Sydney Charles Barrington. (1868 – 1963)
Syd Barrington was born in Oak Harbor, Puget Sound to parents Christina (McCrohan) and Captain Edward Barrington. All of the Barrington sons became sea captains, helping to run the Mosquito Fleet line of sternwheelers and steamers around Puget Sound. Ed, Harry and Sydney (Syd) all earned their unlimited master’s licenses when they were twenty-one and could operate a ship of any size with an unlimited number of passengers. When Ed’s small boat burned, he and Syd used the insurance money to go north to prospect at Cook Inlet in 1896. They returned to Oak Harbor in the fall with wages over their expenses. When word arrived on the steamer Portland about the Klondike strike, Syd contacted Hill and the brothers, along with a cousin George Nunan, headed north on the steamer Al-ki. They staked claims on Bonanza Creek and dug up about $70,000 worth of gold. They refused an offer to purchase but then ran out of good ground. Food was scarce that winter in Dawson and the brothers left for Seattle in December 1897. Ed saw the possibilities for a transportation business on the Yukon River. Both he and Syd could pilot in both Canadian and American inland waters with a Canadian pilot on board in Canada, and they worked for the Alaska Commercial Co. in the spring of 1898.1)
In June 1898, Captain Barrington made a least one trip with the Canadian Development Co. steamer Victoria. He took her from Dawson to Fort Selkirk and back in seventy-five hours, stopping at Sixtymile and Stewart River.2)
At the end of June, the Barringtons bought the sternwheeler Willie Irving for $20,000. The boat was powerful for the day and Ed advertised that the trip from Dawson to saltwater could be made in fourteen days with a connection to saddle horses at Rink Rapids. The boat paid for itself in three trips. Ed then bought the Clifford Sifton for $21,000 and was doing well with the two boats when he contracted typhoid fever and died.3)
Syd spent the winter of 1898/99 in Seattle and hearing that the sternwheeler James Domville was for sale travelled to Dawson before his competition. He sold his interest in the Willie Irving and contacted the Domville’s representative in Dawson to lease the boat for the season for $11,000. On the first trip he was impatient to get to Dawson before the other boats, and the boat struck a rock and sank in the Thirtymile River below Lake Laberge. At that time, the Barrington business included Syd and Hill, their brother Harry and cousin Matt. Syd was the gambler, and Hill was the one who looked after the details. Syd had a quick temper and Hill was easy-going. They made a fortune in the summers and spent it all during the winter down south. Syd was well-liked. He often picked up stranded miners and grubstaked hopeful prospectors. Syd married Maude Delisle, a song and dance performer, and the union ended in divorce. He went to St. Michael, bound for the Nome gold rush and bought a ship and a barge $15,000. He had money in his pocket when he sat down to gamble in Nome but he rose, hours later, with no cash and no boat or barge.4)
In 1900, Syd and Hill, with little money, rode to Dawson on bicycles. They leased the sternwheeler Florence S. from Humbolt Gates and started a rumour about a strike on the Koyukuk River in Alaska. The Barringtons left Dawson on 22 May with a load of excited prospectors. The Koyukuk strike proved to be a reality, and the Florence S was able to make more than one trip up the Koyukuk. On 21 July 1900, the steamer was on the Thirtymile River when the load shifted during a turn and the boat went over on her side and then capsized. A steward, Walter Monaster, and Mrs. Stewart and her twelve-year-old daughter were drowned. Syd Barrington had not been at the wheel but as captain he was responsible, and he was arrested in Dawson for manslaughter. A warrant was also issued for the arrest of Captain Ernest Jorden, the man who was at the wheel at the time of the accident. Syd’s business partners, Humbolt Gates and Tom Rockwell, paid his $10,000 bail and a court hearing a day later declared Syd free of all blame.5)
When the White Pass & Yukon Route (WP&YR) railway was completed and the sternwheeler Clifford Sifton was no longer needed above Miles Canyon, the Barringtons agreed to take the steamer through the canyon and rapids. They hung bales of hay all around her to buffer the journey. Sid went to the pilot house and Hill to the engine room, and they went downstream with the engine running in reverse. The success was followed by the news that the Washington Steamboat -Inspection Service had reviewed the sinking of the Florence S and had withdrawn Syd’s pilot’s license for two years. During that time, Polk’s Directory lists Syd as a pilot, Hill as a bartender, and Harry as a miner. In September 1901, Syd and Hazel Delisle, his first wife’s sister, were married in Seattle.6)
Syd got his captain’s license back in 1903 and became a pilot for White Pass & Yukon Route’s British Yukon Navigation Company. The Barringtons decided they could be better as an independent company and the Hazel B (1906) was commissioned in Seattle. In the fall of 1908, Syd and his associates bought the sternwheeler La France. In 1909, Syd and Hill quit the British Yukon Navigation Co. and Syd became the manager of their new firm, Side Streams Navigation Co. Captain Steve Martin, a cousin by marriage, played a part of the company. Their boats specialized in deliveries on the smaller Yukon tributaries; the Pelly, Stewart, Ross, Porcupine and the White rivers, going further than had previously been navigated. Their sternwheelers, Pauline and La France, were the first into Dawson in 1910 as they had wintered at Lower Laberge and didn’t have to wait for the lake to thaw. That fall, Syd bought the small steamer Vidette and extended her length. The La France snagged a rock in the Thirtymile in 1911 and burned, but fortunately the boat and cargo were insured. In 1913, the Barringtons ran the Norcom and the Vidette in Canada, and the American steamer Tanana ran between Dawson and Eagle, Alaska. The Chisana rush happened that year and Syd took the Vidette up the White River. A little steam launch, Charles Binlry’s Olof Splegatus, proved to move ably on the shallow White so Syd purchased it to get his passengers and freight to Donjek. In 1914, Syd Barrington commissioned the building of the gas launch Hazel B. using Binkley’s ideas. It was named for Barrington’s wife. Barrington and Binkley took the new launch up the Porcupine River in mid-summer of that year.7)
In 1916, Syd got a contract to ship supplies into Alaska for the construction of a railroad. Harry Crowhurst (Syd’s father-in-law) and George Waltenbaugh opened the Side Streams Navigation office in Dawson that year. Syd was in Alaska supervising the construction of two large gas boats for the Alaskan government for use on the coast rivers. That year the Side Stream Navigation Co. was sold to White Pass & Yukon Route. Barrington and Binkley went into business building gas tunnel boats for the Alaskan government in support of the railroad construction. While in Anchorage, Barrington had the Hazel B. No. 2 built for his own use.8) The Barringtons (Syd, Hill and Harry) decided to leave the Yukon and move to the Stikine where river freighting looked to last longer. In 1916 they sold their Yukon company to the WP&YR and moved to Wrangell and the Stikine where they set up the Barrington Transportation Company.9)