Inlander - Captains and Crew

Captains and Crew

The Inlander's first captain was Joseph Bucey, who had been the pilot of the Hazelton. Some of the other officers were Robert Ryder, who was the chief engineer and Jerry Cunningham, the ship's mate. Wiggs O'Neill was the purser. O'Neill would become the foremost historian on the Skeena River sternwheelers and in his later years would write Steamboat Days on the Skeena River and Whitewater Men of the Skeena. Wiggs Creek near Smithers is named in his honour.

Captain Bucey left the Inlander in 1911 and appeared the following year as the captain of the BC Express on the Fraser River.

For the rest of the 1911 season and through to her final voyage in the fall of 1912, the Inlander was piloted by Captain John Bonser. It was fitting that Bonser would pilot the last sternwheeler on the Skeena River, as he had pioneered it twenty years earlier in 1892 for the Hudson's Bay Company in the Caledonia, naming many of the rapids and canyons along the route. The Inlander would be the last of many notable riverboats under Bonser's command, among them, the Nechacco and the Northwest.