Stranded (7 page)
Authors: Aaron Saunders
Without warning, everything went haywire. “We saw curtains and sparks and a puff of smoke. We didn't know what the hell happened,” passenger Lynn Biller would later tell the Associated Press.
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Biller was standing at the stern of the
Regent Sea
when the
Island Princess
seemingly drifted straight toward their ship. Instead of stopping, both ships remained on a collision course, and passengers standing at the rail braced themselves for impact. When the two vessels finally hit, the force of the collision ripped the steel hull plating from the
Regent Sea
and tore a fifty-foot gash in the side of the
Island Princess
. Located thirty feet or so above the waterline, the tear literally ripped the outer steel hull from eleven staterooms, exposing them to the elements. Three of the six hundred passengers aboard
Island Princess
suffered minor injuries from broken glass, while no injuries were reported on the larger
Regent Sea
.
Of the two ships in Skagway Bay that morning, the
Island Princess
bore the brunt of the accident. Although her structure and sea-keeping abilities weren't affected by the collision, the loss of eleven staterooms during the start of the Alaska cruise season ensured that she would have to go into dry dock for repairs. After both Princess Cruises and the Coast Guard had assessed the situation, the
Island Princess
sailed from Skagway bound for the Todd Shipyards in Seattle. Her passengers â and Pilot Nerup â were not on board for the journey.
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Regency Cruises fared far better. The accident didn't impact the
Regent Sea
's schedule, and repairs were made to her bent stern plating and railings as she was underway in Lynn Canal, en route to Juneau. While Regency Cruises stated in a press release that “The minor damage sustained to an aft section of the
Regent Sea
's mooring deck [did] not affect passenger facilities nor the ship's structural integrity,” the event did make the news.
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Once again, Robert Nerup found himself without a licence to act as a marine pilot; this time for a duration of six months, effectively ending his Alaska cruise pilotage season before it had even begun.
In order to have his licence reinstated, Nerup was required to complete a one-day course in shipboard radar, coupled with a two-week course on ship handling and navigation â including tests on “navigation management,” a term for how members of the ship's crew interact with each other when on duty on the bridge. Nerup would also be forced to take another test governing the “rules of the road” at sea, and would remain on probation for a full year after that.
Juneau, Alaska, appears today much as it did in 1918. Ships still dock here, though they bring mainly travellers taking an Alaska cruise vacation.
For every one of the requirements that the State of Alaska and the Transportation Safety Board had set forth for him, Robert Nerup fulfilled each. With his courses once again passed and his licence reinstated, he returned to piloting cruise ships in Alaska in the spring of 1993. But the accidents had left him shaken.
To combat his long-standing depression, he had been taking Effexor at 18:00 each evening since 1992. The antidepressant seems to have alleviated the worst of his symptoms, leaving Pilot Nerup with only a handful of physical side effects that he was able to easily deal with. As he ate his dinner on the evening of June 22, 1995, while
Star Princess
was still docked in Skagway, Nerup took his daily dose of the drug. He hadn't told anyone that he was taking Effexor, and no one â including the Southeast Alaska Marine Pilots Association â ever thought to ask. He rubbed his eyes and looked out at the imposing mountains surrounding the ship. He hadn't slept well during the past twenty-four hours, partly due to the demands of the job and partly because of the altered scheduling for this next leg of the cruise.
The railroad dock in Skagway, shown here in September 1949. The docks were configured so that trains could pull up on the full length of the pier,
thus avoiding the need to walk from the
main WP&YR station, which was situated
at the end of Broadway. Although heavily modernized, this docking location is still used by cruise ships.
City of Vancouver Archives AM1545-S3-: CVA 586-30.85.
Pilots Kutz and Nerup had decided that for the run from Skagway to Juneau through Lynn Canal they would modify their six-on, six-off schedule to better accommodate the shorter length of the journey. Both men agreed to stand watch for five hours and fifteen minutes apiece, with Pilot Kutz overseeing the 19:00 hrs departure of
Star Princess
from Skagway. Pilot Nerup would be officially on duty at forty minutes past midnight on the morning of June 23, 1995.
Because
Star Princess
had been docked for much of the day, the services of both pilots hadn't been needed. Hypothetically, this should have been a day of rest for both men, but sleep wasn't coming easily to Pilot Nerup.
That day he had stood watch from 00:30 until the
Star Princess
came alongside in Skagway at 06:00, at which point he retired to his stateroom to sleep. He awoke at noon, ate lunch, and remained awake until 14:00 that afternoon before returning to his stateroom. Nerup then managed to get three more hours of shut-eye before awaking at 17:00 to have dinner and take his Effexor. By the time he finished dinner and finally crawled back into his bunk at 19:00, Robert Nerup had woken up and gone to sleep four separate times in less than twenty-four hours.
This lack of sleep likely didn't give Nerup cause for concern; after all, he knew
Star Princess
inside and out, having last joined her for a two-week stint on May 17 as she began her Alaska season. This was just one of ten trips Nerup had made aboard the ship in the past few years â more than enough to know how she responded to helm commands and handled at various speeds.
Alaska marine pilots aren't exclusive to any one ship or cruise line, but it speaks to Nerup's character that so much of his work involved the ships of Princess Cruises, even after the collision on board the
Island Princess
three years previously. If the line had any misgivings about his presence on board their ships, they certainly didn't express them publicly.
As the engines of the
Star Princess
rumbled to life, Captain Chiesa deftly guided his ship away from Skagway's railroad dock and out into the open expanse of Lynn Canal. Her screws bit into the churning water, whipped up by Skagway's trademark wind, as she came around to port. Being the middle of summer, passengers gathered on the open decks to admire this scenic departure. In the distance, the White Pass & Yukon Route trains slowly pulled away from the railroad dock, their work hauling tourists to the summit and back done for another day.
Once the
Star Princess
was clear of the harbour and well on her way, Captain Chiesa gave control of his ship to Pilot Ronald Kutz. It was a little after seven thirty in the evening. In roughly five hours he would pass the torch to Pilot Nerup, who would guide the vessel the remainder of the way to Juneau.
Their routine voyage was about to change dramatically.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1918
TRANSITING LYNN CANAL, ALASKA
ABOARD
PRINCESS SOPHIA
Like most great disasters, the seeds of this one were sewn innocuously. As the ship's clocks on board the
Princess Sophia
hit midnight and the date silently slipped over into the first seconds of Thursday, October 24, 1918, the men who stood on her navigation bridge were facing a series of minor annoyances.
First, there was her late departure from Skagway â three hours in total â that would put
Princess Sophia
behind schedule for the remainder of her journey south unless they could make up time. Making up time, however, was beginning to look impossible: less than an hour after setting sail from Skagway a raging snowstorm kicked up as they passed the small town of Haines, Alaska, and entered into the widest stretch of Lynn Canal. Captain Leonard Locke, a stickler for adhering to published schedule times, kept her speed up in the hopes of making up time. With the fierce snow came winds that were bearing down from the north, hitting the
Princess Sophia
at her stern with gusts of up to fifty miles per hour. The high winds also kicked up heavy swells, and
Princess Sophia
began to pitch and roll heavily as she drove on through the growing storm, bound for Juneau.
The nasty, hard-driving winter storm would surely result in an uncomfortable ride for the 278 passengers, but it was far from the worst storm that the men on the bridge that night had ever seen. Along with Captain Locke, First Officer Jerry Shaw strained to see much beyond the foredeck mast. Although all of the lights before the bridge and in the wheelhouse had been extinguished prior to setting sail from Skagway,
Princess Sophia
's running and navigation lights were now acting as miniature spotlights against the snow, illuminating each flake as if it were a high-intensity light bulb as it zipped past.
An officer peers out the window of the
Princess Adelaide
's wheelhouse. Note the drop-down windows; the wheehouse of the
Princess Sophia
would have been very similar in layout and design.
City of Vancouver Archives AM1545-S3-: CVA 586-530.
At age thirty-six, First Officer Shaw was half as old as Captain Locke. He also took home half the pay â roughly $160 per month compared with Locke's relative haul of $300. He'd been with Canadian Pacific for twenty years, and was both well-liked and well-respected. The year 1918 hadn't been the best for the young officer, though. In April, while commanding the 165-foot long Canadian Pacific salvage vessel
Tees
, Shaw found himself caught up in rapidly changing currents near Sidney, British Columbia, just southeast of the provincial capital of Victoria. Making twelve knots at the time, the small
Tees
was rapidly pushed off-course by the fast-moving water.
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Before Shaw or the other officers on her bridge could react, she ran aground on a submerged reef near Zero Point. Both passengers and mail were successfully taken off, and the
Tees
was pumped out and towed into port. The experience, however, clearly rattled Shaw. As he would later tell the
Victoria Daily Colonist
newspaper, the entire event “was entirely unexpected.”
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