Anchorage Daily Times June 5, 1929

SURVIVORS OF ALEUTIAN SAY DEATH WAS VERY CLOSE TO THEM

Additional details of the sinking of the steamer Aleutian were related by survivors upon their arrival at Cordova recently aboard the steamer Admiral Evans. Efforts to obtain information from Captain Nord and other officers were unavailing but in spite of the official ban there were plenty among the survivors who were glad to tell what they knew of the disaster. The following is a general account of the wreck as it was told to the Cordova Times:

Calm waters and not storms sent the Aleutian to its doom. The ship was steaming along with favorable weather, with only ground swells to disturb the water of Shelikof Pass, when it struck an uncharted rock at the end of Amook island at 5:50 o’clock Sunday morning.

Evidence of the tremendous force with which the ship went on the rock is given in the words of one of the survivors who said that he was almost “thrown across the room and almost before he could pick himself up the water was seeping in on the lower decks.:

One thing and one thing alone saved the majority of the passengers from death, and that was the manner in which the boat sank. Listing heavily to the only side available for launching lifeboats, those who took to the small boats were in constant danger of being caught under the sinking ship, but for some unexplainable reason the boat slid off on the other side, dropping almost nose down into the water.

There were exactly seven minutes elapsing from the time that the boat struck the rock until it disappeared from view. In those seven minutes the lifeboats were launched at the rate of one a minute with the waters having mounted to the top deck before the last boat was cut way.

Perhaps launching, however, does not explain the rapidity with which the boats took to the water. “One boat,” a survivor declared, “was floating when we jumped into it. We cut the ropes and pushed off from the sides. Showing how close a call it was, we had to push away from the Aleutian with our oars to keep from being hit by the propeller blades of the ship as it plunged to the bottom.”

The stewardess had a narrow escape from death when she was awakened by the crash and woke to find that an ironing board and other articles in her room had been thrown across the door in such a way that it was almost impossible for her to get out. After a frantic struggle she managed to squeeze through and got on deck just as the last boat was being launched.

Reports from Seward of Miss Miller’s, of Latouche, heroic plunge from the deck of the liner proved to be unfounded. Instead, eyewitnesses said, the young woman became frantic and panic-stricken, running around the deck and refusing to enter a lifeboat. Finally, as a last-minute result, an unidentified man picked up the woman and tossed her bodily from the liner, jumping off himself a moment later. Both of these were picked up from the water by the other boats.

Despite the tragedy of the disaster, there were flashes of comedy sketches here and there which brot smiles to the lips of the survivors when they were safe once more.

A headliner among these was when the chef found that he had two left shoes on when he composed himself on the Surveyor. Arriving at Seward he was among the first to go to the commissary department and triumphantly carried another pair of shoes back to the steamer Evans, finding after he had left port that he had been given two more left shoes.

There was a saving human element of comedy, too, in the attempts made to dress the survivors, the most of whom had nothing but their sleeping garments on.

Even with all available supplies being handed out and with men even taking off their shirts to give to others who had even less, there were many who were attired in nothing but nightgowns or pajamas.

As a last resort, blankets were handed out to those lacking clothes and these were worn on the trip to Seward, the survivors walking down the gangplank like a tribe of Indian warriors with the blankets wrapped tightly around them.

Authentic information as to the condition of the Aleutian is not available as yet. Some reports say that it is lying in 1,000 feet of water but the more generally accepted report is that it is in about 200 feet of water. Since no wreckage whatever was seen to come to the surface after the boat sank it is believed that the liner went down intact except for the great holes in its bottom.

Even the extent of these holes can not be told until divers have an opportunity to look the vessel over. But from the fact that it sank with almost unprecedented speed, the generally accepted belief is that practically the entire bottom was ripped out.

An unconfirmed but apparently reliable story of the disaster, as told by one who was aboard at the time, says that the steamer struck once with a terrific impact and that this first shock was followed by three others in rapid succession, as though the boat was bounding its way over a submerged pinnacle rock, ripping its steel plates loose for the entire length of the boat as it went along.

Immediately after hitting the rock, the boat started rapidly to settle into the water, according to this same source of information, dropping at the rate of a deck every two minutes.

The generally accepted conclusion concerning the wreck seems to be that the waters of Uyak Bay, which it is reported, have changed due to earth tremors and other natural phenomena and that the rock on which the Aleutian struck was not existent when the first survey was made.