Today, October 25th, as I have done the last few days, I will listen to a song that makes me miserable.
The song is Ballad of the Princess Sophia by the Longest Night Ensemble, on their CD Not Too Dark (paid link). This is an album of songs and stories for the Winter Solstice, recorded in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. I picked it up at the Goodwill store in Whitehorse on the trip to retrieve Aly from last summer’s archaeological field school. As it happened, I had recently read one of the best of many books on the Princess Sophia, Ken Coates and Bill Morrison’s Sinking of the Princess Sophia: Taking the North Down with Her (paid link) (check your local, independent bookstore).
The ship ran aground on Vanderbilt Reef north of Juneau in a blinding October blizzard. She stuck there a few days, then sank, killing all aboard. Coates and Morrison point out that the sinking represented a huge disaster for our region, as many of the leading citizens of gold rush-era Alaska and the Yukon died. Only the region’s isolation, and the end of World War I coming within a few short weeks of the disaster kept it from becoming as well known as it might have been.
Today is the 94th anniversary of the death of the Steamship Princess Sophia, and all the souls aboard her. Continue reading