SS Princess Sophia was a steel-built passenger liner in the coastal service fleet of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).

[6] All 364 persons on the ship died, making the wreck of Sophia the worst maritime accident in the history of British Columbia and Alaska.

The route from Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, ran through the winding channels and fjords along the coast, stopping at the principal towns for passengers, cargo, and mail.

Major ports of call along the Inside Passage include Prince Rupert and Alert Bay in British Columbia, and Wrangell, Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway in Alaska.

For example, as a coastal liner, Princess Sophia would only be licensed to carry passengers within 50 nautical miles (93 km; 58 mi) of the coastline.

After several shipwrecks in the Inside Passage and other areas of the Pacific Northwest showed the weakness of wooden hulls, CPR switched over to steel construction for all new vessels.

The following summer CPR assigned her to run once every two weeks from Victoria to Skagway, Alaska, alternating with Princess May and stopping in Prince Rupert along the way.

[11] When Canada entered the Great War in 1914, early wartime economic disruption resulted in a sharp decline of business for the CPR fleet and a number of vessels, including Sophia, were temporarily taken out of service by November 1914.

[2][15] Four hours after leaving Skagway, while proceeding south down Lynn Canal, Sophia encountered heavy blinding snow driven by a strong and rising northwest wind.

[17] Ahead of Sophia lay a rock called Vanderbilt Reef, the tip of an underwater mountain that rose 1,000 ft (305 m) from the bottom of Lynn Canal.

[13] A letter later recovered from the body of a passenger, Signal Corps Private Auris W. McQueen, described the scene on board just after the grounding: "Two women fainted and one of them got herself into a black evening dress and didn't worry about who saw her putting it on.

The wind and waves forced Princess Sophia even farther up onto the reef, but fortunately the vessel's double hull was not breached.

In fine weather and smooth seas on 5 August 1910, Princess May, another CPR steamship, grounded on Sentinel Island within sight of Vanderbilt Reef.

Clallam, a new vessel when she foundered, was sunk in a storm on what should have been an ordinary voyage across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Victoria, British Columbia.

En route to Victoria on 8 January 1904, Clallam, under the command of Captain George Roberts, encountered severe weather conditions.

[3][20][21][22][23][24][25] Locke warned off James Davis, captain of the fishing vessel Estebeth, who attempted and then abandoned an effort to reach Sophia in a skiff.

Davis moored his vessel by tying up to the Vanderbilt Reef marker buoy, which was then in the lee of Princess Sophia and protected from the worst force of the weather.

Princess Sophia had been seriously damaged striking the reef, with a hole in her bow that water ran in and out of at a rate that Davis estimated at 200 or 300 gallons per minute.

Ledbetter, Miller, and Locke all agreed that the passengers would be safer aboard Princess Sophia and postponed any attempt to take them off by boat.

Ledbetter was having difficulty keeping Cedar on station, and the smaller rescue boats that had run for shelter on the evening of 24 October were unable to return to the reef.

Ledbetter decided he would try to anchor Cedar about 500 yards (460 m) downwind of the reef, shoot a line to Princess Sophia (possibly using a Lyle gun), and then evacuate the passengers by breeches buoy.

Cedar would then launch her lifeboats to pick up people from Princess Sophia and ferry them to King and Winge, thus eliminating the need and the hazards of using the boats of the stranded ship.

Given that Princess Sophia had withstood so far some heavy pounding and still remained fixed on the rock, Ledbetter and Miller felt the better course was to wait for the next day to attempt their plan.

[1] Just as Miller was disembarking from Cedar to return to King and Winge, at 16:50 on 25 October, Princess Sophia sent out a wireless message: "Ship Foundering on Reef.

One of the last distress messages, at 5:20pm by wireless operator David Robinson, stated, "For God's sake hurry, the water is coming into my room".

[1] David Leverton of the Maritime Museum of British Columbia told the CBC that the captain's barometer predicted an improvement in the weather and suggested to rescuers that they try the next day.

[17] With no survivors and no witnesses to the actual sinking, what happened on Princess Sophia to drive her off the reef is a matter of reconstruction from the available evidence and conjecture.

Based on the evidence it appears that the storm, blowing in from the north, raised water levels on the reef much higher than previously, causing the vessel to become buoyant again, but only partially so.

As early as 10:20 on 24 October there were enough rescue vessels at the reef to have accommodated all of the people on Princess Sophia, and there would be four or five hours until the wind began to rise.

Historians Coates and Morrison speculate that the memory of the wreck of Clallam, when everyone in the lifeboats died after a premature abandonment of the vessel, may have played a role in Locke's decision.