On September 7, 1952, the Canadian Pacific coastal liner SS Princess Kathleen met disaster at Point Lena, near Juneau, Alaska. The 369-foot passenger vessel ran aground during severe weather and ultimately slipped from the rocks and sank in the waters of Lynn Canal. Remarkably, more than 400 passengers and crew escaped without loss of life.

The Princess Kathleen was navigating near Lena Point when a fierce squall struck. The ship grounded on the rocky shoreline, badly damaging the forward part of its hull. As the tide rose, water began flooding the vessel from the stern. With the ship increasingly unstable, the captain and crew abandoned it.

Approximately 10 hours after the grounding, the incoming tide lifted the ship from the rocks. The Princess Kathleen slipped into deeper water and sank. The wreck came to rest on its port side, with portions of the vessel lying in water ranging from roughly 52 feet to 134 feet deep.

Although there was no loss of life, the wreck eventually became an environmental concern. The ship had gone down carrying a substantial quantity of bunker fuel. Over the following decades, small releases of oil produced sheens and tar balls around Point Lena. In 2010, the U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation launched a major operation to remove fuel from the wreck. Crews ultimately recovered approximately 118,800 gallons of bunker oil, along with additional petroleum products and oily water, bringing the total recovered material to about 144,300 gallons.

Today, the Princess Kathleen remains one of the notable historic shipwrecks of Southeast Alaska. Lying beneath the waters off Lena Point, the rusting remains serve as a reminder of the hazards faced by passenger ships traveling Alaska’s Inside Passage—and of a sinking that could have become a major maritime tragedy but instead ended with everyone aboard reaching safety.