Sunken Canadian stern-wheeler is an underwater time capsule
Jack Linthicum
disassembled and carted across the mountains to the Yukon finally
found. On Lake LaBerge, of Dan Magee fame.
http://ingeb.org/songs/thereare.html
latimes.com
Sunken Canadian stern-wheeler is an underwater time capsule
The A.J. Goddard carried miners in the Klondike Gold Rush, then sank
in 1901. Tools were scattered on deck and tongs remained in a forge,
said the team of archaeologists that discovered the wreck.
By Thomas H. Maugh II
November 24, 2009
Underwater archaeologists said Monday that they have found a virtual
time capsule of life during Canada's Klondike Gold Rush: a sunken
Yukon River stern-wheeler so well-preserved that researchers can
document the last minutes of the five-man crew as well as their life
aboard the primitive cargo-hauler.
The door of the steam boiler on the A.J. Goddard was open, and
slightly charred wood found inside suggested the crew was trying to
build up a head of steam, perhaps to break loose from an ice jam.
An ax remained on the deck after one crew member hefted it to chop the
rope used to tow a barge, a sign of their frantic attempts to escape
the ice floe.
Three men perished in the 1901 sinking, according to news reports at
the time, and two were found clinging to the ship's wheelhouse in the
icy lake.
The bodies of Capt. Charles McDonald, cook Fay Ransome and fireman
John Thompson washed ashore. Engineer Stockfedt and crewman Snyder,
whose first names are unknown, were rescued by a trapper camping
nearby.
The Goddard, which had been disassembled and laboriously carried over
mountain passes to be reassembled on the shores of Lake Bennett at the
headwaters of the Yukon, foundered in a winter storm, sinking in 40
feet of frigid water in Lake Laberge, about 40 miles north of
Whitehorse. Its precise location had been a mystery until it was
discovered last summer in a survey of gold-rush-era wrecks in the
lake.
The ship "is literally a frozen moment in time," with nearly
everything on board in the same place it was when the ship went down,
said underwater archaeologist James P. Delgado, president of Texas A&M
University's Institute of Nautical Archaeology and a member of the
team that found the Goddard.
"The Goddard is a very important reminder that ordinary people get
caught up in events that are bigger than themselves. It's a rare
window into the past where we can truly connect with these five guys,
the reality of the gold rush and trying to make a go of it in
difficult times," Delgado said.
The Klondike Gold Rush was triggered in 1896 when members of the
Tagish First Nations tribe discovered gold in the Yukon River valley
in northern Canada. The remote location made it difficult for
potential miners to reach the site. The most common route was to
travel by rail to the Alaskan towns of Skagway and Dyea, cross the
Coast Mountains through the Chilkoot Pass to Lake Bennett on foot,
then build a craft to journey more than 500 miles downstream to Dawson
City, near the gold strike.
Ultimately, about 30,000 miners made it -- out of about 100,000 who
started the trip -- and an estimated 12.5 million ounces of gold have
since been mined in the region.
A.J. Goddard, an engine designer from Iowa, saw a different way to
make money from the gold rush. He commissioned the construction of two
flat-bottomed stern-wheelers (required because of the shallowness of
the river and its rapid flow) in San Francisco and Seattle. The crafts
were carried in bits and pieces through the narrow White Pass in the
winter of 1897, a task that took Goddard and his wife the entire
season.
But that spring, the couple established the first steamboat link
between the gold fields and the Pacific coast via the railway to
Skagway.
Eventually, hundreds of small ships and boats were servicing the
route, but most of them were eventually abandoned and destroyed.
Doug Davidge, an amateur archaeologist at the Yukon Transportation
Museum in Whitehorse, had been searching for the Goddard for two
decades and recently had been participating in the gold rush survey.
Last summer, the survey team was performing a side-scan sonar survey
of Lake Laberge when, on the last day of the trip and the last scan of
the lake, they saw a promising image in the corner of the screen.
Davidge went back the next day in a motorized canoe and dropped a
camera over the side. He discovered a stern-wheeler that he suspected
was the Goddard.
This spring, not 48 hours after the lake ice melted, the team began
diving to the wreck. Davidge was the first to see it and the first to
place his gloved hand on the rail.
"The ship is upright. It pretty much sank straight down," Delgado
said.
A canvas hose running to a pump suggests that the ship was taking on
water.
The framework of the canvas tent the crew lived in on deck remains.
Their stove was on deck as well, and a cook pot was lying in the mud
alongside the wreck.
They had a forge on deck for repairs -- the tongs were still on it.
Their tools had spilled out of a canvas bag across the deck and into
the mud. A running light on the side of the ship that would have been
lighted by a candle was still in place.
A crew member's coat and shoes were left on the deck, perhaps shed as
he attempted to swim for his life.
The forward hold was full of firewood, while the rear hold was full of
bags, maybe of coal, Delgado said. What appears to be one of the men's
carpetbags was in the hold, but the team has not yet retrieved it. The
team hopes it will contain letters or other identifying materials.
The team is working with the Canadian and provincial governments to
preserve the site. They will return next spring as soon as the ice
clears again to retrieve some objects for display in the Yukon museum.
The project was funded by the Yukon government and the National
Geographic Society.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-sci-sternwheeler24-2009nov24,0,3733461.story
Andrew Chaplin
news:94d4cbba-8fef-4d8d...@h10g2000vbm.googlegroups.com:
> Pic and a map at the citation. Mystery death of stern wheeler
> disassembled and carted across the mountains to the Yukon finally
> found. On Lake LaBerge, of Dan Magee fame.
> http://ingeb.org/songs/thereare.html
>
>
> latimes.com
> Sunken Canadian stern-wheeler is an underwater time capsule
> The A.J. Goddard carried miners in the Klondike Gold Rush, then sank
> in 1901. Tools were scattered on deck and tongs remained in a forge,
> said the team of archaeologists that discovered the wreck.
>
> By Thomas H. Maugh II
>
> November 24, 2009
>
<snip>
> The team is working with the Canadian and provincial governments to
> preserve the site. They will return next spring as soon as the ice
> clears again to retrieve some objects for display in the Yukon museum.
>
> The project was funded by the Yukon government and the National
> Geographic Society.
>
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-sci-sternwheeler24-2009
> nov24,0,3733461.story
>
Someone at the L.A. Times has a sketchy understanding of how Canada is
constituted: the Yukon is not a province.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)
Jack Linthicum
wrote:
Minor point, he didn't say "Yukon provincial", even though the "Yukon
government" was mentioned. My guess would be the National Geographic's
error and not the Times. Still, there is BC slowly working its way out
from Vancouver.
Andrew Chaplin
> On Nov 24, 6:40�am, Andrew Chaplin <ab.chap...@yourfinger.rogers.com>
> wrote:
>> Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net> wrote
>> innews:94d4cbba-8fef-4
> d8d-babe-e...@h10g2000vbm.googlegroups.com:
>>
>>
>> > Pic and a map at the citation. Mystery death of stern wheeler
>> > disassembled and carted across the mountains to the Yukon finally
>> > found. On Lake LaBerge, of Dan Magee fame.
>> >http://ingeb.org/songs/thereare.html
>>
>> > latimes.com
>> > Sunken Canadian stern-wheeler is an underwater time capsule
>> > The A.J. Goddard carried miners in the Klondike Gold Rush, then
>> > sank in 1901. Tools were scattered on deck and tongs remained in a
>> > forge, said the team of archaeologists that discovered the wreck.
>>
>> > By Thomas H. Maugh II
>>
>> > November 24, 2009
>>
>> <snip>
>> > The team is working with the Canadian and provincial governments to
>> > preserve the site.
<snip>
>> > The project was funded by the Yukon government and the National
>> > Geographic Society.
>>
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-sci-sternwheeler24-
2009nov24,0,3733461.story
>>
>> Someone at the L.A. Times has a sketchy understanding of how Canada
>> is constituted: the Yukon is not a province.
>
> Minor point, he didn't say "Yukon provincial", even though the "Yukon
> government" was mentioned. My guess would be the National Geographic's
> error and not the Times. Still, there is BC slowly working its way out
> from Vancouver.
>
The error belongs to the editors at the L.A. Times, as they allowed it to
be published.
When you juxtapose "The team is working with the Canadian and provincial
governments to preserve the site" and "The project was funded by the
Yukon government and the National Geographic Society", you might infer
that a third government, such as that of B.C. is involved. I cannot see
why it would be, however, as Lake Laberge in well down the Yukon River
(some 200 Km) from the border with B.C.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Lake+Laberge,
+YT&sll=45.400379,-75.647736&sspn=0.237206,0.615234&ie=UTF8
&hq=&hnear=Lake+Laberge&ll=60.8877,-135.175781&spn=11.087771,39.375
&t=h&z=5
Jack Linthicum
wrote:
> Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net> wrote innews:9a9566b7-e76e-4eaf...@g1g2000vbr.googlegroups.com:
>
>
>
> > On Nov 24, 6:40 am, Andrew Chaplin <ab.chap...@yourfinger.rogers.com>
> > wrote:
> >> Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net> wrote
> >> innews:94d4cbba-8fef-4
> +YT&sll=45.400379,-75.647736&sspn=0.237206,0.615234&ie=UTF8
> &hq=&hnear=Lake+Laberge&ll=60.8877,-135.175781&spn=11.087771,39.375
> &t=h&z=5
> --
> Andrew Chaplin
> SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
> (If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)
Try looking up Yukon and British Columbia in google. The two occur
together more times than mere coincidence would allow. IIRC BC tried
to take over the governing of Yukon sometime lately.
Arved Sandstrom
> Pic and a map at the citation. Mystery death of stern wheeler
> disassembled and carted across the mountains to the Yukon finally
> found. On Lake LaBerge, of Dan Magee fame.
> http://ingeb.org/songs/thereare.html
Speaking of underwater time capsules, an hour long show (on one channel
or another) on the construction of the Langeled pipeline gave a few good
minutes to the discovery of an early 19th-c. shipwreck near the harbour
of Bud in Norway (see near the end of
http://www.shipwreck.net/pdf/CWA-Kingsley-March2009.pdf; also
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5367/is_200610/ai_n21401397/).
The underwater archaeological techniques employed were pretty cool.
Actually the entire show was awesome. That's some serious technology
they used to build that pipeline.
AHS
Jack Linthicum
> Jack Linthicum wrote:
> > Pic and a map at the citation. Mystery death of stern wheeler
> > disassembled and carted across the mountains to the Yukon finally
> > found. On Lake LaBerge, of Dan Magee fame.
> >http://ingeb.org/songs/thereare.html
>
> [ SNIP ]
>
> Speaking of underwater time capsules, an hour long show (on one channel
> or another) on the construction of the Langeled pipeline gave a few good
> minutes to the discovery of an early 19th-c. shipwreck near the harbour
> The underwater archaeological techniques employed were pretty cool.
>
> Actually the entire show was awesome. That's some serious technology
> they used to build that pipeline.
>
> AHS
My favorite is an 8000 year old ship/boat yard in an underwater site
on the Isle of Wight, near Yarmouth.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427351.000-scuba-diving-to-th...
Frogwatch
wrote:
> On Nov 24, 7:51 am, Arved Sandstrom <dces...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Jack Linthicum wrote:
> > > Pic and a map at the citation. Mystery death of stern wheeler
> > > disassembled and carted across the mountains to the Yukon finally
> > > found. On Lake LaBerge, of Dan Magee fame.
> > >http://ingeb.org/songs/thereare.html
>
> > [ SNIP ]
>
> > Speaking of underwater time capsules, an hour long show (on one channel
> > or another) on the construction of the Langeled pipeline gave a few good
> > minutes to the discovery of an early 19th-c. shipwreck near the harbour
> > The underwater archaeological techniques employed were pretty cool.
>
> > Actually the entire show was awesome. That's some serious technology
> > they used to build that pipeline.
>
> > AHS
>
> My favorite is an 8000 year old ship/boat yard in an underwater site
> on the Isle of Wight, near Yarmouth.
>
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427351.000-scuba-diving-to-th...
Thank You Jack, it has been years since I read "The Cremation of Sam
McGee" and it is just as good now.
Andrew Chaplin
wrote:
> together more times than mere coincidence would allow. IIRC BC tried
I just have. The reason "Yukon" and "British Columbia" occur so often
together is that the river rises in B.C.
As for the politics, Jack, I do not think you recall correctly; even
if you are thinking of the Yukon schools question of the 1937, that's
a dead letter since the 1982 patriation of the Constitution. "[T]o
take over the governing of Yukon" would require a constitutional
amendment, something to which Canadians seem averse since it could
well entail a referendum. If there is anything still afoot, it's news
to us Canadians--in these parts, at least.
David E. Powell
Dennis
>> > Jack Linthicum wrote:
>> > > Pic and a map at the citation. Mystery death of stern wheeler
>> > > disassembled and carted across the mountains to the Yukon finally
>> > > found. On Lake LaBerge, of Dan Magee fame.
>> > >http://ingeb.org/songs/thereare.html
>
> Thank You Jack, it has been years since I read "The Cremation of Sam
> McGee" and it is just as good now.
Yes, is is good! According to Wiki, the vessel in the poem was the
Olive May, not the A.J. Goddard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cremation_of_Sam_McGee#The_truth_behind_th
e_fiction
Although the poem was fiction, it was based on people and things that
Robert Service actually saw in the Yukon. The "Alice May" was based on the
derelict sternwheeler the "Olive May" that belonged to the "BL&K" company
[2] and had originally been named for the wife and daughter of "Albert
Sperry Kerry Sr.".[3] Lake Laberge is formed by a widening of the Yukon
River just north of Whitehorse and is still in use by kayakers.
vaughn
"David E. Powell" <David_Po...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:e1a03b0d-a5ca-42bc...@r24g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
> This sounds like something Clive Cussler would put in a novel!
Stay tuned! No doubt he is paying attention.
Unfortunately Clive has gone the way of some of his contemporaries and is now
hiring others to write his books for him. (You know how it goes. The big guy's
name is on the cover in large type, and then the name of the underpaid schmuck
who really wrote the book appears underneath in a smaller font.) That makes
Clive more of an editor than a writer these days. I rarely read any fiction
with more than one author named on the cover.
Vaughn
Joe Osman
I just read "The Last Stand of Fox Company" in which one of the
Marines told of him and his buddies knocking a railroad car over on
its side, setting it on fire and jumping in until they couldn't take
the heat anymore. It was around 40 below zero Fahrenheit during the
Chosin campaign.
Joe
La N
I have to say it. After today, I do not want to hear recited the poem
"Cremation of Sam McGee" again for a long long time .....
- nilita
Arved Sandstrom
I completely and totally sympathize with those guys. It reminds me of
when we were doing CW training at Fort McCoy WI in January. That
consisted of three, IIRC, extended field ops, all in the neighbourhood
of 4/5 days to a week. Heavy snow cover, and either overcast with
falling snow and not so cold (not colder than maybe -10 F) or periods of
bright sunshine and bloody cold (down to -40 F). One of those latter
periods us HQ Bty FOs were up on the hill adjusting live fire, sharing
the height actually with some Met/Survey guys. Our squad tent was down
the hill in the trees, and that was a refuge of last resort...you get a
Yukon stove going and it turns a tent into a sauna pretty quick. But we
had to grit it out up on the hill.
Pretty much all of us lost the plastic straps and lens covers on our
binos - they broke off in the cold. And not only was it -40 F (noon
temperature) but there was a stiff breeze, so who knows what the
windchill was. I started thinking of the Eastern Front in winter '41-'42
myself. We took our radioman and enconsced him in one of the OP bunkers,
lined all the walls with space blankets, and lit up some camp stoves in
there...he pretty much asphyxiated but at least he was warm. Us FOs,
perhaps 4 of us, could not do the same, and had to brave the elements,
so against all range regs we built a monster bonfire. By the time it was
in full swing we had everyone except the "duty FO" going into the trees
and dragging out giant dead logs to feed the raging inferno. The duty FO
was allowed to warm himself by the conflagration but had to scurry up
onto the hill proper every time he heard a feeble shout of Splash from
inside the radioman's heat bunker.
At one point the Regt FSCC, a major, and the master gunny in charge of
met and survey were both dragging logs out of the tree line when up
drive the battalion CO and the Bn Sgt Maj in their HMMWV. We were all
temporarily caught flatfooted, since the bonfire was so illegal. Within
minutes the lieutenant colonel and sergeant major were both also
dragging lumber out of the woods. And they stayed for quite a while. :-)
AHS
Jack Linthicum
Alan Lothian
<b8cfa242-82cb-4d52...@33g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>,
Jack Linthicum <jackli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Irrelevant. Andrew is bang right. I've spent a depressing amount of my
time as a professional editor, and that sort of error is *your* fault,
if you are the editor. I have roasted the bollocks off young'uns for
less. Oh, and I've made just the odd little error myself, but I'll
stand up straight and take the blame for it. What Google says has
nothing to do with the price of fish.
--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" -- Ibn Khaldun
If you wish to email me, try putting a dot between alan and lothian.
Blueyonder is a thing of the past.