page_title: Senator (1898 ship)
section_title: Seasonal Service to Nome (1901 - 1916)
hierarchical_section_title: Senator (1898 ship) / Pacific Coast Steamship Company (1898 - 1916) / Seasonal Service to Nome (1901 - 1916)
caption_attribution_description: English: PH Coll 794.89 In 1898 the Union Iron Works in San Francisco built the SENATOR for the Pacific Coast Steamship Co. The SENATOR was a single-screw vessel of 2,432 tons, with dimensions 280x38.1x19.6 ft. and driven by a 1,500 horsepower triple-expansion engine. Her cruise speed was 10.8 knots and passenger capacity was 187. She was taken over by the government upon her completion for use with the Army Transport Service and carried 1,004 troops on her first voyage to Manila. Upon her return to the Pacific Coast Steamship Co. she was placed on the San Francisco-Seattle-Tacoma-Cape Nome route. In 1907 the vessel was placed on the Seattle-San Diego route. In 1912 the vessel resumed the Alaska route between Seattle and Nome. In 1916 the SENATOR was sold to East Coast owners. In 1921 she was overhauled and renamed the ADMIRAL FISKE. In 1934 she was sold to Japanese shipbreakers for disposal. (Source: Newell, Gordon, ed. "The H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest." Seattle: The Superior Company, 1966.) Subjects (LCSH): Senator (Ship); Ships--Washington (State)--Seattle
context_page_description: Senator was a steel-hulled steamship launched in 1898. She served as a troopship during the Spanish-American War and was an important part of the Nome gold rush. She spent thirty years in the coastwise shipping trade between Alaska and San Diego, until she was scrapped in Osaka, Japan in 1935.
context_section_description: For the next six years, through 1906, Senator was one of the first ships to reach Nome in the Spring, typically around mid-June, and one of the last to return south in the Fall, typically arriving in Seattle in early November.  She normally completed five round-trips per season, but in 1904 completed six.  These trips usually included a stop at St. Michael, the port which serviced steamer travel up the Yukon River.  Most of the sailings were relatively uneventful.  This was not the case when the ship departed Seattle for Nome on June 1, 1902 with 260 passengers aboard.  When the ship arrived at Nome on June 11, a young man from Ohio was found to have smallpox.  The quarantine officer ordered to ship to Egg Island near St. Michael, Alaska, where the passengers were debarked for a two-week stay in tents. Senator left her passengers there and sailed back to Port Townsend, Washington, arriving July 3, 1902, without passengers since the ship would have to be fumigated and the crew quarantined on arrival.
  Senator missed the 1907 Nome sailing season because she underwent a major overhaul.  The ship was at the Risdon Iron Works shipyard in San Francisco from February to October 1907. She continue her Summer sailings to Nome from 1908 through 1916.
  During the "closed season", that is when ice closed the Bering Sea to navigation in the Winter, the ship usually replaced another Pacific Coast Steamship Company vessel which had been disabled or was in need of repair.  In November 1900, Senator was assigned to run between San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.  She was reassigned to the Seattle - Skagway, Alaska route in January 1901 to replace the Pacific Coast Steamship Company's City of Topeka, which ran aground on Sullivan Island in Lynn Canal, south of Skagway.  Senator's new route took her from Seattle to Vancouver, and then on to Alaska, stopping at Ketchikan, Wrangell, Juneau, and Skagway.  On her first trip to Southeast Alaska, Senator almost replicated City of Topeka's accident.  In the weak light of dawn in a dense fog, Senator grounded on a sand bar at Shelter Island in Lynn Canal.  She floated off with the rising tide and continued her trip, but went into dry dock immediately upon her return to Seattle.  Repairs required replacing 40 rivets in the keel and a new propeller.  She headed north again the day after leaving the shipyard, February 2, 1901.
  While the Southeast Alaska run did not have the urgency of the Nome gold rush, it did have its share of riches.  The Treadwell mine in Juneau was producing gold, and Senator carried $50,000 of bullion back to Seattle in March 1901.  Other cargoes were decidedly more mundane.  When Senator left Vancouver for Southeast Alaska on April 17, 1901 she had on board machinery for the Treadwell mine, 60,000 feet of lumber for the White Pass Railway in Skagway, and livestock headed ultimately up the Yukon River, including 65 head of cattle, 50 hogs, and 200 sheep.  Unfortunately, she also had a case of smallpox aboard.  A woman from Seattle was diagnosed with the disease en route, and Captain J. B. Patterson duly informed the quarantine officer in Juneau upon Senator's arrival.  No one was allowed to land, and no cargo except the mail came ashore (this was fumigated to kill any germs).  The ship was ordered back to the Diamond Point, Washington quarantine station where most of the passengers and crew were kept in isolation for two weeks, and the ship was fumigated.  In 1902, as in the previous year, Senator was assigned to the Southeast Alaska route after her last trip to Nome and almost immediately had an accident.  This time she went aground on rocks at the north end of Wrangell Narrows.  She floated off three hours later as the tide rose.  Her damage was slight, but she was dry docked for repairs when she returned south.  She completed the rest of the season in Southeast Alaska without incident.
  The Pacific Coast Steamship Company placed Senator on the Vancouver to San Francisco run during the winters of 1903 - 1904, 1904 -1905, 1912 - 1913, 1913 - 1914, and 1915 - 1
caption: Senator in Seattle, ca. 1911
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