A Canadian Pacific Railway steamship bound for Vancouver heavily laden with gold from the Klondike sank in the middle of the night after grounding on Vanderbilt Reef in Lynn Canal near Juneau, Alaska.
All 368 passengers and crew aboard the SS Princess Sophia died in what was the worst maritime accident in the history of B.C. and Alaska.
The only survivor was a small dog that was able to swim to a nearby island and was recovered a few days later. The dead, mostly from Vancouver and Victoria, were returned home Nov. 11, 1918, on the CPR steamer Princess Alice, nicknamed the “Ship of Sorrow.” Salvage divers retrieved sacks of mail and the ship’s safe, but the Princess Sophia still remains at the bottom of the sea.
