1925
Built by John Brown & Co. Ltd., Clydebank, Scotland
Length: 350' Beam: 60' Draft: 17' Tonnage: 5875
Two splendid new three-funnel steamships, the Princess Kathleen and the Princess Marguerite, arrived at Victoria from the builder’s yard on the Clyde in 1925. Designed for the triangle route between Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle, and also fitted for northern cruise service, these miniature ocean liners of 5,875 tons, attained speeds in excess of 22 knots on their trials in Scotland and made the Victoria-Seattle run in under four hours. The first turbine steamship built specifically for the CPR Coast Service fleet, their twin screw power plants developed 12,250 horsepower. They were 350.1 feet in length with a beam of 60.1 feet and a depth of 17.1 feet. Captain W.J. Boyce was palced in command of the Princess Kathleen and Captain Thomas Rippon of the Princess Marguerite. Gordon Newell, HW McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, page 364.
Princess Kathleen, twin-screw turbine steamship, returned to Canadian Pacific B. C. Coastal service following war duty as a troop transport. The Kathleen was extensively reconditioned following her return to Victoria. Ibid, p. 533.
The steamships Princess Kathleen and Prince George, both equipped with radar, collided during a heavy fog in September 1951, 27 miles northwest of Prince Rupert. Damage to the C.P.R. liner approached $250,000, while approximately $ 100,000 damage was inflicted on the Canadian National steamer. Both vessels made port undertheir own steam, carrying a total of 480 passengers between them. Ibid, p. 577.
On September 7 1952 the trim three -stacker Princess Kathleen on her last Alaska cruise voyage of the season, was proceeding through freshening winds and an early morning rain squall from Juneau toward Skagway. The strong tides of Lynn Canal aided the wind in setting the Canadian Pacific coastal liner off her course to port. Heavy rainfall made it dffficult to detect her dangerous swing toward shore. Chief Officer C. W. Savage, in charge of the bridge, ordered a change of course to starboard. After some time on the new course, he picked up his binoculars and stepped to the bridge wing to look for landmarks or navigation lights. As he did so, the lookout shouted, "Land", but as it was through the intercom system and, as words tend to become indistinguishable when shouted into the microphone, the rest of his message was lost. The mate ran to see what the lookout had sighted and found the quartermaster had kept the helm to starboard. Then, for the first time, he sighted land, but it seemed some distance off and felt that with more starboard rudder the ship would clear the point. He gave the order, but a few seconds later the ]Wncess crashed onto Lena Point Rock, a few miles south of Vanderbilt Reef where the tragedy of the Princess Sophia had been enacted 34 years earlier. The vessel was a mile and a half off course when she stranded. All passengers were safely landed and Capt. Graham 0. Hughes ordered the after tanks emptied and every effort made to lighten ship in the hope that she would float off. She remained fast, however, and three hours after the last passengers had been removed the hull settled with the falling tide, developing a 1 9 - degree list to port and ten degrees fore and aft, her stern down. In spite of the pumps the water gained steadily in the hull and at 11:45 a.m. she was abandoned. Within two hours she slipped off and sank in 120 feet of water. Efforts to salvage the splendid coastal liner, refitted after wartime troop service at a cost of $ 1,500,000, proved impractical and she was abandoned as a total loss, only partially covered by insurance. Ibid,p. 589- 90
The remaining fuel on the Princess Kathleen, some 110,000 gallons of bunker C oil, were removed in May, 2010, at the cost of some 12 million dollars.
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