James J. Flanaghan (1860 – 1918)

Charlottetown blacksmith James J. Flanaghan went to the Yukon in 1898 and eventually became a shareholder in a number of gold mines. By 1901, he was a miner living at Cooks Dome Roadhouse on the Ridge Road Trail in the Klondike gold fields.1) In 1918, he was an employee with Yukon Gold and a member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers.2)

Flanaghan booked his passage to Prince Rupert on the Princess Sophia in the fall of 1918 and was drowned when the ship sunk in the Lynn Canal.3) His body was found the following summer and returned to Prince Edward Island.4)

1) , 4)
J. Clinton Morrison, Chasing a Dream: Prince Edward Islanders in the Klondike. Summerside, PEI: Crescent Isle Publishers. 2004: 127.
2)
The Maritime Museum of British Columbia, SS Princess Sophia: Those Who Perished, 2018: 58.
3)
Ken Coates & Bill Morrison, The Sinking of the Princess Sophia. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990: 178.