Clara Nevada: Gold, Greed, Murder and Alaska's Inside

February 5, 1898. Witnesses report a giant orange fireball reflected in the glacial waters of Alaska’s Lynn Canal. At the height of Klondike gold fever, the Clara Nevada disappeared into an epic storm— taking passengers and priceless cargo with her. Was the explosion an accident or a robbery gone wrong? Did Captain C.H. Lewis make off with $165,000 ($13.6 million in today’s currency) in raw gold? Or was the sinking a case of a sea-weary steamer meeting an untimely end? Alaska historian Steven C. Levi combs the archives to piece together the true account of the Clara Nevada’s final voyage, attempting to solve the riddle of the lost steamer that resurfaced ten years after that tragic night and became known as Alaska’s ghost ship. Steven C. Levi is a historian and freelance writer based in Anchorage, Alaska. Levi has lived in Alaska for thirty-three years and has more than thirty books in print, ranging from Alaska history to Westerns, how-to and self-help to poetry and aviation to biography. Levi has also developed educational software, written screenplays and developed creative media presentations using poetry and history, a sample of the last being on his website, parsnackle.com (See the “Phantom Dogsled”). Levi’s scholarly articles have appeared in such publications as Journal of the West, Pacific Historian, East Texas Historical Quarterly, Western Folklore, Southern California Quarterly, California and Labor History.