The Alaska Steamship Company was formed on August 3, 1894. While it originally set out to ship passengers and fishing products, the Alaska Steamship Company began shipping mining equipment, dog sleds, and cattle at the outbreak of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897. The company was purchased by the Alaska Syndicate and merged with the Northwestern Steamship Company in 1909, but retained its name, and the fleet was expanded to 18 ships. During World War II, the government took over the company's ships. When the war ended, the company struggled to compete with the new Alaska Highway for passengers and freight. It discontinued passenger service altogether in 1954 and shut down operations in 1971.

The company was founded by Charles Peabody, Captain George Roberts, Captain Melville Nichols, George Lent, Frank E. Burns and Walter Oakes. This group of six men began gathering $30,000 by selling 300 shares of stock, at $100 each. Peabody served as president of the company from its creation until 1912. The first vessel they purchased was the 140-foot steamer Willapa.^[1]

A railroad to serve the mines in the interior encouraged mining activity and brought more fortune-seekers and tourists. By 1905, service was shifted from the Juneau and Skagway region to the Valdez - Cordova, then eventually to Nome, where Alaska Steamship was ready to capitalize on the bonanza by switching its ships accordingly.^[1] Their ships supplied the growing number of religious missions that were being established and the burgeoning fish cannery industry.^[1]

When the Klondike Gold Strike took place in 1897, Charles Peabody reorganized the company and rapidly expanded his fleet of ships to meet the sudden demand for service. In 1898, the stockholders formed the Puget Sound Navigation Company as a subsidiary. The new company was legally organized in Nevada where corporate law was more lenient. The Puget Sound routes allowed the company to continue to use some of its smaller, older vessels as they became unsuitable for the strenuous Alaska routes.^[1]

In 1902, the Puget Sound Navigation Co. started a steamship route from Port Townsend and Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, carrying both freight and passengers. Their competitor the Pacific Steamship Company had committed their entire fleet of ships to the Klondike run and were unprepared to switch to alternates when the gold rush subsided.^[1] The Canadian Pacific Railway, their other potential competitor, decided at first that would not compete on the Victoria route, and chose to concentrate on their Empress ocean-going sleek steamships which fed passengers into their rail route across the Canadian Rockies and to their Empress Hotels in Victoria and Vancouver. On May 2, 1903, Peabody and his associates purchased the controlling stock of La Conner Trading and Transportation Company. They initially named the merged company the Inland Navigation Co. but later resumed using Puget Sound Navigation Co. The new company became the biggest inland shipping company of Puget Sound.^[1]

Unable to compete with faster, cheaper air service, the company discontinued passenger service altogether in 1954, though by then it had established itself within the container ship industry. Despite these efforts, the Alaska Steamship Company shut down in January 1971.^[5][6][7]

The waters of the inside passage were often inhospitable and the jagged coastline was treacherous. While most of the ships in the Alaska Steamship Company's fleet were sold, scrapped, or repurposed, a number of their ships ended their careers as wrecks.^[6]

• Ohio, purchased in 1898, wrecked on the coast of British Columbia in 1909.
• Olympia, acquired by merger in 1909, ran aground on Bligh Reef on 10 December 1910.^[8]
• Admiral Clark, steamship acquired in November 1915 from the Rutland Transit Company, of Rutland, VA. While en route to the West Indies she foundered in Caribbean Sea southwest of Cuba on August 16, 1916, in a probable hurricane. Only 6 survivors, loss of 20 men.
• Seward, acquired by merger in 1909, was captured and sunk by SM U-52 on 7 April 1917.
• Mariposa, purchased in 1912, sank after hitting Straits Island Reef on 18 December 1917.
• Dirigo, built in 1898, sank on 16 November 1918 on a voyage from Cordova to Seattle.
• Alaska, built in 1889, was stranded and sank at Blunt's Reef off of California on 6 August 1921.
• Kennecott, built in 1921, wrecked at Hunters Point in 1923.
• Aleutian, built in 1898, sank off of Kodiak Island on 26 May 1929.
• Alameda, acquired in 1920, was damaged by fire at Seattle Pier on 28 November 1931 and subsequently scrapped.
• Curaçao, built in 1895, caught fire and later sank on 13 July 1940.
• Latouche, built in 1910, was captured by the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1942 and was sunk by a US air attack on 21 October 1944.
• Yukon, purchased in 1923, ran aground in Johnstone Bay 10 miles (16 km) south of Seward, Alaska on 4 February 1946. Three passengers were killed.
• Redondo, purchased in 1915, sunk at Richmond, California in 1948.
• Oduna, purchased in 1964, wrecked at Unimak Island on 26 November 1965.