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Alaska Steamship Travel – A good-natured map of Alaska

The Alaska Steamship Company was formed on August 3, 1894. While it originally set out to ship passengers and fishing products, the Alaska Steamship Company began shipping mining equipment, dog sleds, and cattle at the outbreak of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897. The company was purchased by the Alaska Syndicate and merged with the Northwestern Steamship Company in 1909, but retained its name, and the fleet was expanded to 18 ships. During World War II, the government took over the company’s ships. When the war ended, the company struggled to compete with the new Alaska Highway for passengers and freight. It discontinued passenger service altogether in 1954 and shut down operations in 1971.

The company was founded by Charles Peabody, Captain George Roberts, Captain Melville Nichols, George Lent, Frank E. Burns and Walter Oakes.This group of six men began gathering $30,000 by selling 300 shares of stock, at $100 each. Peabody served as president of the company from its creation until 1912. The first vessel they purchased was the 140-foot steamer Willapa.

A railroad to serve the mines in the interior encouraged mining activity and brought more fortune-seekers and tourists. By 1905, service was shifted from the Juneau and Skagway region to the Valdez – Cordova, then eventually to Nome, where Alaska Steamship was ready to capitalize on the bonanza by switching its ships accordingly. Their ships supplied the growing number of religious missions that were being established and the burgeoning fish cannery industry.

When the Klondike Gold Strike took place in 1897, Charles Peabody reorganized the company and rapidly expanded his fleet of ships to meet the sudden demand for service. In 1898, the stockholders formed the Puget Sound Navigation Company as a subsidiary. The new company was legally organized in Nevada where corporate law was more lenient. The Puget Sound routes allowed the company to continue to use some of its smaller, older vessels as they became unsuitable for the strenuous Alaska routes.

In 1902, the Puget Sound Navigation Co. started a steamship route from Port Townsend and Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, carrying both freight and passengers. Their competitor the Pacific Steamship Company had committed their entire fleet of ships to the Klondike run and were unprepared to switch to alternates when the gold rush subsided. The Canadian Pacific Railway, their other potential competitor, decided at first that would not compete on the Victoria route, and chose to concentrate on their Empress ocean-going sleek steamships which fed passengers into their rail route across the Canadian Rockies and to their Empress Hotels in Victoria and Vancouver. On May 2, 1903, Peabody and his associates purchased the controlling stock of La Conner Trading and Transportation Company. They initially named the merged company the Inland Navigation Co. but later resumed using Puget Sound Navigation Co. The new company became the biggest inland shipping company of Puget Sound.