James William Troup

James William Troup (February 5, 1855 – November 30, 1931) was an American steamship captain, Canadian Pacific Railway administrator and shipping pioneer.

Captain James William Troup was born in Portland, Oregon in February, 1855. He was the son of Capt. Willam H. Troup, a prominent early steamboatman in the Pacific Northwest. His maternal grandfather was sailing ship Capt. John Turnball. James had a younger brother, Claud Troup (1865-1896) who was also an accomplished steamboat captain. James Troup also had a son, Roy Troup, who became a steamboat captain.

Together with his father, Captain Troup built many of the early steamboats of the Columbia River and he went to work on the steamer Vancouver in 1872 at the age of 17.

By the age of 20 he was captain of the small propeller steamer Wasp, having served in every position from deckhand on up. Troup went to work on the Columbia river above the Cascades, for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company holding first a position as a purser and later as master. When the first Harvest Queen, a big new steamer was built in 1878, Troup was appointed her master, even though he was only 23 years of age.

In the early 1880s, as railways started to be completed along the Columbia River, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, which had bought out the O.S.N., started taking its boats off of the river to find employment for them elsewhere. This required running the rapids either at Celilo Falls, the Cascades, or both. In 1881, Troup ran Harvest Queen over Celilo Falls, where she was nearly wrecked, and then through the Cascades. In 1881, he also took Idaho through the Cascades.

In 1883 Troup began working in British Columbia for J. A. Mara, owner of the Peerless and Spallumcheen, two steamboats running on Kamloops and Shuswap lakes and the Thompson River. He also won the trust of Captain John Irving as a skilled steamboat captain, and was placed in charge of Irving's main steamer William Irving, named after Captain Irving's father. Irving also gave Troup command of the huge and difficult to manage sidewheeler Yosemite on the route from Victoria to New Westminster.

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