In the Days of the River Boats

if you say you gone to almost anyone the first thing they think of is the gold rush when about thirty thousand men climbed the Chilkoot pass and made their way downriver to the Klondike or they think of the verses of Robert's service there's a land where the mountains are nameless and the rivers all run God knows where there are lives that are airing and aimless and deaths that just hang by a hair but the gold rush was just a flash in the pan the Yukon is a river in the northwest corner of North America it rises in the mountains just 15 miles from the Pacific Ocean and runs nearly 2,000 miles to the Bering Sea before the turn of the century it provided the only practical access to a part of the country that was cut off from the outside by rugged mountains on three sides river boats came up from the Bering Sea occasionally as far as Selkirk and beyond that you were on your own even before the gold rush some traders and prospectors had come in over the Chilkoot and white passes and in 1898 the White Pass and Yukon route company began building a railway from Skagway over the mountains and around the rapids to Whitehorse here's how Skagway looked in the 30s the trains chug down the Main Street and started to climb building the road was a superhuman effort one of the engineers wrote the strong winds and severe cold made the men torpid and be numbed not only their minds but their bodies so that after one hours work it was necessary to relieve them by freshmen nonetheless only 35 men were lost from illness or accident out of 3500 who were employed once when a gold strike was rumored 65 percent of the laborers abandoned the job and stampeded but the line was eventually finished in 1900 Whitehorse became the railhead because it was the head of navigable waters trouble was for seven months of the year the boats were frozen in the railway company ran an Overland Stage two Dawson the route was over 400 miles with a weigh station every 20 miles where you could get a hot meal or a bunk for two dollars the trip from Whitehorse to Dawson took from four to ten days one way depending on the condition of the trail in summer the river route took only a day and a half downstream or four and a half days upstream it was four hundred and sixty miles past Lake lebarge who delinquent Carmack's the five fingers rink and Hell's Gate rapids and numberless bends and shallows two months before breakup a bull gang would arrive to get ready for launching the first job was to chip out ice lodged under the hulls the creeks and rivers broke up first but the ice held on the lakes to speed the break-up on Lake lebarge they used to lay down lap black mixed with old crankcase oil to absorb the sun's heat and melt the ice down stream but Dawson the whole town would bet on the day and hour the ice would go out these shots were taken in 1932 the year the Dawson dock was carried away up at Whitehorse and Carcross shipwrights and crews repaired any damage that had been done the year before the boats were jacked up and the cribbing was removed they put tallow and grease on the ways and they put the butter boards in place to support the steamer as it slid down I tried the fish oil but dogs ate it all off it took three or four weeks to launch all the boats was one going down the ways every two or three days the boats were designed to take a lot of Freight in shallow water flat bottom no keel shallow-draft with the prow shaped not to cut into the water but to channel it under the hull where it was needed the wheelhouse was well forward to get a good look at the river ahead the first boats carried liquor and food for Dawson bills of lading for other cargo read like a mail-order catalogue and there was enough wood to fire up and reach the first wood pile downstream the paddle wheel was set in the stern to avoid damage because the river was fast and the channels were sometimes very narrow usually by late May Lake lebarge was open and traffic got into full swing often they pushed a barge so they could carry more Freight one of the spring hazards was migrating caribou sometimes the steamers had to come to a full stop to let them clear the river Five Fingers an old-timer called it five huge rocks like centuries in midstream first time down in spring they'd likely put out a boat and take a look the government did a lot of blasting on the cliffs to make the passage safer you had to be ready to cut straight across the river as soon as you were through or you'd hit a submerged rock there's brought the stern very close to the cliff and more than one boat had her upper house work damaged every 50 miles or so there'd be a woodpile depending on the amount of wood needed for certain stretches of the river and also of course on a safe depth of water and a convenient Bank height it was the deckhands job to get the wood on board the number of cords ordered by the ship's master were measured off by the purser each cart load was about a third of a cord and it took about a quart an hour to keep the paddle turning it roughly 22 revolutions per minute which was about right so that you'd be pushing water and not air the river boats were the lifeline in summer which stops all along the shore the mates got the cargo sorted out and the purser kept the paperwork straight sometimes there'd be an Indian trapper moving his dogs and gear down the river or an old-timer who'd been outside and would come home there are hardships that nobody reckons there are valleys unpeopled and still his land and it beckons and beckons and I want to go back and I will a sharp bend with fast water could cause you trouble if you were pushing a barge you had to jackknife it around by tightening the lines on one side and slacking off on the other sandbars and channels were always shifting with the current bill bromley master the klondike said after years of experience in this kind of work you get solely you can read the water different whirlpools indicate different depths of water that's what we're continuously on the lookout for you've got to be on your own when you're on these rivers 36 hours after leaving Whitehorse Dawson City the votes put up here for 24 hours while they blew down the boilers and cleaned them the crew got some rest Mae got mighty little sleep on the way down there was lots of doing in Dawson and 30s it was a prosperous place maybe 2,000 people east of the city they were still mining gold one of the biggest dredges in the world was working on the creeks at that time at the Yukon consolidated Gold Room at Bear Creek they melted down the dust and nuggets it's interesting that of 250 million dollars taken out of the creeks three-quarters of it was after 1900 those 30,000 sourdough didn't find it all but it didn't take much space on the steamers to carry the gold bricks out so when they struck rich loads of silver and base metals in the mail district was a great thing for the White Pass and Yukon route several mines were opened and there was pretty heavy investment in plant and equipment Thor was hauled by cat train and stacked at Mail Landing the new mining area was on the Stewart River southeast of Dawson during the summer the ore was moved downriver to Stewart landing and trend ship to upgoing steamers the Stewart River was even shallower than the Yukon so in 1922 the smaller keno was built to move the ore down to the junction of the two rivers they tried to time their arrival at Stewart landing to meet a steamer coming up from Dawson so the hundred and 25 pound sacks would only have to be manhandled once the ore was a payload for the upriver boats and barges that had been travelling practically empty the only drawback was that pushing a barge added half again to the fuel cost so in 1929 the Klondike was built to take more Freight without a barge she was 240 feet long over that's two-thirds the length of a football field but some of the boats still needed the barges gasoline had become a big item along the river a wood contractor might be moving his whole operation and there was always the general cargo going upstream at Five Fingers the steamers needed help a one-inch steel cable about 1500 feet long was permanently fixed to the short both ends leaving enough slack to be wrapped around a steamers winch the first mate was in charge of the action on deck while the vessel was being lined up between the cliffs the operation took about half an hour and probably an extra quart of wood because of the changing Shoals and channels in shallow stretches deckhands were constantly taking soundings both port and starboard but a gravel bar could come up fast if they ran aground the first thing they did was reverse the paddles to try and wash away to gravel under the hull is that didn't work they'd get a cable ashore and fasten it solidly to try and winch themselves off sometimes they had to put out as much as 10,000 feet of cable if that failed they had to use the spires that they carried lash to the forward housing depending on whether they were trying to get off sideways or straight they put one or both spires over the sides through a metal collar with winches and block-and-tackle they'd actually hoist the hull off the bottom then lurch forward three or four feet at a time like a sick grasshopper this operation could take up to 36 hours and he used a lot of wood so that no matter how tired the crew were they'd had to wood up at the next wood pile that was grounding and there was grounding that's the Casca in 1936 in the same year the Klondike was hold coming around a point near who delinquent and sank in a few feet of water no lives were lost and the superstructure and machinery were salvaged to be used in the construction of Klondike 2 she had the same broad beam for Freight and square knuckles to prevent sites living in spring and fall the ships would tie up at night if there was a bad stretch of water ahead and summer nights were short never totally dark so the captain's often kept right on going though the klondike didn't carry many passengers the tourist trade up and down the river and the lakes above Whitehorse was important to the economy masters loved the river and when there was something to see they'd blow the whistle sometimes a wood raft would float by or local fishermen would be out with his fish wheel catching salmon and grayling crossing Lake lebarge the passengers would be allowed in the wheelhouse a steamer would make 10 to 14 trips in the five month season the last run usually took a full load of liquor down to Dawson and brought back a last load of ore and a bunch of miners going out for the winter most of the boats wintered at Whitehorse lined up waiting to be hauled up the ways by steam winches frees up was about the middle of October up at Carcross south of Whitehorse they still use horse-drawn capstans to haul out the lake steamers hauling out was pretty much a reverse action of the launching now of course we've got airlines and highways was big 18-wheelers rolling in winter and summer but it will never be like it was in the days of the riverboats

Channel: Jean-Francois Mezei

Views: 38,380

Rating: 4.9553075 out of 5

Keywords: Canada, Yukon, Documentary (TV Genre), History, Paddle Steamer (Means Of Propulsion), Trains, Gold rush, Yukon River (River), Dawson City (City/Town/Village), Whitehorse (City/Town/Village)

Id: SfSrm6NEJkA

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 15 2014