Frieda

 The name Frieda Bohnsack will be familiar to most who read this. Her ranch east of Sheldon bears the name Bohnsack Ranch and is now owned by her daughter and husband - Bonita and Lynn Laske. When gathered at a family reunion last summer, Bonita invited us to come out to the ranch for a quick visit. It had been several years since last visiting so we accepted the invitation and followed them out. 

Frieda has been inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame and a brief write-up of her career can be found at their website. While visiting the ranch I spotted a Fargo Forum clipping pinned to a wall that caught my eye. The headline read, “Sheldon Woman Rescued from Wrecked Liner Yukon.”

In the month of February, 1946, the SS Yukon was heading to Seattle from Seward when it encountered mountainous waves and fierce gales that caused it to crash on rocks and break apart. The after-section drifted away and capsized. Luckily the skipper had herded passengers and crew numbering around 500 people into the forward section. 

Rescue operations soon began, but the fierce weather hampered it. Frieda apparently had to spend many hours on the wreckage before being one of the last to be rescued. She was quoted, “Fourteen hours of darkness that night, spent with all of us crowded into the fore part of the ship seemed unbearable. We could not go out on deck for fear of being washed overboard. Besides, after the split there wasn’t much deck left.”

The rather lengthy article told how after rescue, Frieda got her first food, soup, in about 40 hours. She said, “I wasn’t hungry though, I was too scared to even think of food.” She didn’t have much praise for the ship’s crew: “They got drunk and stayed drunk. We’d have been better off without them.”

When they got back to Seward the Red Cross saw to it they were fed, given clothing, and provided with a place to sleep. Likewise, upon reaching Seattle, they met them at the dock and gave them accommodations for a place to stay. Back at her ranch, the reporter assumed she’d no longer want to travel by ship. She answered, “Oh, no, I love a boat trip and I’ll take one again. But not one like the Yukon, please.”