Fred M. Racy

Fred Racy was a riverboat man who learned his trade on the Mississippi River.1) He worked for White Pass & Yukon Route in the River Division. He was on the Seattle #3 in 1909 when it was frozen in sixty miles outside of Fairbanks. The crew cut the ice away from the boat to get it into safe winter quarters. They built a log cabin and stored the cargo and perishables. Racy and Ed Baker were left with the boat as caretakers, and the rest of the crew walked to Fairbanks.2) Fred Racy was First Mate on the sternwheeler Yukon in 1936. Racy had a very loud voice and could be heard from a great distance. Arthur Knutson thought he was the finest of steamboat mates.3)

Al Stout worked under First Mate Fred Racy on the steamer Yukon [in 1940?]. The boat ran from Dawson to Nanana two times a month. Stout got off the boat in Eagle because he and Racy did not get along.4) Racy had a stroke on board the boat in the spring of 1940.5) Fred Racy spent more than forty years as mate on steamers plying the Yukon River between Whitehorse and St. Michael, Alaska.6)

1) , 3) , 5)
Arthur E. Knutson, Sternwheels on the Yukon. Snohomish, Washington: Knutson Enterprises, Inc. 1979: ix-x, 17-18.
2)
University of Washington, Special Collections Division. Captain S.E. Lancaster photograph collection, AWC3781.
4)
“Al Stout talks with William Schneider and Steve Ulvi.” 21 August 1991, Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, Project Jukebox. 2020 websites: http://jukebox.uaf.edu/YUCH/htm/alstout.htm; http://jukebox.uaf.edu/site7/interviews/3436.
6)
The Whitehorse Star (Whitehorse), 18 February 1944.