Daily Sitka Sentinel from Sitka, Alaska • Page 1

SITA'S HUME-OWNED PAPEK Daily Sitka Sentinel and The Arrowhead Press Member of Associated fOLUME XIU 1Oca Copy Monday, September 8, 1952 NUMBER Princess Kathleen Sinks Near Juneau Sinks In 90 Feet of Water 18 Miles North of Juneau Passengers-Crew All Safe; Taken To Juneau Sunday Juneau, (JP) The relentless waters of a Southeastern Alas- ka "s'Mps graveyard" claimed another Canadian Pacific Lines vessel yesterday its flagship the Princess Kathleen but not a person of 425 aboard was lost. A mile and a half off 'course, the 5,908 ton Kathleen crunoh- ed aground with her bow al- most underneath a cliff at 3:15 a. m. (PSD; Sunday. Earth quake conscious Californ'ians a- board said the blow felt like suck a shock.

Within lour hours, with Coast Guard aided rescue efforts, the 305 passengers aboard were got ten ashore, many of the young- er ones climbing down ladders to the beach. Near mid-day, when the rising tide 'began to fill the hull, Capt. Graham O. Hughes ordered "abandon ship" and the 118 officers and crew were also put ashore. The ship slipped from its rocky berth and sank, with its bow going high into the air, in 90 feet of water at 1:40 p.

m. The spot was 18 miles north of The Kathleen had sailed from Juneau for Skagway. First officer Charles W. Sav- age was on the bridge when the ship hit, Capt. Hughes report- ed.

The lookout sighted the reef and cliff looming up in. the Iff atchcombing I'll bet Juneau was crowd- ed after the passengers and crew of the Princess Kathleen were bedded down. We don't know how that many could ba commodated in Sitka. Did you feel the air today Football Weather and not a team at any of the three high schools in Sitka. Most everybody who has lived in Sitka for any length of time has been in a ship or boat wreck.

All that ever happened to me was that I hit every rock within 10 miles when I had a 'boat. Oh, well I was lucky. They tell rne I didn't miss much when that 'buck got away over Labor Day. The fellow who got him said he was not too fat. Now what did he mean that? darkness and light rain but there was no time to change course.

I The first officer was unable to explain the ship's position, Hughes said. He was near collapse after the ship was ab- andoned. The ship's plight was not be- lieved serious at first and the passengers were served coffee, winds kicked up six foot waves and a drenching rain fell. I Through a mix-up, ensign i Richard Lacey, commander of the Coast Guard 83 footer which reached the scene, reported lat- er, an SOS was sent on the wrong requency. It was not until two hours later that the Kathleen contacted an Alaska Communication System station on ship-shore telephone to find out why the distress message had not been answered.

On arrival of the cutter, life- boats brought passengers ashore fires were built on the beach and a path cut through brush and rocks half a mile to a road. "The shock when the ship struck the sihore was most vio- lent," said one passenger, Ken- neth Hile of Los Angeles, in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Examiner. "Prac- tically everyone was knocked out of their bunks." "We picked ourselves up and looked out our cabin door," said Hile whose wift, Muriel, was with him. "People were look- ing out all along the gangways. There was no panic.

Everyone was calm. some thought at Jess Ressner Rites Set For Tuesday Funeral services for Jess Kessner, who died today at the Pioneers Home, will be held tomorrow at the Pioneers Cem- etery with Rev. Frederick Kne- bel officiating, at 2 p.m. Mr. Kessner was born in Indiana on Sept.

30. 1886, and cam to Alaska on July 7, 1925, making his home at Juneau un- til 1938 when he moved to Skag way. He entered the Home from Skagway June 26, 1947. He had been in the clothing business prior to coming to the Home and he continued that business by selling work cloth- ing here. He had been married, but his wife died a number of years ago.

A brother, James, of Prince- ton, Iiidinana, survives. first that the jolt had been caus ed by an earthquake. The sus- pense was maddening. Firially the 'boat's public address sys-1 tern went on. The vessel's skip I per was talking.

"He admonished everyone to ibe calm, to dress warmly, to put on life jackets and to go to their life stations on the boat Despite this foreboding of tra- gedy to our boat, everyone re- mained calm. We all went to work efficiently carrying out the skipper's instructions." About 160 of the younger pas sengers, many of 'them OB a tour sponsored by the Catholic Young Men's Institute of San Francisco, clim'bed down lad- ders to the shore and hiked to the road. "The crew hacked a path thr- ough more than a mile of rough jungle," said Mrs. Mary Kane of Oakland, Calif. "Then they helped us to a road, where buss- es and taxis picked us up.

Two men carried one elderly lady all the continued on page four) Kathleen Jinx For YMI Group From San Francisco Vancouver (IP) Their holidays dumped 15 fathoms into Alas- kas' Inland Passage, 19 tour- ists arrived here today carrying memories of shipwreck and very little else. And for many of the glad to be alive Americans, who fig- ure loss of luggage a small mat ter when the ocean was playing for keeps, the story of ship- wreck had its beginning more than a year ago. They and some 280 other pas sengers were aboard the excur- sion steamship Princess Kath- leen when- it ran aground yester day north of Juneau and was claimed by the Pacific. All the crew members and passengers escaped. The bedraggled band most of them resident's of San Fran- cisco arrived on the first flight of an airlift set up after the sinking.

A twin engined DC-3 carry- ing the identification markings "CF-CPY" had replaced the luxurious $5,000,000 Kathleen as their means of travel. Those weren't too tired told their stories to reporters and the most bizarre part of the saga was related by 23 year old Lorraine Shaylor, a clerk with a San Francisco insurance firm. Lorraine, her sister Gladys, and their father were members of a tour group sponsored by the Catholic Young Mere's Institute of San Francisco. The tour was scheduled to go to Alaska last year but plans had to ibe cancelled when the Kathleen was damaged in a col- lision with steamship Prince continued on page four) Stevenson Says U.S. Press Now All For One Party Says Piress Fair In Treatment of Demo arty Information Portland, (JP) Gov.

Ad- i two-party system. I am in favor i of a two-party system in polit- ics. And I am frankly consider- ably concerned when I see the extent to which we are devel- oping a one-party press in a two partv countrv. lai Stevenson saad today Amer- lean editors should "contem- "As an ex-newspaperman plate the very real dangers of and a citizen. I am frankly con- the one-party system in the cerned about the implications of press." this one-party system our He said the "overwhelming American press and our free so- majority of the press" is oppos- ciety." ing the Democratic party but The Democratic candidate asserted he has been "well im- pressed by the fair treatment accorded me by most newspap- ers, including most of those al- igned editorially with the op- position." "I am convinced," he said, 'that nearly all publishers are doing their honest best, accord- ing to their lights even if I must confess that sometimes their lights seem a little dim." He also declared: "I am touched when I read in papers solicitious editor- ials about the survival of the Fight Chinese, S.Koreans For Control Of Capital Hill Seoul, Korea.

(JP) Chinese and South Korean infanirymen )attled fiercely tonight for con- of Capital Hill amid burst- ng shells from tremendous U. and communist artillery bar- An American comlbat officer reported the fighting was large- hand-to-hand "with bay- onets, fists, grenades, satchel- charges, daggers and clubs." The officer said "it's a hide and seek affair at night, all land-to-hand because there's not anything to shoot at in the dark." He said no one controlled the crest of the central front height Because of the heavy artillery barrages from both sides. The U. S. eighth army earlier had reported that the South Koreans who in three days have attacked five times in the face of 48.000 rounds of artillery fire had reached the top only to be driven off an hour later.

The Americans said that U. spoke before a group of Oregon newspaper editors, publishers and radio men at a luncheon in Portland today. He arrived here by plane last night, extending his hard-driving campaign to the Pacific Coast. "It is going to be a tough campaign," Stevenson said, "and I am not kidding myself about the difficulties. "We have a lot of ground to make up.

We 'have made up some. I figure thae we still have a little distance to go. But I figure, too. that we are gaining steadily." It was the first time Steven- son has publicly discussed the progress of the campaign. In saying, it is going to be he also paid a tribute to the Re- publican candidate, Gen.

Dwi- ght Eisenhower, saying: "My opponent is a great gen- eral who has served the army and the nation well." But Stevenson again taunted the Republicans on the ground that they are split into two par- ties, sharply divided over pol- icy, and have no politics of their own. He has hammered away at this point in a number of spee- ches made since he left Spring- field, 111., his headquarters, last Friday. "I wait breathlessly for each morning's newspaper," he told the editors, "to see which Re- publican party is on top that day. "I do not think the people will install a party which does not seem capable of governing. And I do not see how anyone can argue that this fretful, dis- tracted and divided Republican party has that capacity.

If it cannot govern itself, why sho- uld we suppose it could govern the country?" The luncheon was, sponsored by the Oregon Journal. Tom Humphrey, editor of the news- artillery ruined two Red battal- paper, recently wrote Steven- eJ aS in son a letter wh ich contained the me behind Capital Hill and the phrase "the mess in Washing- ton." Stevenson, in replying, wrote "as to that mess in Wash ington," using the same words. other was moving down a draw when Allied artillery zeroed in on them. Brig. Gen.

Lee Young Moon, commander of the Capital div- ision, said Chinese casualties "ran into hundreds killed." Another officer said no ac- curate figure on Red casualties could be given because many of the dead and wounded "are in territory we don't control." The U. S. fifth air force said its sabre jet pilots knocked five migs out of the air today and damaged five others in battles near the Manehurian border. The air victories raised the (continued on page four) President Truman, in a news conference shortly after the letters were published, said he knew of no such mess. Marine forecast from Monday to Tuesday.

Outside waters Dixon En- trance to Yakutat gentle to mod erate northerly winds. Fair entire area with patches of night-time fog..