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Current Events & News Blogs - Blog Rankings

A.J. Goddard, Klondike-era Steamboat Found in Yukon Lake

November 26, 2009 · Filed Under Current, History, Lore of the Sea, Ships

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
but the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

For reasons probably best left unanalyzed, a friend of mine and I used to drink rum and read aloud the poems of Robert Service on cold winters nights. A favorite was the Cremation of Sam McGee which involves a wrecked steamboat on the “on the marge of Lake Lebarge.” Archeologists have recently discovered a remarkably well preserved paddlewheel steamboat from the Klondike gold rush at the bottom of Lake Laberge.

Klondike-era steamboat found in Yukon lake

Archeologists have found a mostly preserved steamboat from the Klondike Gold Rush era on the bottom of Lake Laberge in the Yukon.

The exact location of the 108-year-old sternwheeler A.J. Goddard had been a mystery since Oct. 22, 1901, when it vanished in Lake Laberge during a winter storm. Two members of the five-man crew survived, while the other three drowned.

The ship was built in San Francisco in 1897 and shipped in pieces to Skagway, Alaska. It was then hauled inland through British Columbia and assembled at Bennett, B.C. The steamboat hauled gold miners and supplies into the Yukon’s Klondike region until it disappeared.

An international archeological team was amazed last summer when the untouched shipwreck — complete with tools, dishes, and even charred wood in the ship’s firebox — was located.

“Picture a boat just sitting upright on the lake bottom. It’s not buried or damaged significantly,” team member Doug Davidge, president of the Yukon Transportation Museum, told CBC News in an interview Tuesday.

“It has a small paddlewheel at the back end or in the stern, and the hull was completely intact and all those materials that were on the boat are lying either on the deck or nearby.”

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