weekly series
The story of the wreck, its immediate context and causes, has been told many times. Less well-known is the gory aftermath, including the corpses, photo ops, and racism in the official response. Amidst those tangled narratives of the aftermath, one story stands out. One man was willing to shatter his fortune and health to keep the last promise to his beloved, lost wife.
These were sailors on ships, many of them experienced veterans of the Inland Passage. While they lacked specifics on the Sophia’s final demise, they did possess some understanding of what the outcomes would have been possible for those aboard the doomed steamer. A repeated fear at the time, and one without even the slightest bit of evidence, was looting by Alaska Natives. In a letter, Governor Thomas Riggs wrote, “We were keeping track ... that there was no pilfering by Indians.” Deputy Collector of Customs C. D. Garfield warned that all Alaska Natives in the search area were “to leave adjacent waters immediately and not return under severe penalties.”
Almost everyone in Southeast Alaska would have known someone on the Sophia if not many individuals. The ship and its crew were regular visitors, and its passengers included prominent Alaskans like Walter Harper, who summited Denali in 1913. As Governor Riggs wrote, “I feel the disaster probably as much as any many in Alaska as there were on board fully fifty people with whom I was acquainted, many of them intimately, and whom I regarded with deep affection.
Unlike most stampeders, the Albert prospered in their new domain. He was not exactly nouveau riche but was certainly comfortable and prominent. In 1914, the Seward Daily Gateway described him as “one of the old timers on Kenai peninsula and an owner of some valuable property above Susitna Station.” By 1918, long after most would-be prospectors had departed, he and his wife were still ensconced in Flat.
If the Canadian Pacific Railway was not going to send more divers to investigate the wreck — and they were not — then Albert Winchell would hire his own. On Dec. 21, Albert and a local diver, Selmer Jacobson, made their first of five visits to the Vanderbilt Reef. And on Jacobson’s first dive, he saw four bodies, recovering one. Because of Ilene’s illness, she was given her own stateroom on the steamship.