This blog post is part of RBSC’s new series spotlighting items in the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection and the Wallace B. and Madeline H. Chung Collection.
CC-PH-02827 – Starboard view of the CPR SS. Tartar at wharf in Vancouver, BC, 1897.
The SS Tartar, pictured above at a wharf in Vancouver, BC, was one of two steamships that the Canadian Pacific Railway purchased in 1897. They did so with the intention of capturing a portion of the Klondike Gold Rush traffic, as stampeders traveled northward from San Francisco, Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver to Alaskan ports in Skagway, Juneau, and Dyea. Although the Tartar and its companion, the SS Athenia, completed their weekly route from Vancouver to Skagway only six times before they were withdrawn from service in July 1898, the steamship became an unlikely figure in the saga of the American con man Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith. On July 12, 1898, the Tartar arrived in Skagway just in time to carry ten of Smith’s accomplices to Seattle, who were “hunted like wild beasts” and exiled by local citizens following Smith’s death a few days earlier.[i]
RBSC-ARC-1820-PH-0990 – “Soapy Smith’s Saloon” in Skagway, Alaska, complete with a Soapy Smith dummy that, when you enter the front door, raises his glass to you and his eyes light up when you go through a far door. Taken ca. 1930.
re based on swindling travelers in Skagway, such as his famous “prize soap racket” where he would sell bars of soap which had the chance of containing money bills; of course, none did. As Smith’s cons redirected mining traffic away from Skagway, which became known for its crime and crooks, the local townspeople were outraged and formed a vigilante committee to restore law and order. On July 8, 1898, Smith exchanged shots with a member of the committee, City Engineer Frank Reid, with both men dying from their wounds. Reid’s funeral was the largest in Skagway history, with his gravestone inscribed with the words: “He gave his life for the honor of Skagway.”
More than a century later, Jefferson “Soapy” Smith lives on in through a myriad of biographies, a dedicated museum in Skagway, and an annual Soapy Smith Wake on July 8, though the SS Tartar has been relegated to the back pages of those stories. After 1898, CPR re-directed the ship to supplement the Empresses on the Pacific trade route.
Both the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, and the Phil Lind Klondike Gold Rush Collection, have materials touching on this episode of history. For more images, documents, and information about “Soapy” Smith and the CPR’s coastal steamships, plan your visit to the Chung Lind Gallery here!
[i] “Skaguay’s First Shipment of the Unwelcome,” The Daily Alaskan, July 12, 1898, p.4, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2017218619/1898-07-12/ed-1/seq-4/; “Arch Desperado Dead,” The Daily Alaskan, July 11, 1898, p. 3. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2017218619/1898-07-11/ed-1/seq-3/