The Cordova daily times., 1916-02-05
DREAD TOLL OF THE ALASKAN
 WATERS

Strong condemnation of the govern ment's policy toward Alaska, which is held to have been one of repression rather than assistance" is contained in an article on Marine Disasters of the Alaska Route" appearing in the January issue of the Washington His torical Quarterly, just issued from the presses of the University of Washing ton. The article. is from the pen of MT. c. L. Andrews, who for twenty years was in the customs service in Alaska; and it contains the fullest ac- count ever made of the multi-millions land the many lives lost for want of proper aids to navigation of the l. O0O mile long channel running north from Seattle to Skagway.
 The government has not done. and is not now doing, what it should do toward the upbuilding of the terri tory of Alaska" MT. Andrews writes. "Its policy has heretofore been that of repression, rather than assistance. If, instead of building forts and main taining military establishments in the country at an immense cost, only to be abandoned. there had been light houses and coast protection provided, the advancement of the land would have been secure and property amounting to millions of dollars would have been saved"
 Mir Andrews takes cognizance of the efforts of the present and of past to aid navigation, and remarks that the long delayed drag survey is at last locating the sunken rocks that heretofore cost a ship to find, in almost every instance"
 Because of the lack of aids to mariners" he says. "the marine in surance to Alaska is greater than to almost any part of the world. The rate from Seattle to Skagway is as much as the rate from Seattle to Liv- erpool, via the Panama canal, in times of peace. The government tax on canned salmon is less than 1 per cent, while the marine insurance on this same salmon from Bristol bay to Se- attle is per cent.
 With adequate aids to navigation along the coast the rate need not be greater than to other parts of the civ ilized world The buoys and lights, the fog signals and the wireless tele- graph are fast putting aside the ma rne dangers of Alaskan waters. Some of them are badly needed, have been long delayed, and are warmly wei comed as they arrive. Thirty-fiye years elapsed before the first light house was built and nearly half cen tury has passed and not light on Bristol bay, a place from which there is 1,5OO,OOO cases of salmon shipped each year"
 The writer says the government has waited for private enterprise to deyel' ! op the territory, while 1t reaped the \ benefit before it made an investment
 In addition to pointing out the ter
 ritory's claim to further attention
 MT. Andrews tells a dramatic story of many of the famous and terrible dis asters of the channel, supplementing his article with a detailed list of all discoverable wrecks in Alaskan wat CTS, partly supplied by the Pacific
 Fisherman and partly the result of a summer spent in Investigating the records at Juneau in 1915. The loss of life, which he supplies as fully as possible, was not published in earlier | lists of disasters.
 Mir Andrews is working in the Ban croft library at Berkeley, California at the present time, on a book which he intends publishing. Alaska is the subject.
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