The PS Eliza Anderson operated from 1858 to 1898 mainly on Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Fraser River but also for short periods in Alaska.

She played a role in the Underground Railroad and had a desperate last voyage to Alaska as part of the Klondike Gold Rush.

Eliza Anderson was launched on November 27, 1858, at Portland, Oregon for the Columbia River Steam Navigation Company.

This had a number of effects on the Canadian west coast, perhaps the most important of which was the establishment of British Columbia as a separate colony from Vancouver Island.

For the American steamboats, they benefitted by decision of Canadian governor James Douglas to grant "sufferances" to them to allow them to work on the Victoria to Fraser River route at a levy of $12 per run.

Tom Wright (1828–1906), took or at least endeavored to take, goldseekers up to the head of navigation at Yale By March 30, Eliza Anderson had completed two round trips to Fort Langley, and returned to Victoria carrying $40,000 in gold dust.

[2] By May, 1859, three vessels were operating in competition on the Fort Langley route, the Eliza Anderson, the Beaver, and the Governor Douglas.

In June, 1859, Captain Wright brought Enterprise down to Victoria, and arranged in July to have Eliza Anderson tow the sternwheeler around to Grays Harbor, where the Chehalis River flows into the Pacific.

Returning to Victoria, Eliza Anderson picked up a load of miners bound for Olympia arriving there for the first time on July 9, 1859.

[6] Julia, then running the mail, was a shallow-draft riverine vessel not fit to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca during the winter.

On September 24, 1860, a 14-year-old black youth, named Charles Mitchell, hid on board the Anderson, seeking passage to Canada to escape slavery.

Governor McGill then told the ships officers, and when they were just four miles out of Victoria, they seized Mitchell and held him in "close confinement".

What happened next is not entirely clear, but McGill went ashore and either acquiesced in the assertion of the Canadian court's writ over the vessel, or, as the Pioneer Democrat later insisted, protested vociferously against it.

Curiously, although the Pioneer Democrat denounced the action of the Canadian court, blaming the situation on "sharp dressed" black people and misguided whites, the Pioneer Democrat also denied that he was a slave, claiming that he was some type of ward, even though the title of their article used the words "fugitive slave" and the protest by Captain Fleming that it printed described Mitchell as Tilton's "property.

Captain Finch had a head for figures, and became one of leading bankers in the Washington Territory, conducting finance at every landing called at by the Anderson.

Counties in those days were poorly funded, and paid their bills not in cash money, but "warrants", that is to say, paper promises to pay.

[4] When things were winding down for the Anderson on the Olympia–Victoria route, she was tied up to Percival Dock in Olympia for some time, until the Cassiar Gold Rush in northern British Columbia seemed to offer a chance to make money.

Eventually Captain Wright was able to clear himself of these charges, but with the Anderson having been off the route so long, the competitors had captured all the business.

[3] In October, 1886, Captain Wright sold Anderson to the Puget Sound and Alaska Steamship Company, which ran her hard under Capt.

[12] Starting in about 1890, Eliza Anderson was laid up on the Duwamish River[13] during the financial crises of the early 1890s, and would have rotted away there except for the discovery of gold in the Yukon Territory.

[14] A flotilla of dubious vessels, since described as "floating coffins," was organized, consisting of Eliza Anderson traveling in company with the old (built 1877) but still powerful steam tug Richard Holyoke towing, astoundingly, three craft behind her, the sternwheeler W.K.

Merwin, the hulk of the old sidewheeler Politkosky (once a Russian gunboat, now a coal barge), and William J. Bryant, a yachting schooner owned by a wealthy playboy named John Hansen.

[3] The Moran shipyard in Seattle finished quick overhaul on the Anderson and she was back in the water on July 31, 1897, and she was somehow able to meet the approval of hulls and boilers inspectors Bryant and Cherry.

Every day since she left Seattle it has been common talk that if she withstood the seas of the North and reached St. Michael in safety she would do something no one expected her to do.

Anderson's owners had oversold her tickets, and the passengers, finding much less space aboard then they'd been promised, were only prevented from throwing the purser overboard by the personal intervention of Captain Powers.

When the Eliza Anderson arrived at Comox, British Columbia, incompetent coal loading by her crew caused the steamer to veer out of control into the ship Glory of the Seas sustaining minor damage to one of her paddle guards.

Passengers were writing notes to loved ones and tossing them overboard in bottles, of which there was an ample supply since most of the boat's stock of whisky had been consumed in an effort to keep up morale.

Anderson stayed moored at Dutch Harbor until March 1898 when a storm washed her up on a beach where she gradually disintegrated.

[3] Of her fate, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote, on March 31, 1898: The old Eliza Anderson, after an interesting career of 40 years, is at last a total wreck.

When Anderson left Kodiak after coaling, Erik had stowed himself away on board, hoping to get to Dutch Harbor to ask an uncle for a loan to restart their business.