Not one to sit for long, William became intrigued by the wealth of the Incas and he packed up his wife and son and embarked to Peru, where he purchased a schooner and traded up and down the Peruvian coast.

As 30,000 gold-seekers poured into what would soon be the Colony of British Columbia, Moore made his first fortune, not in mining, but in providing transportation for the miners and delivering their supplies up the Fraser River to Fort Hope.

[3] The Henrietta navigated the Fraser River to Yale in February 1860, but Moore soon replaced her with a new and more powerful sternwheeler, the Flying Dutchman, which was launched in Victoria that September.

[3] Moore intended for her to run from Victoria to Yale, connecting with the Flying Dutchman on Harrison Lake, but the Alexandra proved to be too big and expensive to operate and only made a few trips on that route.

Moore suffered additional financial hardship as rate wars raged between him and his rival, William Irving, driving steamer fares down to as low as 25 cents for the trip between New Westminster and Yale.

Moore was not out of business for long, however, and soon purchased another sloop and moved his family and their goats to New Westminster, where Hendrika had their sixth child, son Bernard.

Moore then purchased the barge Lady of the Lake, equipped it with sails and renamed it Marcella and ran it from New Westminster through Puget Sound to Olympia, Washington.

The Big Bend Gold Rush ended shortly afterwards, and Moore purchased land in Kamloops and his family, with their omnipresent goats, joined him there, ironically making part of the trip on Captain Irving's sternwheeler, Onward.

[9] Later in that spring of 1866, Moore had already had enough of farming and moved his family up to Barkerville, where he worked as a miner until 1869, when he learned of yet another new gold discovery, this time in the Omineca Country.

[11] After delivering the supplies, Moore and John began prospecting, but had no luck, and come winter, they left the barge on Takla Lake and took the Babine trail to Hazelton, canoeing down the Skeena River to the coast, where they took the steamship Otter back to Victoria.

In the spring of 1871, Moore built another schooner, the Minnie, and loaded her with more supplies for the Omineca district and went up the coast, accompanied by his sons, John and Henry, a crew of thirty men, and a herd of mules.

But even an experienced riverboat captain like Moore could not ascend the entire length of the perilous and swift Skeena River with a loaded barge.

Facing starvation, his crew left, and Moore and his sons had to drive the mules the remaining 90 miles (140 km) to Hazelton on foot.

Taking the Babine trail back to Takla, they were joined by Billie, and the four Moores ran the barge and the pack mules for the Omineca miners for the rest of that season.

They returned to Victoria that fall and embarked to Omenica again in the spring of 1872, with a contract from the Hudson's Bay Company to freight supplies up the Skeena to Hazelton.

Once they arrived in Hazelton, John took the mules up the Babine trail while Moore, Billie, Henry and their crew returned down the Skeena to pick up another load.

When they were floating past the Kitsequekla Canyon, shots were fired and one of the crewmen was wounded in the leg, while another bullet barely missed Moore.

Upon their return at Port Essington, they learned that the government, having heard of burning of the Sticks village, had sent Lieutenant-Governor Joseph Trutch in a gunboat, HMS Scout.

There they were joined by six prospectors and two First Nations guides, who all boarded the barge and with much towing, rowing and sailing, the group covered the last 75 miles (121 km) to Telegraph Creek.

[13] Moore ran the Gertrude against Irving's Royal City for a few weeks, creating a rate war that would lower fares to $1 between New Westminster and Yale.

William Moore, now 60, was hardly ready to become an employee of his old rival's 28-year-old son, so he built another sternwheeler, the Teaser, which was eventually seized by creditors (despite Billie's attempt to hide her in Alaska), and sold and renamed the Rainbow.

[20] By 1887, Moore joined the government survey party headed by William Ogilvie and showed them how to build and navigate a barge up the Yukon River.

Moore then told Ogilvie of his belief that the Yukon Valley would be the site of the next gold rush and that the White Pass would be a major route to it.

He built a log cabin, a sawmill, and began the construction of a wharf in anticipation of the ships that would land there, offloading thousands of eager gold-seekers.

[22] He and Ben returned to Victoria in that winter where Moore wrote several letters to Ottawa, telling of the Yukon's great potential and the need for a wagon road over the White Pass.

[24] On 29 July 1897, the mail steamer Queen would be the first of the gold rush flotilla to dock at Moore's wharf in Skagway Bay, followed by John Irving's Islander and the collier Willamette.