Talk:Alaska Steamship Company

Alaska Mid‑importance

	Alaska portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Alaska, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of Alaska on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AlaskaWikipedia:WikiProject AlaskaTemplate:WikiProject AlaskaAlaska
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Ships

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ships, a project to improve all Ship-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other articles, please join the project, or contribute to the project discussion. All interested editors are welcome. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.ShipsWikipedia:WikiProject ShipsTemplate:WikiProject ShipsShips

A fact from Alaska Steamship Company appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 26 May 2008, and was viewed approximately 2,139 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the US government took control of the Alaska Steamship Company's fleet during World War II?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/May.

Wikipedia

The article (not to mention other articles describing the period) fails to make the distinction that the Alaska Syndicate was a syndicate of the Guggenheim and J. P. Morgan interests. This conglomeration is better known in Alaska for the Kennicott mine and CRNW. Their growing influence in Alaska at the time was also a point of political contention, similar to the Alaska Railroad decades later under the leadership of Otto Ohlson.RadioKAOS (talk) 02:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ownership

A concern (stated above) regarding ownership is a source of confusion from the beginning of the article and throughout. In the lead it states The company was purchased by the Alaska Syndicate and merged with the Northwestern Steamship Company in 1909, but retained its name. Under the "Merger" section it also discusses this. The second paragraph of that section has an incomplete (and incoherent) sentence "Charles Peabody retired in 1912 and S.W. Eccles of the Guggenheim Company.", did something like took over maybe? The last paragraph in that section states In the 1930s the company bought its long-time rival, the Pacific Steamship Company., and "away we go" with the rest of the article that includes a DYK mention.

What we have here is confusion leading to an inability to tie most of the companies and ships together. They (both) either get lost in Mergers, two World Wars, or disposition after each war. Add to this the renaming of ships before the wars, during the wars (when traded between services), and after the wars, and things get really confusing. An article that does not delve deep enough into the history just worsens this.

This company was "purchased and merged" with the the Northwestern Steamship Company but somehow retained the name. This brings in the need for ownership and a need to mention that the Alaska Syndicate was a syndicate of the Guggenheim (Meyer Guggenheim and the Guggenheim family) and J. P. Morgan interests. James J. Hill (J.J.), owner of "Northwestern Steamship Company" as well as the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway and Morgan were friends and associates. Old MR. Morgan was probably both men's best friend when money was concerned. Meyer and J.J. were rivals in railroad as well as shipping.

The point is that a company was sold and merged yet that company continued to exist (in a vacuum?) until circa 1930 when it was found to be doing business again, after buying its long-time rival the Pacific Steamship Company, and continued until 1971.

Surely Two editors expressing concern has reasoning? There needs to be some "tying in" of the history of this article, as well as others, that will help solve Wikipedia article linking fragmentation problems. Otr500 (talk) 18:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Alaska Steamship Company. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080609000222/http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/alaska.htm to http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/alaska.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:57, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]