Klondike Boats through the eyes of Edwin Tappan Adney

The following are excerpts from Edwin Tappan Adney's 1900 book "Klondike Stampede". Adney had a skilled eye for boat design, and is well known for his documentation of traditional North American watercraft. Adney was sent to the Klondike in the summer of 1897 by Harper's Weekly. Adney was no greenhorn journalist - he was an experienced woodsman and canoe traveler, later becoming the founding treasurer of the Explorers Club His account is perhaps the best documentation that exists of the boat types used on the Klondike adventures. Excerpts about the design of the boats are given here for research purposes, for the Klondike boatbuilding group:

p. 15-16, written while still in Victoria B.C. in early August 1897:
"Knock-down boats of every conceivable sort are being taken up since the reports have come down that boat timber is very scarce, as well as high in price.

I have had cut out, from my own plans, the ribs and sides of a lumberman's bateau twenty-three feet long, five feet beam, eighteen inches width on the bottom, five and a half feet overhang in front, and four feet at the stern, the bottom being of three-quarter inch cedar, the sides of five-eighth and one-half inch stuff. It is, in fact, an extreme type of dory, a perfect rough-water boat, its flaring sides preventing the boarding of waves, its narrow bottom enabling it to pass through a narrow channel. It is easily handled with either pole paddles, or oars. I have roughly calculated that one ton will sink it a foot. Its actual load will be less. But reports'are discouraging about boats. The trails up the mountains are reported so narrow and tortuous that long pieces cannot be carried over. In that case I can cut the lumber into sections. It may never get over. Hundreds of boats, it is said, are being left behind."

The ferryman at Long Lake refuses to go out in the storm, so we pay him full price, 1 cent a pound, for his boat, a large double-ender, load our goods in it, rig a small square-sail in the bow, and scud to the other end, leaving the owner to get his boat when the storm eases up. A portage of a few hundred yards to Deep Lake, and another ferryman takes us to the foot, a mile distant, where we set up tent.

The river here drops into a narrow canyon at tremendous speed, falling eight hundred feet in two or three miles. The trail strikes across a spur of the hill, striking the lake near its head. Lindeman is a beautiful lake, four and a half miles long, and narrow, with a towering mountain on the opposite side. At its head, on the left hand, a river enters, and there is timber for boats up this river. Vegetation is now plentiful, but it consists mainly of willows and a dwarf cornus, or "bunch-berry," which at this season, with its purple-red leaves covering the whole ground, gives a rich look to the landscape. We pitch tent in a lovely spot, on which we decide to build our boat. We pack our goods over from Deep Lake, and when the lumber arrives we build " horses " and set to work constructing the bateau."

A party usually sends two men ahead to build the boats. They must go either five miles up the river just spoken of and raft the logs down here, and construct saw-pits, or else to a patch of timber two miles back, and carry the lumber all that distance on their shoulders. A saw-pit is a sort of elevated platform, ten or twelve feet high. On this the log to be sawn is laid, and a man stands above with the whip-saw, while another works the lower end, and in this way they saw the logs into boards. The boards are small, rarely more than nine or ten inches in width. It is a poor quality of spruce, soft and " punky," and easily broken. There is some pine. The boards are an inch thick, and planed on the edges. After the boat is built the seams are calked with oakum and pitched. The green lumber shrinks before it gets into the water, so that the boats as a rule leak like sieves, but the goods rest upon slabs laid upon the bottom cross-ribs.

Everybody is happy, singing at his work. When a boat is ready to be launched every one turns in to help, for some have to be carried some distance to water. And when a boat departs it is with shouts of good wishes and a fusillade of revolver-shots. Nails are in great demand, bringing $1 or more a pound; likewise pitch, which commands the same. A few days ago, in order to finish a boat, a man gave $15 for two pounds of pitch. No one will sell lumber at all.

Many are selling out and going back even after reaching here.

The last of September it snowed six inches, and it continued to snow a little each day after that. We had to work under an awning. At Crater Lake there were said to be snow-drifts twenty feet deep. Still the people were coming, it being estimated that there were a hundred outfits on the trail this side the summit, as compared with two hundred and twenty-five two weeks before.

No one knows where Jim is. Three of my horses have been taken over the summit and are working on this side. The burros are feeding on rolled oats. During the day we had them they dined off flapjacks; but this is very expensive horse-feed. Forty cents a pound packing is added to the price of all commodities here. There are many selling out flour at $20 a pack. L'Abbe here throws up the sponge. The little French baker, Richards by name, from Detroit, true to his determination, is here with goods, having been working f rom daylight to dark, and even Simpson, with his newspapers. He is putting his canvas canoe together with alder frames.

There are but few of the Islander party this far. I see only the Beall and Bowman party. A few are ahead, but the rest are behind or on the Skagway trail.

I was laid up for a week—the constant wet and cold had been too much. Work stopped on our boat. On the 4th of October the snow went off. On October 5th our boat is finished; we had decided to remodel her, giving her six inches more width top and bottom. The last seam is calked to-day, and she is carried down to the lake, and the next day we load the goods into her. She stands 23 feet over all; 6 feet beam ; 16 feet by 30 inches bottom ; draught, 18 inches with 1500 pounds of cargo.

We start amid a salvo of revolver-shots. The lake is as smooth as glass—what Brown calls an "ash breeze." So he gives her the ash oars until a real breeze springs up, when we hoist a sprit-sail, and in a short while are at the foot of the lake, where several other boats are about to be lined through a nasty thoroughfare into Lake Bennett. It has raised a great deal of anxiety from our minds that our little boat carries her load so well; above all, even when loaded she responds to the oars in a way that delights Brown."