The SS Islander was a 1519 ton, 240 feet (73.2 m) steel hull, schooner-rigged twin-screw steamer, built in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 in 1888, and owned and operated by the Canadian Pacific Steam Navigation Company.

She was built especially for the Inside Passage

Inside Passage

The Inside Passage is a coastal route for oceangoing vessels along a network of passages which weave through the islands on the Pacific coast of North America. The route extends from southeastern Alaska, in the United States, through western British Columbia, in Canada, to northwestern Washington...

 to Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 and was reputedly the most luxurious steamer engaged on that run. As a consequence, she was favoured by many wealthy businessmen, speculators, bankers, railroad tycoons and the like who had a stake in the lucrative Klondike

Klondike, Yukon

The Klondike is a region of the Yukon in northwest Canada, east of the Alaska border. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon from the east at Dawson....

 gold fields.

Wreck of the Islander

On August 14th, 1901 the Islander departed Skagway, Alaska for Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...

, filled to capacity with passengers and carrying a cargo of gold bullion valued at over $6,000,000 in 1901 dollars. Sometime after 2:00 am on 15 August, 1901 while sailing down the narrow Lynn Canal

Lynn Canal

Lynn Canal is an inlet into the mainland of southeast Alaska.Lynn Canal runs about from the inlets of the Chilkat River south to Chatham Strait and Stephens Passage...

 south of Juneau, she struck what was reported to be an iceberg

Iceberg

An iceberg is a large piece of ice from freshwater that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. It may subsequently become frozen into pack ice...

 that stove a large hole in her forward port quarter. Attempts to steer the foundering vessel ashore on nearby Douglas Island

Douglas Island

Douglas Island is a tidal island in the U.S. state of Alaska, just west of downtown Juneau and east of Admiralty Island. It is separated from mainland Juneau by the Gastineau Channel. The Juneau-Douglas Bridge, connecting the island with Juneau, provides a two lane road to and from the island and...

 were in vain; within five minutes, the tremendous weight of the water filling the ship's forward compartments had forced her bow underwater and her stern, rudder and propellers completely out of the water.

After drifting for about 15 minutes in a strong southerly outbound tide, the Islander began her final plunge to the bottom and sank quickly. In total, 40 lives were lost.

Salvage attempts

Reports concerning the substantial value of the ship's cargo led to many early salvage attempts and also several lawsuits. No sooner had the Islander sunk than efforts began to locate the wreck. Within days her sister ship, the SS Haling was sounding

Sounding

Sounding generally refers to a mechanism of probing the environment by sending out some kind of stimulus. The term derives from the ancient practice of determining the depth of water by feeding out a line with a weight at the end....

 the area in order to determine the wreck's depth.

The first attempt to locate the Islander was a failure. In 1902 Henry Finch, an experienced diver with 40 years' experience, dragged the bottom of the Lynn Canal for the wreck. He located the hull but was not able to proceed with an actual salvage attempt.

1904

In 1904, equipped with a specially designed barge and diving bell

Diving bell

A diving bell is a rigid chamber used to transport divers to depth in the ocean. The most common types are the wet bell and the closed bell....

, Finch succeeded in locating the wreck of the Islander in 175 feet (53.3 m) of water and reported a "gaping hole" in the ship's bow. Unfortunately, Finch did not have the means to gain access to the reported location of the gold in the Purser

Purser

The purser joined the warrant officer ranks of the Royal Navy in the early fourteenth century and existed as a Naval rank until 1852. The development of the warrant officer system began in 1040 when five English ports began furnishing warships to King Edward the Confessor in exchange for certain...

's Office amidships and as a result only a section of deck rail and grating were recovered.

Over the next 25 years at least a dozen separate salvage attempts were made on the Islander. Every operation succeeded in reaching the wreck, but none proved able to penetrate the ship's hold or recover any of the gold. Apart from the adverse weather conditions, the strong currents, and extremely cold temperatures, salvage from the depth at which the wreck lay was virtually unknown in the early 20th century.

1929

In 1929 Captain Wiley of Seattle teamed up with Frank Curtis, a professional housemover with experience in moving and transporting large structures. Their scheme involved leading 20 steel cables beneath the sunken liner that were to be connected to surface vessels. The cables were then to be tightened at each low tide, inching the wreck towards shore with each high tide. This challenging operation occupied two complete salvage seasons until, on 20 July 1934, the Islander surfaced near Green's Cove, Admiralty Island

Admiralty Island

Admiralty Island is an island in the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska, at . It is 145 km  long and 56 km  wide with an area of 4,264.1 km² , making it the seventh largest island in the United States and the 132nd largest island in the world. It is one of the...

, Alaska.

The "gaping hole" first noted by Henry Finch in 1904 turned out to be more significant than suspected: 60 feet (18.3 m) of the Islander's bow, including the Mail and Storage Room, had been completely sheared off. However, it was the Purser's Office in the midsection of the vessel where the Islander's gold was expected to be found.

Disappointingly, when the wreck was cleared, the Islander yielded only $75,000 worth of gold nuggets and gold dust. The Purser's Office disclosed none of the strongboxes of bullion that were expected; its safe contained just a handful of US $10 and $20 gold coins and some waterlogged paper currency.

According to statements made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...

 (RCMP) constables who were aboard the ship to guard the shipment of gold, the bullion had been stowed in a locker on the port side of the forward well deck

Well deck

A well deck or well dock is a hangar-like deck located at the waterline in the stern of some amphibious warfare ships. By taking on water the ship can lower its stern, flooding the well deck and allowing boats and amphibious landing craft to dock within the ship. This facilitates moving cargo...

, just abaft the break of the focsle – an area located within the "missing" bow section which was not located until August 1996.

1996

In 1996, OceanMar Inc. of Seattle raised capital in the USA and the UK to charter a suitable vessel and mount a salvage expedition equipped with an extensive sidescan sonar suite, and a "Surveyor" Remotely Operated Vehicle

Remotely operated vehicle

A remotely operated vehicle is a tethered underwater vehicle. They are common in deepwater industries such as offshore hydrocarbon extraction. An ROV may sometimes be called a remotely operated underwater vehicle to distinguish it from remote control vehicles operating on land or in the air. ROVs...

.

On their arrival at Juneau, the expedition's ship, the MV Jolly Roger, was boarded by a US Deputy Marshall

United States Marshals Service

The United States Marshals Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice . The office of U.S. Marshal is the oldest federal law enforcement office in the United States; it was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789...

, and the expedition was served with a Temporary Restraining Order

Injunction

An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...

, obtained by a rival salvage company, Yukon Recovery of Seattle. Yukon Recovery claimed rights to the wreck on the grounds that they had salvaged a light fitting and a bottle, under the Abandoned Shipwrecks Act

Abandoned Shipwrecks Act

The Abandoned Shipwrecks Act is a United States piece of legislation passed into law in 1988 meant to protect historic shipwrecks from treasure hunters and salvagers by transferring the title of the wreck to the state whose waters it lies in.- Background :...

. OceanMar, who had extensively researched the Islander asserted that the wreck had never been abandoned and their Salvage Agreement which was with the original insurers consequently took precedence. OceanMar were also able to show that they had located the bow section long before Yukon appeared on the scene.

A meeting in Anchorage with a judge who was an expert in maritime law resulted in OceanMar being granted permission to survey and video the wreck site, on the strict understanding that nothing was to be removed from the wreck.

The MV Jolly Roger and her crew spent the following five weeks recording every aspect of the bow section and side-scanning the debris field lying between the original point of impact and the ship's final resting place. The Islander's bow section was located on the 95th anniversary of the sinking, almost to the hour.

OceanMar then found themselves involved in four years of legal action with Yukon Recovery, resulting in the United States courts of appeals

United States courts of appeals

The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system...

finding in favour of OceanMar on 7 March 2000.

In 2004, the company was still trying to raise the capital needed to mount a new salvage effort.