The Upper Yukon is to have two more fast new steamers. Work has begun on them at Lower LaBarge, and they will be ready early in the season. The Merchants' Transportation Company, Limited, with R. W. Calderhead as managing director, is building and will operate the craft on the river.
The company recently purchased the Ora, Nora and Flora, Klondike Corporation fleet, and the new boats will be partly constructed from material and machinery taken from these boats.
Mr. Calderhead lately returned to White Horse from Vancouver and
Seattle where he went on business connected with the work of construction of the new craft.
The steamers will be called the Thistle and La France. The La France
will be ready to leave for Dawson as soon as the river opens and the other will be put into commission afterward. Each vessel will be 100 feet long and have a beam of 20 feet and draw about 8 inches of water. It is expected they will be speedy as well as light draft, and commodious. Mr. Calderhead states they will be finely furnished and equipped with parlors, state rooms, bars, bath rooms and other such luxuries in additior to the other accommodations on the steamers. The cylinders of the craft will be larger than
those of the company's old steamers, and the finished vessels will be about the size of the Prospector, which was built at White Horse last year, and which was one of the fleetest vessels on the Yukon.
E. J. Smythe, who built the Prospector, is building the La France and
the Thistle. Captains Martineau and Bailey will be masters of the new vessels.
Mr. Calderhead says he believes the business the coming summer will be
good, especially inward. He says nothing as to the composition of the Merchants' Transportation Company, and nothing has been learned as to who the stockholders are beside Mr. Calderhead. Last year Mr. Calderhead was manager of the Klondike Corporation, which operated the steamers Ora, Flora and Nora, and is well known to Klondikers as a member of the feed and warehouse firm of Lancaster & Calderhead at Dawson.
