Fjords, Snowy Mountains, Glaciers — Alaska!
by
James Wong
The first time I travelled on a P & O ship was from Bombay to Hong Kong on the ‘Chitral’ in 1969, at the end of my appointment in the Chinese Department at the Indian Army Educational Corps Training College in Pachmarchi, India. Thirty four years later, from 31s1 May to 7′1‘ June 2004, I travelled with the cruise ship ‘Sun Princess’ on an eight-day (seven night) cruise from Vancouver to Alaska.
Susan and I boarded the ‘Sun Princess’ during the afternoon and the ship set sail at 6.30 p.m. on 31st May. The whole night and the whole of the next day were spent cruising in Georgia Strait and Queen Charlotte Strait. The sea was calm and the atmosphere peaceful. We felt no motion and heard no noise; it was just like sleeping in an hotel room. The ship headed for Ketchikan for her first stop. This is the first port of call in Alaska for northbound cruise ships and during the early morning of the third day (2n June) we entered United States waters.
Captain George Vancouver carried out an exploration of the Inner Passage in 1793 and discovered the territory now known as Ketchikan. The first white settlers came in 1883 and built a fish salting factory, followed by more than a dozen canneries producing over two million cases of salmon per year, thus earning Ketchikan the title of ‘Salmon Capital of the World’. It was drizzling as we strolled along Front Street and we were surprised to see rows of jewellery shops. We went into one and met a saleswoman who had come from Shanghai the previous year, lured by high wages, even though the business season is only from May to September each year.
During the previous evening (1st June) I had visited the casino on board, playing the slot machines at five cents stake and within three hours I had lost more than 100 dollars. That night I went there again and at first made more losses. Then an image appeared on the screen which seemed to be telling me that if I touched it at the right time, I would win. I did so and this proved correct. I did this a couple more times, then a bell rang and out came 9.600 five cent pieces, which discounting my earlier losses gave me net winnings of around 350 dollars and a nice surprise.
The vessel’s second stop was at Juneau, the State Capital of Alaska. In 1880 Joe Juneau and Richard Harries searched for gold here and found nuggets as large as beans. Three large gold mines were then established close to today’s Juneau, which at that time had no name. Juneau now has a population of about 30,000, of which some 3,000 are Pilipinos working in the salmon canneries. We had a chaomian in the Dragon Palace Chinese Restaurant at noon and discovered that there were only about one hundred Chinese in Juneau, engaged in small-scale businesses.
Our entire cruise was within the numerous fjords along the West Pacific coast and we never went out into the open sea. I had never seen so many snow-capped mountains lined up as far as the eye could see. It was early summer; the snow had begun melting and the beauty of the surroundings fascinated me. Our ship arrived in Skagway on the morning of 4,h June. Susan and I had reserved a combination coach/train ticket for travelling the White Pass and Yukon Route to White Horse in Yukon Territory.
During the whole 40-mile coach trip, a few cars passed on the road but there were no signs of houses or people. The trip ended at Carcross in Yukon Territory, where we had lunch and then boarded the train back to Skagway on the White Pass and Yukon Railway.
This narrow gauge railroad was built in 1898 during the Klondike gold rush. It climbs 3.000 feet in just 20 miles and features steep grades, cliff-hanging turns, two tunnels and numerous trestles and bridges. It is incredible to think that it has been running profitably for over a hundred years; at first it was used by the gold miners but this only lasted for a few years and since then it has been used by tourists. Our train took us downhill all the way back to Skagway, a very small town with only 800 residents year-round, rising to 1,200 in summer. Nowadays, at least 400 cruise ships visit annually, carrying around 800.000 tourists who find themselves enjoying the town with a ‘Gold Rush’ theme.
In 1896 when George Washington Cormack and his Indian companions, Skooum Jim and Tagish Charlie, found gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory, some 30,000 gold seekers passed through Skagway during the first year of the rush, but it was not until the completion of the White Pass and Yukon Railway in mid-1898 that Skagway cemented its position as ‘Gateway to the Klondike’.
We left Skagway in the late evening of 4th June, travelling through Icy Strait during the night and arriving at Glacier Bay in the morning. The first thing to catch my eye was the sight of countless chunks of ice floating on the surface of the water. After cruising through the bay, we arrived at Grand Pacific Glacier and Margerie Glacier in the late afternoon, the ship stopping about a quarter of a mile from them. It was apparent that the ice was several hundred feet thick and several thousand yards wide, bluish-grey in colour. On three occasions while we were there, large chunks of ice broke off with a muffled sound like a light explosion and fell into the sea, accompanied by shouts of “Iceberg!, Iceberg!” from the watching passengers.
People have been coming to Alaska since the 1880s to see Glacier Bay. Enter the bay and you cruise along shorelines which were completely covered in ice just 200 years ago. In 1794 Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait choked with ice and Glacier Bay was a barely indented glacier, more than 4,000 feet thick and 20 miles or more wide, extending over 100 miles to the St. Elias range of mountains. By 1879 the naturalist John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay and by 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier headed Tarr Inlet 65 miles from the mouth of Glacier Bay. Such a rapid retreat is known nowhere else and scientists have documented it, hoping to learn how glacier activity relates to climate changes. As to the scenery of the glaciers, words cannot describe it; I believe that it needs a spirited artist of great skill to portray it vividly.
We moved slowly out of Glacier Bay that afternoon, reluctant to leave. The ship took a southerly course through Icy Strait to the Gulf of Alaska, entering the traffic lanes of Prince William Sound and proceeding at slow speed towards Port Wells and College Fjord. We observed glaciers at from a greater distance than that from which we had viewed Grand Pacific Glacier the day before. On the shore to our left a row of six glaciers were lined up for our inspection. On the right shore, further away, were even bigger and wider glaciers but we saw no signs of ice crashing into the sea.
During the evening a farewell party took place on board. 746 champagne flutes were used to construct a champagne fountain. As the champagne was poured, everyone cheered, the band played, photographs were taken and the passengers retired happily to their cabins at the end of the party. So ended our cruise journey.
