The Phantom Pilot of the Good Ship Eliza Anderson

The sidewheel steamer *Eliza Anderson*, shown here as she was in 1880, was every bit as ungainly as she looks. —*Wikipedia*

It was said of the Eliza Anderson that “no steamboat ever went slower and made money faster”.

During her 40-year-long career she was a fixture of the maritime traffic between Puget Sound, Victoria and the Fraser River, carrying passengers and freight.

But it’s her last voyage, this one during the Klondike gold rush when she was old and decrepit, for which she’s most remembered.

A hellish voyage that came to the very brink of shipwreck and destruction—at which moment a ghost-like figure in white beard and oilskins miraculously appeared on her bridge and directed her to a safe anchorage.

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Ghosts, its seems, don’t just haunt old houses. Sometimes they go to sea, to bedevil, beguile and bewitch those unfortunate enough to encounter them. In the case of the ancient Eliza Anderson it was a ‘phantom’ pilot who came to her aid when she needed it most.

The ancient lady of 1897 was not even a fond memory of the fine ship that had long served between Puget Sound and British Columbia ports.

Rated at 275 tons, and 144 feet long, she’d been built in Portland in 1858 and placed on the Olympia-Victoria mail run. A typical walking-beam sidewheel steamer of the period, she could lay claim to a record of safe and steady service in an age when going to sea on a passenger vessel was often akin to taking one’s life in one’s hands.

Although not palatial, she was popular with travellers who appreciated reliability in an age when maritime safety standards were almost non-existent. But even so charmed a lady as the Anderson had to grow weary.

By the time she approached her 40th birthday, she’d been twice retired. The second mothballing had been so complete hat she’d been allowed to settle, half-submerged, in a muddy slough where scavengers stripped her of much of her fittings and weeds grew knee-high on her decaying wooden decks.

For three years she rested and rotted, all but forgotten in a Duwanish River backwater.

Then the world went mad.

The discovery of gold in the Klondike fired the imaginations of thousands of all nationalities and backgrounds. Soon they were off to the newest gold fields by any means of transportation available. Nothing was too old, too small or too decrepit to get them there; it it floated, it was pressed into service.

By canoe, by rowboat and by ship, they sailed for the Yukon by way of Alaska. Among the many derelict vessels of all sizes and shapes to be reprieved in 1897 was the old, tired and retired, Eliza Anderson. The pioneering paddlewheeler, like most of the others pressed into gold rush service, was now regarded as a floating coffin.

Under the command of Capt. Town Powers, she slipped her moorings for St. Michael, Alaska, early in August. Apparently in the belief that there is safety in numbers (or, perhaps, that misery loves company) the sidewheeler was part of a small company of similar underwriter rejects.

Besides the Anderson there was the 14-year-old, 108-foot-long W.K. Merwin, the small schooner William J. Bryant as stores ship, and the 20-year-old tug Richard Holyoke.

Like the Anderson, the latter was part of Pacific Northwest maritime history, having been one of the first deep-sea, propeller-driven tugs built on Puget Sound. She was to tow the Bryant, with her four passengers, and the sidewheel steamer Politkofsky.

Built in 1863 of hand-hewn Alaskan cedar as a tug and supply boat for the historic Russian-American Company, she’d once been described as “one of the most magnificent specimens of home-made marine architecture”. By 1897, however, the Politkofsky, too, was long past her prime and, without her own power, was along under tow as a fuel barge.

**Most of the Anderson’s paying passengers, who ranged from the noteworthy to the notorious, had known dissatisfaction from the moment they set foot on board**.

The ship’s owners (who knew all about mining for gold without ever having set foot in the Yukon) had shameless overbooked. Cabins and berths had been sold, not once but often two and three times over, meaning not only first come first served, but who carried the biggest stick.

Latecomers, or those unwilling or unable to settle matters by a turn of the cards, fisticuffs or duelling, faced the long, cold voyage to Alaska on the open deck.

Many of the passengers made it known that they didn’t intend to dig their gold from the frozen ground, either; their mining tools consisted of a vast array of decks of cards, roulette wheels and other gambling paraphernalia. This blending of the respectable and not so respectable, and an equally bizarre mix of crew members, some of whom had never before been to sea and were working their passage north, did nothing to improve life aboard the Anderson.

Relations between passengers and between passengers and crew deteriorated almost hourly as the seagoing circus limped northward along the B.C. coast through the Inside Passage.

In the pilothouse, Capt. Powers had quite enough to contend with just in getting there, his sieve of a ship lacking even such amenities as a compass. His trial was almost cut short at Comox, V.I., when the Anderson collided with the venerable clipper ship Glory of the Seas. Fortunately for the Glory, the steamer confined much of the damage to her own starboard paddle box.

In defiance of the elements and all commonsense, the convoy lumbered northward until off Kodiak Island. There, the Anderson, Holyoke, Politkofsky, Merwin and Bryant encountered their first real trouble of the voyage when the Merwin’s towline snapped during a gale. The crew of the Holyoke, obviously of superior calibre, managed with difficulty to restore the lifeline.

**The Anderson chose that moment—at the height of the storm—to have her own crisis by running out of coal.**

Unable to refuel from the Politkofsky, and unable to keep her head into the wind, Capt. Powers had to order the crew and passengers to loot the ship of virtually everything that was flammable and expendable. As the steamer wallowed drunkenly in the troughs, teams armed with fire axes literally attacked her.

They smashed up furniture and wooden fittings, secondary bulkheads—anything unessential to the functioning of the ship and that would burn—to feed the Anderson’s boilers.

Hours passed with her yet afloat but running out of even this fuel, with no sign of the gale abating.

As the sidewheeler’s chances of survival steadily diminished, the Rev. Mr. Clark of New Hampshire enjoyed a growing number of converts as many of the ship’s company turned to thoughts of greater salvation. Some of the gamblers, in fact, had already sacrificed their cards and dice to the engine room.

On deck, under the direction of Capt. Powers who’d shown himself to be more than worthy of his command, the crew poured almost 50 barrels of kerosene and lubricating oil over the bow in an attempt to calm the waves.

When the smokestack crashed to the deck, all aboard must have thought that the end was near.

Those more concerned with survival than with with salvation continued to chop up what furniture was left as others poured oil over the bow and worked to set out a sea anchor. Yet others were kept busy repairing the rudder chains, so rotted that they broke repeatedly, and clearing the steam pumps which continually clogged with coal dust from the flooded bunkers.

**For two days and nights this combination of patchwork and prayer kept the Anderson afloat**.

By this time, however, it had become apparent to all aboard that she couldn’t long endure such an uneven battle. Only the Rev. Mr. Clark could have taken any satisfaction from their worsening plight, he by this time having won over the blackest of sinners aboard whose concern for the Hereafter coincided with the last of the available fuel.

Quite simply, there was nothing left to burn; the engine room firemen had gone to the extreme of draining the ship’s wooden water tanks and chopping them up, and the cook had contributed the last side of bacon from the galley!

By the third morning of the storm, the end of the Eliza Anderson and her motley company was near. All but out of fuel, taking on water and totally lost, she simply couldn’t go on. Although what occurred next is a matter of record, being based upon the declarations of Capt. Powers and his officers, well over a century after, we can only marvel.

According to them, the steamer’s rescue came—literally—from out of nowhere, in the form of a small sailboat. As those aboard the dying Anderson watched in disbelief, it sped across the waves and quickly overtook them. Upon pulling alongside, the craft’s sole occupant clambered over the rail and onto the steamer’s deck.

Without so much as a word or sideways glance the stranger, described as “a veritable giant of a man, raw-boned and muscular,” made his way to the pilothouse.

Looking, with his long grey hair and beard as though he’d stepped from the pages of the Old Testament, he took up a position beside the helmsman.

Then, with the tersest of instruction, he guided the ship, down to its last gasp of ransacked fuel, through the storm. Past reef and inlet, with the last reserves of steam in her boilers, the ancient lady inched forward until at last able to anchor alongside an abandoned cannery in the snug of an island cove. Only then did the stranger return to his boat and, without a word to identify himself or to explain how he’d known of their predicament, sail away

With 75 tons of fuel found at the cannery, the Anderson crept on to Unalaska where her passengers abandoned her for a safer vessel. She lay at her moorings for a year until driven ashore by a storm and she eventually broke up.

Supposedly a photo of the *Eliza Anderson* after her arrival in Unalaska. Note that this is a sternwheeler; also that both smokestacks are intact, contrary to the accepted account that the Anderson’s single funnel crashed onto her deck during the last storm. —*www.pinterest.com*

*This* is the real *S.S. Eliza Anderson* after she reached her destination at Unalaska; her name shows clearly on her bow. And, yes, she still has her smokestack. Surprisingly, considering her age and her ordeal, she looks almost respectable. —*Wikipedia Commons*

The saga of the Anderson’s mystery pilot continued to intrigue, his sudden appearance and disappearance assuming a mystic quality which made more than one of the steamer’s company wonder if they’d imagined him.

As the story was told and retold it became more fanciful, one version having the stranger suddenly appear at Capt. Powers’ side then vanish into thin air upon making their safe anchorage.

Two years after her miraculous escape, one of her crewmen identified the phantom pilot as the ghost of Capt. Tom Wright, owner and master of the sidewheeler at the height of her career on Puget Sound. “Capt. Tom’s spirit saw our danger,” declared this stranger. “He knew and loved the Anderson, and that was how it happened that a stranger came out of the storm and brought us safely to land.”

Captain Tom Wright, Puget Sound maritime legend and for many years part owner and master of the *S.S. Eliza Anderson. —Wikipedia*

A problem with this theory of ghostly intervention is that Capt. Wright was still alive and kicking in 1898!

Others, of course, had more pragmatic explanations for this phenomenon.

Such as that told some 60 years after the harrowing voyage, by a former seaman of the U.S. Revenue cutter Corwin, which had been sent in search of the Anderson upon the safe arrivals of her consorts.

In the course of the Corwin’s search, the crew had questioned two brothers at Kodiak Island. Operators of a small cannery which had failed, the Scandinavians told them how one of them had boarded the Anderson at Kodiak as a stowaway, intending to ask a relative at Unalaska for a loan.

Even after hours of storm (and all the while passengers and crew attacked the ship with axes for firewood) he’d remained hidden, sure that she’d weather through and afraid that he’d be] turned over to the authorities if he revealed himself.

When it became apparent, however, that the old steamer was about to founder, he’d presented himself to Capt. Powers and guided him to a safe anchorage near the cannery. Once she was secure, his brother had taken him off by rowboat, both hiding until the steamer sailed.

Thus, according to this version, the phantom pilot was an unnamed Scandinavian cannery operator.

Whichever he was—stowaway or ghost—the mystery pilot undoubtedly saved the Eliza Anderson and her exhausted company from destruction.

* * * * *

Or did those aboard the dying steamer, beside themselves with fear, imagine the whole thing?

There’s an uncanny similarity in the story of British Columbia commercial fisherman Randy Morrison who experienced shipwreck in 1985. With his skipper Leanor Egolf, the 34-year-old was swept from the deck of their foundering Pacific Traveller. Egolf vanished but Morrison’s immersion suit kept him afloat and alive for 18 hours. Upon his rescue he spoke of a “ghost ship”.

Although temporarily blinded by salt spray, he said he “didn’t know then that I couldn’t see with my eyes. But I saw this boat clearly. This longboat pulled alongside me and there were these guys in long grey coats and they beckoned me and said, ‘Come on, get aboard.’

“And I thought, gee, this is funny, my arms just keep going through the boat. Why can’t I climb aboard?

“When I think back on it I don’t know if it was real or a hallucination. But I think, if I could have been able to climb aboard with them, I would have left my body behind on this earth.”

As the late Mr. Ripley would have said of both the Elizabeth Anderson and the Pacific Traveller incidents, “Believe it or not!”