Steamer Deck, Inside Passage, Alaska, 1950s

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Steamer Deck, Inside Passage, Alaska, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Inside Passage, Alaska

Steamer Deck, Inside Passage, Alaska, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-2BAD9F

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The chain rail was never going to stop anyone from going overboard, but it did its real job, which was to make everyone feel like careful precautions had been taken. A woman in a red coat holds a bundled toddler up to see the mountains, on the theory that a fourteen-month-old will remember snowfields glimpsed from a steamer deck. She will not. The grown-ups will, which is the entire point of the exercise.

A second child stands wrapped to the eyebrows in a dark hood, keeping her own counsel at the rail, already better than the adults at understanding that scenery, once seen, does not require comment. Post-war steamer travel through Alaska's coastal waters was sold as both transportation and spectacle, and families dressed for the cold the way people then dressed for church, out of respect for the occasion rather than the temperature.

Nobody in the frame is smiling, because nobody in the frame knows a camera is running. The mountains will still be there in the next decade and the one after; the wool coats and the chain railing will not, which is generally how these things sort themselves out.

The historian's note

Coastal steamships operating between Puget Sound and Southeast Alaska carried both cargo and passengers through the 1950s, following routes through the Inside Passage that had served as the region's principal transportation corridor since the late nineteenth century. Vessels of the Alaska Steamship Company and similar lines combined mail and freight runs with tourist berths, offering ordinary travelers a view of glaciers and coastal ranges previously seen mainly by prospectors, loggers, and fishing crews.

The snow-covered range visible from the deck is characteristic of the coastal mountains bordering the Inside Passage, where peaks rise directly from tidewater and remain snow-capped for much of the year. Passenger dress in the image, heavy wool coats and knitted hoods for both adults and children, reflects standard outdoor wear for open-deck viewing on a working steamer, which offered little in the way of heated observation space.

By the following decade, jet travel and the growth of the Alaska Marine Highway ferry system would largely displace this style of coastal steamer tourism, making images of families at the rail of these vessels a record of a transitional era in regional travel.

Subjects & keywords — each links to a search

mother and child·ship deck railing·snow-capped mountains·1950s travel·contemplative mood·family voyage·rear view figures·overcast maritime light·chain rail·vintage travel nostalgia·coastal fjord scenery·Inside Passage·postwar tourism·Alaska coastal steamer

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Particulars

Creator: Unattributed
Date: 1950–1959
Place: Inside Passage, Alaska — viewed from the open deck of a coastal steamer, snow-capped mainland range beyond
Subject: Woman and children watching mountains from a ship's deck
Original format: jpg
Original held: Yes, by the archive
Rights: Open