The SS Bertha is pictured, wrecked at Uyak Bay, Alaska. (Wikimedia Commons)
Part of a continuing weekly series on Alaska history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage or Alaska history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.
By the early 1910s, the SS Bertha was a living relic, a wooden-hulled survivor from before the gold rushes. That age meant she possessed more tenure in the Pacific Northwest than most of her passengers and crew. Commercial ships tend to die ignobly, as wrecks or scrap. And ends do come for us all. The Bertha at least went out with style, in a chemical crescendo. For that is what happens when a vessel carrying material that reacts violently to water wrecks in the waters of Alaska.
The Bertha launched in 1888, a 185.5-foot-long, 32.5-foot-wide steamship. In 1915, she operated with a 30-person crew. For the first decade of her existence, she served the Karluk Packing Co., which, as suggested by the name, ran a salmon cannery on the Karluk Spit, on the southwest side of Kodiak Island. The Alaska Commercial Co. bought her by early 1898 at the latest, when she became one of the legendary gold rush ships, ferrying supplies and prospectors from the West Coast to Alaska. The newly formed Alaska Coast Co. purchased her in 1906, operating and chartering the steamer for the remainder of her existence.
As with all ships of the era that dared the seas, rocks and storms of the Pacific Northwest, the Bertha managed several narrow escapes. In March 1896, she was caught within a nasty storm that blew the steamer over a hundred miles off course while between Sitka and Prince William Sound. In 1902, she hit rocks at Fitzhugh Sound off British Columbia, amid a Seattle to Valdez run. The hull was initially considered a total loss, but she was subsequently repaired and placed back in service.
The SS Bertha, docked in California in this undated photo. (Wikimedia Commons)
On June 8, 1912, she landed at Cordova covered in ash from the massive Novarupta volcanic eruption in what is now Katmai National Park and Preserve. Those aboard did yet know any of the specifics, such as location, impact and survivors. They could see bright lights at the edge of the sky and heard immense explosions, all despite the distance. It is still the largest eruption in United States history, forming the Katmai caldera and releasing 30 times as much magma as Mount St. Helens in 1980.
The Bertha also served the Upper Cook Inlet region during and after the Cook Inlet Gold Rush of the 1890s. Before Anchorage was established in 1915, the town of Knik on the other side of the water was the area commercial center. Due to the mudflats at Knik, other ships anchored at Ship Creek, what they often called the Knik Anchorage, or simply Anchorage. Lighters and barges then carried cargo and passengers across the water.
In 1914, Charles Brown and Thomas William “T.W.” Hawkins chartered the Bertha to carry a load of goods into the Knik Arm. For most of that sailing season, the ship remained here as a floating store and hotel for miners. Brown and Hawkins ran a shop in early Anchorage, but they are best remembered for the still-standing Brown & Hawkins building in Seward.
Her cargo ran the full gamut, including people, from paid passengers to refugees of natural disasters and shipwrecks. Once, it carried a full flock of sheep to repopulate a farm in Alaska. There was, of course, salmon, lumber, copper and gold aplenty garnered from the territory. In one February 1912 southbound delivery, she brought 50 tons of gold, 250 tons of copper and 50 cases of halibut.
The Steamship Bertha at Kodiak, Alaska, pictured around 1900. (Photo by Anders Beer Wilse / Wikimedia Commons)
As an aside, the steamship Bertha is sometimes credited as the namesake of Mount Bertha, the Southeast peak in the Fairweather Range of the St. Elias Mountains. The U.S. Geological Survey once explicitly acknowledged this origin. Today, they are more circumspect. Their database of geographic names, the GNIS, now notes it was “Published in 1910 by U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (USC&GS) on Chart 8306.”
That year indeed fell within the Bertha’s operational lifespan. However, mountaineer Bradford Washburn knew a different origin story. In his “Bradford Washburn: An Extraordinary Life” autobiography, he wrote, “It turns out that the International Boundary Commission had a large number of men working on the surveying project and Bertha was a prostitute in Skagway who gave great happiness to the workers, gaining a certain measure of fame for her efforts.”
During the late 1960s, one of the most popular exotic dancers in Anchorage was Sandra Ann Adams, aka Big Bertha. She is featured in this Anchorage Daily Times ad from Nov. 26, 1965.
Bertha is a rather uncommon first name today. Yet, there was once another infamous Bertha in Alaska. During the late 1960s, one of the most popular exotic dancers in Anchorage was Big Bertha (Sandra Ann Adams), who headlined all over town, an advertised feature attraction. She was billed as a heavyweight go-go dancer, around 270 to 300 pounds of entertainment, the exact amount varying from ad to ad. Tangent thus concluded.
As the years passed, fewer ships remained from the Klondike Gold Rush heyday. Most notably, the Portland, the famed “ship of gold” that carried news of the Klondike gold strikes to Seattle in 1897, wrecked in 1910. The Bertha, outdated and underpowered compared to newer ships, was a relic of a different time. When Seattle leaders launched a Golden Potlatch summer festival in 1911, they hired the Bertha to reenact the landing of the Portland.
The end came in 1915. Incidentally, she was the first commercial ship that spring season to reach what would become Anchorage. A few months later, she was sailing around Kodiak Island for a cannery supply drop. On July 18, she ran aground on an uncharted sandspit in Uyak Bay. In a moment, the aged steamship came to a complete stop, and water rushed through the portholes and flooded the engine.
The SS Bertha. (Photo by Anders Beer Wilse / Wikimedia Commons)
Capt. Charles Glasscock blew the Bertha’s whistle four times — four last times — to alert the nearby cannery, which dispatched its tender for the rescue. The cannery bunkhouse became their temporary home. No one died, and the crew even recovered several tons of supplies. The next day, the cannery ship pulled the Bertha off the sandbar and beached her closer to the facility.
Unfortunately, the steamer was carrying 16 barrels of quicklime (calcium oxide). There were and are many commercial uses for quicklime, from food additives to mitigating the odors of decaying bodies. Most relevant to the Bertha, it is also a fundamental ingredient in mortar and cement, making it a popular product in the canneries and emerging settler towns of Alaska. The unfortunate part is that adding water to quicklime produces a highly exothermic reaction, meaning it gets extremely hot, boiling the water. Given enough time, heat will cause adjacent flammable materials — such as wooden barrels and ships — to combust.
Around 7 a.m. on July 19, the barrels of quicklime began to smoke. At noon, the Bertha burst into flame, burning through the night and the next day. The ship was gone. The fire surprised the captain and crew. While recovering some of the cargo, they left their personal effects on the ship, clearly believing they would be able to return at their leisure. Instead, they saved the company some money but lost their own belongings.
The SS Bertha is pictured in this undated photo. (Wikimedia Commons)
Mournful notices of her demise spread across Alaska and down the West Coast. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer lamented the loss, “So memorable was the history of the Bertha in the gold rush to the Klondike and so well known her connection with the development of the North.” A defining trait of glory is that it must pass to be appreciated.
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Key sources:
“Bertha Grounds and Then Burns.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer. July 21, 1915, 14.
“Details of Loss of S.S. Bertha.” Juneau Empire. July 26, 1915, 2.
“E.L. Webster to Rule City During Potlatch Week.” Seattle Times. July 2, 1911, 7.
“To Establish Branch Store.” Seward Daily Gateway. March 16, 1914, 1.
“Explosions Heard for Distance of 2.” Seattle Times. June 9, 1912, 5.
“Kadiak Girl, 17, Here First Time.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer. February 16, 1912, 10.
McCurdy, H. W. The H. W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, 1966.
“Northwestern Sails Wednesday.” Valdez Daily Prospector. March 22, 1915, 4.
Washburn, Bradford, and Lew Freedman. Bradford Washburn: An Extraordinary Life. Portland, Oregon: WestWinds Press, 2013.
