John Melville “Pat” Patterson (1907 – 1929)
Pat Patterson was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri. He was chief pilot for Rocky Mountain Airways when Clyde Wann went to Colorado to buy an Eaglerock airplane.1) The Yukon Airways and Exploration Co. was founded by Andy Cruikshank, James Finnegan and Clyde Wann in 1927. Stevenson crashed at Whitehorse, wiping out one wing. Cruikshank left the company, and the business was reorganized with Patterson as a pilot. The new company financed another plane, using a motor out of a wreck.2) It was an Alexander Eaglerock biplane they called the Northern Light.3) Patterson flew the plane from Denver to Whitehorse. The Eaglerock Northern Light only carried two passengers, so they looked for another plane and purchased a Ryan B 5 with pontoons out of Seattle.4)
In February 1929, pilot Patterson flew the little Northern Light from Mayo to Whitehorse and lost his bearings when he ran into heavy fog and a storm. He made a landing on the Takhini River, about thirty miles from Whitehorse, and he and his passengers, Tom Fornier and Miss M. Duval, camped for the night. Patterson had no difficulty locating himself once he was in the air the next morning.5) In March, Patterson successfully flew through severe snow storms to deliver a passenger to Mayo and a caterpillar crank case to the Walker Fork Mining Company at Forty Mile.6) In March 1929, Bert Petersen, in charge of deepening the navigation channel at Five Finger Rapids, was able to get parts from Vancouver to repair some broken machinery in about six days. Peterson wired D.A. Muirhead in the Whitehorse White Pass office, who wired the company’s purchasing department in Seattle. The parts left Vancouver on the Princess Mary and were transferred from the Skagway wharf to the train depot by car. The parts arrived at the Whitehorse train depot and were transferred to the Northern Light, and pilot Petterson took them to a small lake near Carmacks. They were transferred by dog team to Carmacks, and Sandy Grant took them the last 12 miles with a horse and hastily constructed sled improvised by “Slim” Koebke, the handyman at the camp.7)
In September 1929, Patterson went to St. Louis to take delivery of the new plane, the Queen of the Yukon II.8) The pilots barnstormed up the coast but lost the motor at Ocean Falls. They flew to Dawson where they had a contract to fly the Royal Mail at $175 an hour. The two company planes met at Mayo, the small plane flown by Percy Nelson and the larger one, Queen of the Yukon II, flown by Patterson.9)
The crash of the Queen of the Yukon II on 2 November 1929 was caused by engine failure. Patterson tried to bring the plane down to the Stewart River, but the runner broke through the thin ice and the plane nose-dived into the water, killing him. He was the first plane fatality in the Yukon, and the accident put the Yukon Airways and Exploration Company out of business.10) The company was bankrupt and there was no government welfare, so the Yukon Order of Pioneers had a short meeting and declared him an honorary member. They buried him in the Mayo cemetery with the propeller of the aircraft as a tombstone.11) Gordon Stewart was made secretary-treasurer of the company and sent to St Louis to pick up a new plane. He worked at the Ryan Aircraft Co. for four months while he waited, but the depression had set in, the backers ran out of money, and Yukon Airways folded.12)