The Admiral Sampson was a steel-hulled, twin-propeller design with two upper decks constructed of wood, and a single smokestack.

[4] In February 1900, it came to the rescue of the U.S. Army transport ship McPherson, which was disabled by a broken propeller shaft off Hampton Roads, Virginia.

[5] On 4 November 1902 she sank the cargo schooner Charlie Bucki ( United States) in a collision in Massachusetts Bay in dense fog.

The new company offered freight and passenger service between San Francisco and Puget Sound and Alaska ports as far north as Nome.

[3] On the morning of August 26, 1914, the Admiral Sampson left Seattle en route to Juneau, Alaska with 126 passengers and crew aboard.

This action both reduced the amount of water rushing into the hole and allowed some of the Admiral Sampson's passengers and crew to evacuate onto the Princess Victoria.

Aboard the Admiral Sampson, wireless operator Walter E. Reker transmitted emergency messages and helped passengers board lifeboats; he then joined his captain on the bridge.

The Wireless World reported in April 1915: "As the cargo of his vessel consisted of oil, the horrors of fire were super-added to the situation and Reker found too much work to do to think of his own safety.

"[11] A large crowd met the Princess Victoria when it reached the Canadian Pacific Railroad wharf shortly after 10 a.m.

"A gaping wound loomed large in the vessel's bow, only two or three feet above the water line … In the breech hung a battered hatch cover from the Admiral Sampson.

In 1991, Gary Severson and Kent Barnard used side-scan sonar to locate the Admiral Sampson's resting place.

[8] The search failed to discover the safe, but the salvagers did recover the ship's engine order telegraph and various galley equipment.

[1] Since the pioneering dives in the early 1990s, the Admiral Sampson has become a destination for a handful of technically advanced and experienced divers.