Today's Looking Back can be found here.

When you think about the hazards involved in traveling to and across Alaska in the early days of the 20th century, you typically think of overland travel — dog sleds, stages, and things like that. You don't typically think about the ships bringing passengers to Alaska, even though traveling on them was at times even more hazardous than trips through the trackless tundra. This editorial from the April 26, 1910 edition of the News-Miner illustrates some of the hazards of ocean travel during those first days:

VALDEZ-SEATTLE TRAVEL.

People of Tanana who go down to the sea in ships on their journeys to and from the Outside have an idea of the importance of the work done in Washington by Governor Clark in obtaining aids to navigation for Alaska in the shape of lighthouses and lights, but few of them have kept a list of the Alaska boats which have been wrecked, or remember how many of them have gone to the bottom. The following from the Juneau Record is in order:

While it would not be fair to say all of the ships destroyed in Alaska through having been wrecked could have avoided destruction had the waterways been lighted as they should have been, still it is a fact that many would not have encountered the fate they did while ploughing through the unlighted passages, if the Government had provided proper aids to navigation. Not long ago an old-timer recalled the following vessels, all destroyed within the past 12 years:

The Clara Nevada, during the Klondike boom, between Skagway and Juneau.

The Discovery, while en route south from Valdez.

The Oregon, on Hinchinbrooke Island.

The Lauranda, south of Ketchikan.

The Centennial.

The Saratoga, near Ellamar.

The Cutch, in Lynn Canal.

The Mariechen, in Chatham Strait.

The Islander, below Juneau.

The Mexico, in Dixon's Entrance.

The Columbia, cannery bark, near Unalaska.

Star of Bengal, a cannery boat.

The Ohio, south of Ketchikan.

The Wolcott, seven miles from Kodiak.

Charles D. Lane, while southward bound from Nome.

The Willipa, near Ketchikan.

The Tillamook, near Kodiak.

The Farallon, in Illiamna bay.

The Yucatan, in Icy Straits.

The list as it appears above is not a complete one, men who follow shipping could undoubtedly add others to it, but, even as it stands it shows the grave necessity there exists for protection to the vessels employed in the Alaska trade.

The wonder is that it is not twice as large.