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STEAMER CHIPPEWA 127440 Dressed ship for her first run to Victoria, BC. Moored in front of the Empress Hotel. Original photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.© |
Once a splendid, twin-stack, passenger steamship launched in Toledo, Ohio in 1900, the CHIPPEWA was designed to run as a fast commuter ship on the Great Lakes. She did so for seven years before a sale was negotiated by Joshua Green of the Puget Sound Navigation Co. with Arnold Transportation Co. Green's partner, Charles E. Peabody, negotiated to purchase two other steamers, the INDIANAPOLIS and the IROQUOIS.
A mechanical overhaul was done on the CHIPPEWA at Hoboken prior to the departure on the afternoon of 18 February 1907, Capt. McClure, commanding and C. F. Bishop as chief engineer.
On her trip west to Seattle, she traveled 17,500 miles on the Cape Horn passage. She spent 54 days, and 17 hours of actual running time with some extremely rough weather in the Strait of Magellan.
Trouble began soon after the New York harbor pilot was dropped. Fires started throughout the ship as seawater shorted out the electrical cables. The navigating lights went out, the boiler injector pipes began to leak, pipe joints blew out and the forward bulwarks were stove in. "Everybody is sick and everything going wrong," wrote Bishop in his engine room log. Saltwater kept getting into the boilers and it was necessary to shut one of them down completely for much of the voyage. On 24 March, just south of deadly Cape Horn at the entrance to the Straits of Magellan, the CHIPPEWA twice went aground; (click on "read more" just below ––
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