A Trip to Alaska

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Following Vancouver's Wake. QUEEN CHARLOTTE'S SOUND, which we cross on the way to Sitka, is a dan gerous place. Here, in our very course, in 1794, Vancouver got the Discovery, his flagship, upon the rocks one day, and had no sooner, by the rising of the tide, floated her again, than the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Following Vancouver's Wake. QUEEN CHARLOTTE'S SOUND, which we cross on the way to Sitka, is a dan gerous place. Here, in our very course, in 1794, Vancouver got the Discovery, his flagship, upon the rocks one day, and had no sooner, by the rising of the tide, floated her again, than the Chatham, her consort, went upon another reef farther seaward. After a day and a night of severe labor, the Chatham was released, having sustained but comparatively little damage. Our own ships in later days have not always been so fortunate. The Suwanee, double-ender, went to pieces here in 1868, though all on board were saved. But in 1873 the steamer George S. Wright struck on some rocks here, as is supposed from portions of wreck which were found scattered among the islands, and all on board were lost. She was bound from Sitka for San Francisco, and is supposed to have struck during a snow storm. Some bodieswere found oast ashore with life preservers on, the wearers having evidently perished in the water. About four years later, a Sound Indian turned up who represented that he was the sole survivor of the Wright disaster. His story was to the effect that he had been a coal-heaver on hoard the lost steamer, and after she struck he got into a boat along with the captain, pilot, and some soldiers. They made land and built a fire, soon after which a party of Indians appeared and were offered five hundred dollars by the captain to take the castaways to Fort Rupert, about twenty-five miles to the southward. The sole survivor went on to relate that though the Indians appeared, for a time, to entertain the proposition favorably, they finally concluded to kill the whites, which determination was carried into execution. This alleged sole survivor gave as a reason for not telling h...