Volume 12 , Issue 47

Gunpowder Gertie - Pirate Queen of the Kootenays

It was in the late 1800's where few roads ran to the Kootenays. The rivers and railways were the main routes of travel. Most used shallow bottomed sternwheelers to ply the often treacherous waterways. That is how they supplied the towns and carried passengers. They also ged the mining boom and transported the valuable metals for smelting.

Where there are ships and treasures, there are pirates. The Kootenay Lake system saw many of these pirates. The roughest, toughest and most to be reckoned with was Gunpowder Gertie, the Pirate Queen of the Kootenays.

What a name for a girl (Gertrude Imogene Stubbs) born in 1879, in Whitby (a port town on the east coast of Britain), England, the daughter of George Stubbs, a train engineer and his wife, Violet, a seamstress.

Gertrude was noted as a bit of a wild thing from the first. She liked oohing better than to spend her time down at the busy docks, listening to the stories of sea captains in port between voyages. Gertie also liked riding with her father on his route from Whitby to Pickering and Scarbourough.

Gertie and her father and mother emigrated to Sandon, B.C., Canada in 1895 when her father accepted a job to run trains for the newly copleted K & S Railway. Gertie's mother, Violet, was a little apprehensive about the decision to move to the wilds of Western Canada, but George was convince that they could make a good life for themselves in the boomtown. They traveled to Canada by steamer from England.

Gertie was very taken with life on board the steamer, as it made a profound impression that was to forever affect her life.

It was less than a month after they had arrived in the thriving town of Sandon, that Gertie's mother was tragically killed in an avalanche that destroyed their home on the steep mountainside at the north end of town.

Gertie was coming home from her job at a general store in town and witnessed the whole thing. Gertie's heart broken father (George) blamed himself for Violet's death and sank into drinking and gambling. George pretty much left his only daughter to fend for herself. Gertie had to make sure her father actually made it for his shifts and accompanied him on his routes to Kaslo, helping him shovel coal.

Gertie's father slid further into debt and depression, and she was pretty much doing the actual running of the engine herself to enable her constantly drunken father to keep his job so they would not starve. After George's death in 1896, the Railway refused to allow Gertie to continue working for them because their policies did not include hiring women.

Gertie was stranded in Kaslo without as much as a penny after paying off her father's debts. She found that what honest work she could get as a woman paid only starveling wages. AFter barely eking out a living through the winter, she cut her hair off short, disguised herself as a young man and hired on as a coal hand on the sternwheelers.

Gertie was happy and her knowledge of steam engines soon proved so useful that she was given more responsibilities. BUT ... unfortunately, Gertie's disguise was finally discovered. her ship and another were racing to establish which vessel had the superior speed when the boiler ran dry. The explosion in the engine room blinded her in her right eye and knocked her unconscious.

Gertie was taken to the hospital where the attending doctor realized she was a woman. Without even compensation for her injury she was given the sack, nor would any other steam company hire her on. Furious that she was not allowed to do the work she was good at merely because she was not allowed to do the work she was good at merely because she was not a man, GErtrude Imogene Stubbs swore vengeance on the steaminess and Gunpowder Gertie was born.

The Provincial Police were most thoroughly embarrassed by her when she stole their own patrol boat to mount her buccaneering campaign against the paddle-wheelers that had treated her so poorly.

Originally it was christened the "Witch" when it was built in Scuttle Bay, just north of Powell River, this 42' (12.8m ) long patrol boat was purchased and refitted by the Provincial Police with the intention of using it to patrol inland lakes and rivers. The "Witch" was transported to the interior by railcar where her hull was sheathed in iron and her stern was modified and fitted with two of the first ever ducted propellers.

It was this gunboat (Witch) that was Gunpowder Gertie's first ill-gotten prize. The "Witch" arrived in Nelson on February 12, 1898, by railcar. On the morning of February 13, it was gone. To this day no one has figured out how she managed to steal the ship from its railcar and transport it to the water without so much as being seen, but Gertie did. The next time the ship was spotted, it was sporting Gunpowder Gertie's handsewn Jolly Roger and robbing the S.S. Nasookin at gunpoint.

From 1898 to 1903 Gunpowder Gertie steamed up and down the rivers in her gunboat, rechristened the "Tyrant Queen," attacking and robbing steamboats of their cargos (gold and silver) from local mines and payrolls on their way to towns. She would appear out of nowhere brandishing the small but deadly Gatling gun, relieve the passengers of their valuables and the paddle-wheelers of their payloads at pistol point and then vanish. With communication much slower in those days, by the time word got through to the Provincial Police that Gunpowder Gertie had struck again, she would be long gone. The law could never catch Gertie and her Tyrant Queen. The Tyrant Queen could outrun anything else in the water at the time and Gertie knew every little twist and turn, isle and inlet on the lake system.

One of Gunpowder Gertie's own men, Bill Henson, an engine man who was dissatisfied with his share of the booty, betrayed Gertie in 1903. Henson went to the Provincial Police for a handsome reward and a promise of clemency as he sold out Gunpowder Gertie.

Henson gave Gunpowder Gertie a phony tip about a supposed fat payroll coming into Kaslo on the S. S. Moyie. When Gertie ordered the vessel to heave to and prepare to be boarded, near what is now known as Redfish Creek, she found it full of lawmen, bristling with guns. Knowing when she was outgunned, Gertie turned tail and prepared to make her escape but the devious Henson had sabotaged one of the gaskets and as soon as the steam pressure reached full, it blew, crippling the Tyrant Queen and making her an easy target for her pursuers. The battle was ferocious! They say the river ran red with blood before the lawmen were able to board the gunboat and capture Gunpowder Gertie, who put up an enormous fight before finally being clapped in irons.

Gunpowder Gertie was sentenced to life imprisonment but died of pneumonia during the terrible winter of 1912. She never revealed where she had hidden her ill-gotten gains. Rumor has it that she buried it somewhere along the river system she had plundered and left a hidden map that would lead to the treasure. All her crew perished in the final battle, including the turncoat Bill Henson, who Gertie shot in the back when she spotted him trying to jump ship during the fray.

Gunpowder Gertie took her secret to the grave and to this day no one has yet discovered the resting place of Gunpowder Gertie's gold.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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