Above all, navigation on the Yukon was a seasonal enterprise. The river froze over in late September or early October and became unnavigable until the ice broke up in June. Even when it was flowing, the river was deeper in the spring as the snow melted and shallower in the summer and fall. There were no charts, buoys, or other aids to navigation. Grounding on sand bars was a common occurrence and freight was often off-loaded to lighten the steamers sufficiently to refloat. As a rule, Yukon steamers did not run at night due to the navigational difficulties but this did not present much of a constraint because at the high latitudes of the Yukon it was light during most of the time the river was unfrozen.
Portus B. Weare would typically take between two and three weeks to ascend the river from St. Michael to Dawson City, and somewhat less heading downstream. During her service on the Yukon she would typically make 2-3 round trips per season, but in at least one year made four deliveries to Dawson City. Steamers on the Yukon, including
Portus B. Weare, often towed, pushed, or were lashed to barges to increase the freight they could move.
Portus B. Weare, like all the steamers on the river, was wood fired and would stop every six hours or so to pick up wood that had been precut and to gather driftwood. She burned 25 to 30 cords of wood per day when underway on the river. Captain Benjamin Franklin Horn earned the nickname "Driftwood" by grounding
Portus B. Weare on a sand bar while engaged in gathering fuel. Passengers would often leave the ship to pick berries, hunt ducks, or just stretch their legs on shore while the crew was "wooding up". Mosquitoes were a constant complaint on these occasions.
1892 - 1896 Immediately after launching and
sea trials, the new steamship was loaded with trade goods. Captain J. C. Barr and John Healy took her up the Yukon, crossing the bar at the river's north mouth on September 28, 1892. By October 1,
Portus B. Weare was about 500 miles up the river, but by October 5, when she was about 800 miles up the Yukon, the thickness of the ice made further travel impossible. She was frozen in for the winter. The energetic Hamilton later became secretary of the North American Transportation and Trading Company, and had one of its Yukon Steamers named after him. After the break-up of the ice in the spring of 1893 made the Yukon navigable again, Healy went on to establish a new trading post, Fort Cudahy, near the mouth of the
Fortymile River and stocked it with food and mining supplies carried by
Portus B. Weare. Healy undercut the prices of the Alaska Commercial Company trading post across the river, and his goods sold well. During the winter of 1893 - 1894, the ship was moored in a slough near Fort Cudahy.
1897: Klondike gold strike Portus B. Weare spent the winter of 1896 - 1897 frozen in at Dawson City. The ice went out of the Yukon about June 15 and she started down the 1600 miles to the sea. On June 27, 1897,
Portus B. Weare reached St. Michael with 60 miners on board and an estimated $1 million in gold dust and nuggets from the Klondike gold fields. She was the second steamer to bring news of the new strike, arriving two days after the Alaska Commercial Company's steamer
Alice. When the miners and their gold reached Seattle and San Francisco, the Klondike gold rush began.
Portus B. Weare was loaded with passengers and 300 tons of provisions at St. Michael. She sailed up the river again on July 3, 1897. There was real concern that starvation could be a problem in the gold fields and the Alaska Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company cooperated to get supplies to the interior before the river froze over in late September. She reached Dawson City On July 25, 1897. The ship took more than a month to reach St. Michael. On her final passage up river in 1897 there was more trouble. When
Portus B. Weare stopped at the company's trading post at Circle City she was boarded by a committee of the local miners. They were just as short of supplies as the miners in Dawson City and winter was approaching. After some unsatisfactory negotiations they decided to take what they wanted by force. On September 20, 1897, fifty armed miners surrounded the ship and began unloading supplies, taking 30 tons. Attempting to seem reasonable in their piracy, the miners took only what they believed they needed, so as not to starve other miners in Dawson City, paid for the goods, and even looted an Alaska Commercial Company steamer,
Bella, so as not to seem unfair to either company. The piracy on
Portus B. Weare and other incidents where desperate miners had taken trading posts by force showed that Alaska and the Yukon were essentially lawless. The 20 Mounties at Fort Constantine were no match for tens of thousands of miners spread over hundreds of miles of wilderness. Understandably, Weare became concerned with security. He is reported to have purchased a
Maxim machine gun in 1897 for
Portland, the sea-going vessel he chartered for runs between Seattle and St. Michael. Nonetheless, the gold rush was undeniably good for business. The fare from Seattle to the goldfields, including board, was advertised at $1,000 in August 1897, but had been lowered to $700 by September.
1898: Klondike gold rush By 1898 the North American Transportation and Trading Company fleet had grown to six steamers. The company had offices at 618 First Avenue in Seattle, where it took bookings from Yukon bound travelers. It offered a complete suite of services to miners including ocean transport to St. Michael, a hotel at Fort Get There, river transport up the Yukon, food, mining supplies, and financing for mining ventures. It even had a rather unusual real estate business buying gold mines from departing miners to sell to newcomers. The company also offered employment to miners in the winter chopping wood to fuel the next year's steamboats. Its first ship headed to Alaska in 1898 left Seattle on June 10, and additional ships followed every ten days. On a summer run from St. Michael to Dawson City in 1898,
Portus B. Weare was loaded with whiskey. The ship was met by Portus B. Weare himself about 100 miles up the river. He had come overland via
Chilkoot Pass. No doubt the whiskey would have sold well, but given the ongoing issue of food shortages in the interior, Weare ordered the ship back to St. Michael to change her cargo for more practical provisions. The ship finally left St. Michael on July 22, 1898, for her trip up the Yukon. She arrived at Dawson with 300 tons of freight in early August. She carried no passengers up river, so as not to exacerbate the potential of starvation in the gold fields during the coming winter.
1899 - 1927 In 1898 gold was found at
Nome, and by the spring of 1899 the
Nome gold rush had begun. The new strike diverted miners away from the Yukon gold fields. Steamboat traffic on the river slumped. The miners already in the Klondike had gold to spend, however.
Portus B. Weare transported $1 million of gold earned by the trading posts of the North American Transportation and Trading Company down the Yukon in the spring of 1899.
Portus B. Weare spent the winter of 1900 - 1901 at St. Michael. In 1903, traffic to the Klondike had fallen so far that the North American Transportation and Trading Company lost $400,000. Portus B. Weare had difficulties in his grain trading business at the same time, leading ultimately to his expulsion from the Chicago Board of Trade and personal bankruptcy. One of the two partners who organized Merchants' Yukon Line was the same energetic Charles Hamilton who had walked out from the frozen-in
Portus B. Weare in 1892. Under its new ownership,
Portus B. Weare made the first delivery of the year of livestock to Fairbanks on July 10, 1911. This included 100 head of cattle and 75 - 80 hogs. It took her 15 days to reach Fairbanks from St. Michael. She returned to Fairbanks with another 200 tons of freight on July 19, 1911. By August 7, 1911
Portus B. Weare was back at St. Michael. The ship may never have sailed again. Although still documented by the
Bureau of Navigation, she was listed as not operating in 1912.
Portus B. Weare was abandoned at St. Michael in 1926 or 1927. At the time she was one of the oldest steamers on the river and her design and machinery were obsolete. Furthermore, the
Alaska Railroad had reached Fairbanks, reducing the need for steamboat transportation to the interior. == Captains ==