Nolan Center opens new shipwreck exhibit

The Nolan Center opened its newest exhibit on shipwrecks with much fanfare last Friday, Nov. 8. With food, wine, music, and special presentations, many people turned out for the grand opening. The exhibit, "Wrangell Remembers - Shipwrecks Close to Home, 1908-1952," features stories and artifacts of several Southeast Alaskan shipwrecks from the 20th century. Four ships are featured in this exhibit, The Star of Bengal, the S.S. Mariposa, the Princess Sophia, and the Princess Kathleen.

The Star of Bengal, 1908:

The Star of Bengal was built in 1874. It was purchased by the Alaska Packers' Association in 1905, to transport cannery workers and canned salmon.

The wreck occurred in the early hours of Sept. 20, 1908. The Star of Bengal was leaving Wrangell on the Sept. 19 with the assistance of two tugboats, which would guide the ship out to open ocean. Gig Decker, one of the guest speakers of the evening, said that the ship was carrying 52,000 cases of salmon and 111 Chinese and Japanese cannery workers.

As the day wore on, the weather grew worse. The tugboats were not strong enough to pull a heavy ship like the Bengal, and communication between all three was all but impossible. All of the ships were being pushed towards rocks near Coronation Island. Around 2 a.m. on Sept. 20, according to the exhibit, both tugboats cut the Bengal loose and headed for safety, believing that the ship had dropped its anchor to ride out the storm. According to the exhibit, the Bengal dropped anchor around 3 a.m., but with the storm they continued to wash closer and closer to the shore. She ran aground at 8:30 a.m. and had to be evacuated

Not many people survived abandoning the ship. When one of the tugboats returned, they only found 27 survivors. None of the survivors were cannery workers, according to Decker, because they had been locked belowdecks and forgotten.

There was an inquiry into the sinking. The Bengal's captain, Nick Wagner, accused the tugboat captains of cowardice. Wagner was accused of sailing his unfit ship into a storm. Decker also added that he was accused of neglect and abandoning the cannery workers. All charges were eventually dropped, and the Bengal's sinking was declared an accident.

However, Decker takes issue with the official decision. In his personal opinion, he said he believes Wagner was only exonerated because of the influence the Alaska Packers' Association had at the time.

"They were the largest salmon canning operation in Alaska, had a lot of political clout, and I think exonerating Captain Wagner was a way to remove the responsibility from the Alaska Packers' Association," he said. "If Captain Wagner had been convicted, the Alaska Packers' Association could have faced some serious legal action."

S.S. Mariposa, 1917:

The S.S. Mariposa was built in 1883. It was sold to the Alaska Steamship Company in 1912. The ship served to transport passengers and cargo around Alaska and down to the lower 48.

The wreck occurred on Nov. 18, 1917. The Mariposa left Anchorage and was heading south, towards Wrangell. She was carrying 25,000 cases of canned salmon, 1,200 tons of ore, and 265 passengers. Around 3 a.m. on Nov. 18, the ship struck Straits Island Reef near Point Baker. All passengers were safely evacuated and taken to Wrangell on the ships Curacao and Ravalli. At 9:38 a.m., about six and a half hours after striking the reef, the ship sank with all its cargo.

"Both the Sophia and the Mariposa, wrecks I'd been on, look nowhere near like a ship anymore," said guest speaker Mike Kurth. "They're just a lot of steel plates and superstructure kind of all jumbled up. It's kind of hard to tell that they were ships."

Princess Sophia, 1918:

The display for the Princess Sophia is on loan from the State of Alaska museum, Crary said in a previous interview, and is the only portion of the exhibit not put together in-house. The Sophia was commissioned in 1911 for the Canadian Pacific Railway's "Alaska Princess Line" of cruise ships. During the first World War, several ships in the Princess fleet were recommissioned as troop transports. The Sophia helped get Alaskan soldiers south to Seattle or San Francisco.

The wreck occurred in October of 1918. The Sophia left Skagway on the night of Oct. 23, one of the last sailings south for the winter. Shortly after leaving the ship ran into heavy snow and wind, and was blown off course. In the early hours of Oct. 24, the ship struck Vanderbilt Reef. The impact raised the vessel above the waterline on top of the reef. Several ships attempted to rescue those on board, but rough conditions hindered these efforts. On Oct. 25, the Sophia sent a radiogram stating they were taking on water. When the ship sank, it took all 343 people on board with it.

"Another sad thing about this story is, if you look at the dates, this ship was only six years old when this happened, so it was still fairly new," Kurth said.

Princess Kathleen, 1952:

The most recent shipwreck in the Nolan Center's exhibit is the Princess Kathleen. Also in the Princess fleet, like the Sophia, the Kathleen was built in 1924. She had a long career taking people around Southeast Alaska and the British Columbia coastline.

The wreck occurred on Sept. 7, 1952. It was the final cruise of the season, from Vancouver to Skagway. The Kathleen was carrying 425 passengers. Due to poor weather conditions, the ship was blown off course to port. The course was then corrected to starboard, but the chief officer failed to follow up with another order to return to the original course. This set the Kathleen towards the shoreline.

The ship ran aground at Lena Point, near Juneau, at 2:58 a.m. A hole had been ripped through the ship's hull, and everyone evacuated. By 11 a.m., the ship fully slipped off the rocks and sank. There was no loss of life.

"I'd say of the three wrecks that I've been on, the Kathleen is the only one that still looks like a ship when you go down on it." Kurth said.

More details on the stories of these wrecks can be found at the Nolan Center.