Eleven Day Alaska Cruises

This 1935 brochure advertises cruises to Skagway, Alaska on the Prince Robert, one of Canadian National’s newest steamships. The cruises included lengthy tourist stops in the towns of Prince Rupert (7 hours), Ketchikan (5 hours), Sitka (8 hours), and Juneau (5-1/2 hours) before arriving in Skagway at 9 am. Passengers would get to spend most of two days in Skagway before the return cruise departed at 8 pm.

Click image to download a 3.4-MB PDF of this brochure.

Up until 1930, Canadian National’s Alaska service had been provided by the sister ships Prince Rupert and Prince George, which had been built for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in 1910. This service was so successful that when CN took over the Grand Trunk Pacific in 1925 it ordered three new ships: Prince Robert, Prince David, and Prince Henry. The new ships were 385 feet long and could carry 400 passengers, compared with 307 feet and 250 passengers for Rupert/George.

Unfortunately, by the time the new ships were delivered in 1930 the Depression had greatly reduced demand for Alaska travel. Henry and David were never used in Alaska service, instead running the West Indies route in the Atlantic Ocean. Prince Robert was used as a cruise ship rather than a ship for regular travelers, but never made money for CN.

This brochure explains that Prince Robert would make four cruises during the summer of 1935, departing Vancouver on June 28, July 12, July 26, and August 9, completing the summer with a return to Vancouver on August 20. As near as I can find out, the ship was idle the other ten months of the year.
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“Minimum fare $100” (about US$1,450 in today’s money) notes the brochure (today’s marketers would say “as low as” rather than “minimum”). This provided a room with a “single bed and Pullman upper berth” plus all meals except when in port in Skagway. Fares could go as high as $215 (US$3,120 today), which bought “two single beds with sitting room and separate bathroom.” The ship had only two $215 suites, but it had 20 $155 rooms with double or twin beds and private bath.


This colorized postcard shows the Prince Robert, with the low row of portholes representing the D deck while the two levels above are the B and C decks. The pair of twin portholes near the center are one of the $215 suites. Click image to download a 145-KB PDF of this postcard.

The brochure includes floorplans of the three decks of staterooms: B, C, and D. Judging from the diagrams in the brochure, the place to be was deck D, which included the two $215 rooms but also had some $100 rooms. All of the rooms on deck D had windows overlooking the ocean, while rooms in decks B and C had windows looking out onto the promenade decks.

The brochure also notes that the Prince Rupert and Prince George would each make six 8-day, nine-night round-trips between Vancouver and Skagway during the summer of 1935. The voyages were shorter mainly because they didn’t go to Sitka and they probably spent fewer hours in cities like Ketchikan and Juneau along the way. The minimum round-trip fare on these ships was just $85 (about US$1,235 today).


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