THE STAR OF
BENGAL
WRANGELL • ALASKA • SEPTEMBER 20, 1908
A salmon packer met its fate off the coast of Wrangell in 1908 — leaving behind a mystery, and more than 100 souls lost.
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On the night of September 20, 1908, the Alaska Packers Association sailing ship Star of Bengal was driven onto the rocks of remote Coronation Island, about 80 miles west of Wrangell. She was carrying 138 people — most of them Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino cannery workers — home at the close of the salmon season. By morning, roughly 110 were dead in what remains the second-deadliest maritime disaster in Alaska’s history. More than a century later, a Wrangell-led team has found her again, and is working to bring the story, and its people, home.
The men aboard had spent the summer at the Alaska Packers Association cannery here in Wrangell. Asian cannery workers were part of this town’s working-class heritage — many formed bonds with local Tlingit families, united by a shared knowledge of natural medicines and a common place in the social order of the day.
The Star of Bengal belongs to Wrangell’s history. The Nolan Center holds it close — as local history, as an immigrant story, and as a memorial to people whose names were nearly lost.
WHY IT MATTERS TO WRANGELL
This material was produced with assistance from the Maritime Heritage Grant Program administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. Opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Interior.