There’s a dramatic change in the landscape as your ship enters Lynn Canal north of Juneau. The mountains are higher, the vistas starker, glaciers seem to overhang the water in little cirque valleys.

And it wasn’t just the landscape, but the weather as well; Lynn Canal and Chatham Strait, to the south, form a 200 mile long wind tunnel for the wet North Pacific lows sweeping up from the ocean and the cold Arctic highs pushing down from Siberia and the Alaska interior. Especially in the fall, there would hardly even be a break between systems. Weatherbound fishermen in Auke Bay would catch a ride out to the shore by Pt. Lena to get their grim weather forecast: row after row of nasty looking grey bearded seas rolling down the canal.

The bottom here is littered here with the pieces of two of the finest steamers to travel north, both belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railroad. First was the Princess Sophia. At around 1 a.m. on October 24, 1918, the gold miners and the crews from the ten 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 and 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.

Thirty-four years later, miscalculation of a course change drove the graceful Princess Kathleen ashore at Lena Point, Mile 956; her passengers were more fortunate. They climbed down ladders to the rocky beach and watched the favorite of all the Alaska-run steamers slide off the rocks and disappear into deep water.

Eldred Rock, Mile 990N. Glacier Bay is on the other side of those mountains. Lynn Canal is a wind tunnel between the high pressure areas that develop in the Alaska interior and the low pressure systems that come in off the ocean.

Look at the steep sides of the Canal as you approach Skagway and you'l understand why it would be so difficult to build a road north from Juneau.

Tragedy in the making - rescuers thought they should wait for better weather before trying to take passengers off. But it got worse in the middle of the night, blew the ship off the reef and into deeper water where it quickly sank, taking 343 souls with her...

TIP: If you want to get some dramatic photos... get up early here - the approach to Skagway is spectacular. Most ships actually arrive around 6, so you'll want to set your alarm for 5... Plan on going out on an upper deck after supper as well.. it's pretty dramatic in the evening too. Sleep when you get home...