakness for rum he evening sun bathed the Skag- Glasgow, Scotland, for the her coal-fed triple and the ladies, was entertaining a party of way docks with that golden light Canadian Pacific Naviga- expansion direct acting dance hall girls in his cabin. Pilot LeBlanc was tion Company as a steel Tpeculiar to the far north as hull, schooner-rigged engines pushed her at 15- sole officer on the bridge. He scanned the dark Charlie Knox lugged his heavy twin-screw steamer. knots. She was subdivided horizon carefully; even in summer caution was portmanteau up the gangway of the into six water-tight needed in these waters. Icebergs were SS Islander, pride of the Canadian Fine view of SS Islander in Vancouver Pacific Navigation’s coastal fleet. on a sunny day. Note Bewhiskered and tough as old the stored canoes. shoe leather, Knox had been mucking in the Klondike gold fields for three long winters. Now 8 SEA CLASSICS/March 2020 seaclassicsnow.com 9.