Queen of The North Sinks! - Mile 493

One of the saddest recent episodes along the Inside Passage took place around midnight on March 22, 2006. Around 8 pm that evening, the big BC Ferries Queen of The North, a steel 410',' 700 passenger, 115 car ferry left Prince Rupert and headed south into Grenville Channel towards it's next stop. The ship was the main source of transportation and supplies for most of the small communities along the Inside Passage along the northern BC coast.

It was a nasty night with slashing wind and rain, but with three radars and a full complement of other navigation equipment and a spacious navigation station that included GPS for plotting the ship's position to within 50 feet, the Queen of the North had made the trip many many times before.

Tragically the crew on the bridge were somehow engaged in a 'personal conversation' as press reports had it, and neglected to make a critical course change after the Queen exited Grenville Channel into Wright Sound. She continued on the wrong course for approximately 14 minutes before striking a glancing blow on the side of Gill Island, slicing her hull completely open, and sinking her in less than an hour.

Very fortunately, someone had their radio on in the First Nations fishing village of Hartley Bay, just 8 miles away, and was able to get together a rescue force of about every local boat large enough to safely leave the dock - it was blowing over 60 mph that night. The Hartley boats quickly crossed Wright Sound to take the 99 shocked passengers and crew aboard their boats and back to their village. Unfortunately two passengers, Shirley Rosette and Gerald Foisy, apparently failed to reach the safety of the lifeboats and were lost with the ship.

The subsequent investigation revealed that it was the inexcusable inattention of the crew on the bridge at the time - the Captain was asleep - that caused the tragedy. All were fired, and eventually, the fourth officer, on duty at the time, was charged with criminal negligence. A Popular Science article about the sinking revealed that the fourth officer and the other person on the bridge had had a previous romantic relationship with each other, and that evening watch was the first time they had seen each other since breaking up.

Built as the Stena Danica, she originally operated on the route between Gothenburg, Sweden, and Frederikshavn, Denmark. Sold to BC Ferries in 1973, she was renamed the Queen of Surrey, and put on the West Vancouver - Nanaimo route across Georgia Strait. But, due to her RORO (Roll on, roll off) design that required opening her bow to unload, she was found to be unsuitable for the busy cross strait run which requires 8 trips a day, so after only two years, she was decommissioned and laid up.. pretty poor planning if you ask me...

Three years later, she underwent a ten million dollar refit to equip her for service along BC's north coast, adding staterooms, more restaurants, and a cargo hold. Renamed, the Queen of The North, she was put on the Port Hardy to Prince Rupert run with service to Bella Bella and Skiddegate, in the Queen Charlotte Islands as well .

In 2001 she was give another major refit, but BC Ferries had decided to replace her with a more modern ferry with multiple bulkheads and watertight compartments. The Queen of The North just had a single collision bulkhead forward. However it is unclear if even a ferry with multiple compartments could have survived such an accident which opened up a gash along most of the starboard side of the ship's bottom.