"The Pacific Princesses: An Illustrted History of Canadian Pacific Railway's Princess Fleet on the Northwest Coast" (used book)

The Pacific Princesses: An Illustrted History of Canadian Pacific Railway's Princess Fleet on the Northwest Coast

by Robert D. Turner

About the Book

Used Book. Hardcover. Dust jacket included. Fair condition. Some tears and wear to the dust jacket.

--From the dust jacket

In 1901 the Canadian Pacific Railway Company acquired control of the pioneering Canadian Pacific Navigation Company which for 20 years had provided the principal steamship services on the British Columbia coast and a major link between Puget Sound and Alaska. This purchase was the beginning of the fascinating story of one of the most outstanding steamship operations in the history of the Pacific.

Within a few years, the CPR transformed the CPN’s assortment of outdated coastal freighters, passenger steamers, and ancient paddlewheelers into a modern fleet of luxurious coast liners – the Princess ships – offering unprecedented services to Washington State, British Columbia, and southern Alaska.

Beginning with the Princess May and the beautiful Princess Victoria, illustrated on the dust jacket, the fleet grew to include such well-remembered vessels as the Princess Charlotte, Patricia, Alice, Adelaide, Maquinna, Louise, Joan, Elizabeth, Marguerite, Kathleen, Elaine, and Norah.

It is an exciting story ranging from the spirited competition of the rate war with Joshua Green’s Puget Sound Navigation Company and the races between the record breaking Princess Victoria and the rival Chippewa and Iroquois, to the affectionately remembered leisurely cruises of the night boats and the services to the isolated coastal ports from Ucluelet to Skagway. Inevitably, there is also tragedy with the sinking of the Islander only months after the CPR line was formed and later, the losses of the Princess Sophia and the Princess Kathleen.

The CPR’s palatial intercity liners of the famed Triangle Route between Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver captured the public eye but there were other less renowned aspects of the Princess fleet’s history that could ot go unrecorded: the coastal freighters; the tugs; the riverboats  of the lower Fraser River; the war services of the Princess Kathleen and Princess Marguerite; the CPR’s Atlantic Princesses; the pioneering automobile ferry Motor Princess, and the competition of Puget Sound Navigation, Grand Trunk Pacific, Union Steam, Canadian National, Black Ball, and finally , British Columbia Ferries.

The steamships played a formative role in the development of the north Pacific coast of North America and the CPR’s Princesses will long have a place in its history. This is their story, told candidly but with affection.