derelict ships

[mmegaera]

Time and place -- Klondike Gold Rush, 1898. I've googled some, but I'm not sure what terms to use -- I've googled a lot about the Klondike in the last few months, and gotten a lot of useful information, but I haven't run across this sort of thing except for a few fuzzy pictures. I also have a fair amount of printed research material on that Gold

Comments

[wpenrose]

The ship

[mmegaera]

Thanks very much! This is the sort of detail I can use, and was having a hard time finding.

[plaguedocs]

I have a book called, "Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899," by Pierre Berton. It has some fairly detailed descriptions of conditions on board these ships, and the experiences of wrecking -- including comments from passengers.

[mmegaera]

That was one of the first books I read when I was researching this book, back a year or so ago. I guess my memory lapsed. I'll go back and take another look, thanks.

[plaguedocs]

If the book doesn't have enough detail for you, he's got pretty extensive referencing information. Original sources can be hard to get your hands on, but I've been amazed at what I've been able to access through my county library system (which connects to the state university library system) not to mention online (once I know exactly what I'm looking for).

[mmegaera]

I did a lot of that for my last book -- for instance, I obtained one of the original copies of the 1878 Hayden Geological Survey Report on Yellowstone, complete with hand-drawn maps, from the University of Wyoming library. I was amazed they let that thing out of their sight, let alone gave it up to the vagaries of the U.S. Mail. It was an amazing artifact. My ILL librarian (there was a point where I think she thought I considered her my personal librarian [g]) got me some amazing stuff, probably fifty or so ILLs over the course of several years. I spent a lot of time at the Montana Historical Society and the library and archives at Yellowstone National Park as well.

I'm lucky enough to live within an hour's drive of Seattle and the University of Washington's enormous collection of Klondike material, so hopefully I'll be able to give my librarian a rest this go round [g].

Anyway, I pulled Berton's book back out this afternoon as well as Tappan Adney's contemporary account, The Klondike Stampede. He was a newspaperman on

[chvickers]

I would suggest you look at some of the personal accounts of the survivors of the Titanic sinking. Archibald Gracie's account is especially detailed; although you can't take his stories about the other passengers as the gospel truth, his experiences of being pulled into the water, fighting the current and the cold, etc. are reliable. His book is called "Titanic: A Survivor's Story" and is available on amazon.com and in many public libraries.

[mmegaera]

I guess that seemed a bit far afield from what I was looking for, although I did consider it. The "oh, god, that's cold," grabbing onto a piece of debris and praying part I've got. It's the "this is an old, leaky tub and it never should have been put back into service, look at it sink" part I'm really having a hard time with [g].

Thanks for the reference, though. I'll take a look at it.

[chvickers]

It's much more complex than "oh god, that's cold", though: every survivor has something to say about what happened to him that a layman would not expect. Charles Lightoller almost died when a sudden inrush of water into the ship pulled him in against a grill, but seconds later a gush outward propelled him back to the surface. I don't think that's intuitive. Most people will die of cold, some of drowning, some of injuries as parts of the ship fall into the water, others of panic, others of burns (in 1896 your ship is probably steam propelled, even if it's old). Not all will die right away - some who survive the sinking will die while waiting to be picked up. Your character may even find the person next to her in the lifeboat dying

[mmegaera]

Thank you for typing all this up. You've made me consider a good many things that I hadn't.