S.S. PRINCESS MAY
by: Patrick McSherry
This is an image is of the Canadian
Pacific Railway steamer S.S. PRINCESS MAY. On August 5, 1910, she
hit a reef close to Alaska's Sentinel Island...and then the tide went out!
Her passengers and freight were removed, but unable to be refloated, she
remained on the rocks for nearly a month until tug boats were able to pull
her off. During this time, a photographer, W. H. Case, apparently snapped
this amazing photo. In the process of being removed from the reef she received
a fifty foot long gash, eighteen inches wide. The damage was repaired
and served for nine more years before being sold for use in the Caribbean.
She was scuttled off Jamaica in 1930.
Source: "Flashback," National Geographic, Vol. 194, No.
2 (Washington DC:
National Geographic Society, August, 1998) 128.
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