THE LEXICON OF LINES

 

GRACIE S.
Skipper Ed Kennell, Seattle, WA.

For our lexicon of salt;

 On a run in from the Cape, as 
shellback Miles McCoy relates, 
"Reading both pages, that is when 
running before it and the main is out
to one side and the fore is out to the 
opposite side. I clearly remember this sail.
Bob Schoen was in his prime climbing all over
the wet decks snapping photos.
That was a grand sail for everyone."
Photo by the late Bob Schoen with memories 
by his good friend 94-year old Miles McCoy,
Orcas Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.

Lore from The Lazarette.... a look back,
Courtesy of the Honourable Doug Adkins and

The Cruising Club of America

The vocabulary of sailing is absorbed and then employed by those of us who engage in the adventurous use of the sea. We use it with ease and sometimes forget how unusual and arcane it must seem to those who do not speak our seasalted mother tongue. The great Cruising Club historian Jack Parkinson gave us the indispensable Nowhere is Too Far, The Annals of the Cruising Club of America which chronicled our history by each year from 1922 through 1959. He clearly loved language. His account of the year 1947 included a remarkable poem by Thorvald S. Ross of the Boston Station, he the third New Englander to serve as Commodore of the CCA. The Commodore ranged widely and sailed with fellow members from across the roster. He wrote a ballad as his answer to the old, old question of "How many ropes on a full-rigged ship?" and Parkinson, to our everlasting benefit, included it in his annual account. 

Enjoy Seven Ropes by Past Commodore Thorvald Ross.

SEVEN ROPES

In taproom, when the wind was wailing,

  Old bo's'ns yarned of serve and splice,

Of wagers won by mighty sailing,

  Of whip and warp, of trim and trice.

No more are clippers trade-wind driven; 

  We scarce remember, save in rhymes,

The names their riggin's all were given-

  Lost lingo of hard-bitten times.

A maze of flax and coir and cotton,

  Of ramie, sisal, hemp, and jute,

The very twists and lays forgotten,

  Since steam and diesel won repute.

We class their halyards, sheets, and braces,

  Their lifts and lanyards, vangs, and guys,

As ropes that ran to mystic places

  And sinewed spars in multi-plies.

But take a full-rigged ship, from master

  Down to the boy, they knew each one,

And how to haul and pay it faster

  Or reeve or snub or let it run.

Yet ropes as such they had but seven

  In all that lexicon of lines,

That cobweb spun from deck to heaven,

  Which Knight in Seamanship defines;

Man rope, on gangway to the landing; 

  Foot rope, the beckets under yard

To furl and reef-a risky standing!

  They held their swabs in light regard.

The top rope swayed topm'st for staying;

  The bolt rope edged the cloth for roach;

The bell rope was for watch and praying;

  The wheel rope whirled to save a broach.

There was one more, and it no piker,

  I'd like to've been it if I could,

The back rope of the dolphin striker-

  That tough and trusty stick of wood.

From sheer to bow past bobstay bending,

  It held the jib boom to its search

For new horizons, never-ending,

  And foiled the sea at plunge or lurch.

It's gone the way of all its brothers;

  It did its job, not best or worst,

But on the voyage with all the others

It led the rest and did it first.

BEAUTIFUL AND WONDERFUL with Sir Attenborough

 

Henry Cayou Channel
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Photograph from Blakely Island,
courtesy of  L.A. Douglas
Click image to enlarge.

3 February 2025

"People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure."

David Attenborough

MEN AND SHIPS OF THE NORTHWEST – a Review by Don Page

 

L-R; Seattle/Olympia salty writer
Gordon Newell
and Capt. Shaver
with precious cargo 
aboard steamer PORTLAND. 

Dated 27 Nov. 1966. Colman Dock, Seattle.  
Aboard they are transporting the first load
of 800 books, weighing 6,200 pounds.
Low-res of an original photograph from the 
archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

The H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest

Edited by Gordon Newell. Superior Publishing Co.

$100. (in 1966)

"The H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest may be the most remarkable book ever published on the West Coast.

It's a big book almost any way you look at it. Its buckrum binding houses 736 pages. Those pages are divided into 61 chapters, crammed with 2,000 pictures and the 950,000 words it took writer Gordon Newell to sketch the story of ships and men of the waterfront and the sea from 1896 to 1965.

These 70 years bridged the eras of sail, of coal, of oil, and now, of nuclear power aboard our ships. They saw booms and busts, hot wars and cool peace, gold rushes, launching and sinking, arrivals, and final departures.

Newell has told his story well, revering maritime history and the people who made it. He has also provided the deft touch of a professional writer and a dash of sardonic humor now and again to give the text a welcome crackle.

The history opens in 1895 with Nippon Yusen Kaisha, in company with the Great Northern Railway and Captain James Griffiths, opening the first regular Japanese steamship service to Seattle. It closes with the death in 1965 of 

'Einar Endresen, 83, an old-time sparmaker whose father founded the Endresen Spar & Lumber Co at Aberdeen, which he later managed, furnishing masts and spars to sailing vessels on the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts.'

In between are many well-remembered sea stories of the Northwest–stories such as the construction of the battleship NEBRASKA, the arrival of the 'ton of gold' ship PORTLAND, the fading of the Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet, and the rise of the waterfront unions from blood and grime to positions of responsibility.

Many of the stories are less well-remembered. For instance, the story of the two submarines built in Seattle and bought by the Province of British Columbia at the start of WW I. British Columbia's premier borrowed money from a bank to buy the subs, and Newell comments, 'For a time British Columbia enjoyed the historic distinction of being the only province of Canada to own its own mortgaged Navy.'

Newell memorializes, too, the Puget Sound skipper who went on to become admiral of the Turkish Navy and the ill-starred Skagit sailor who departed this vail by wrapping the anchor rope around his neck and jumping.

The McCurdy Marine History is not just history of Seattle or Puget Sound, of course. Its stated geographic range is from the California border north into the Arctic Ocean.

Newell has done a responsible, commendable job. He was strengthened and guided in this effort by a distinguished sponsor and a conscientious board of review. The book would have been impossible without an 'angel.' That angel and guiding light of the history was wealthy, now retired, Seattle shipbuilder, Horace McCurdy.

Early in 1963, McCurdy established a grant with the Seattle Historical Society for the research and writing of the new History. He picked Newell to do the writing. The grant grew as the book grew. It started at around $50,000 by the time Superior Publishing began distributing the 1,500 volume press run of the McCurdy History. That grant, of course, won't be paid back. Whatever small profits come will go to the Historical Society and to publisher Albert Salisbury for his gamble in putting out the book (Publishers of Lewis and Dryden went broke on it.)

McCurdy is an admitted dewy-eyed lover of things of the seas. He also is a hardheaded businessman. He wanted the best, most authentic history he could buy with his $50,000. To ensure this be assembled a review board of 17 men, all authorities on one or more phases of subjects to be covered in the History. That review board read three progressive manuscripts of the book. Members made suggestions to author Newell and supplied source material. Some even contributed sections for his editing.

The result of McCurdy's and Newell's work and the contributions of the review board, coupled with the rich material of 70 years of Northwest maritime history is a handsome volume as impressive as it looks."

Don Page review published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 21 May 1967. This review was extracted from Don't Leave Any Holidays Volume II, H.W. McCurdy. Inscribed copy number 38. Published July 1981. Saltwater People Historical Society collection.

Below, Don Page writes further in the Seattle P-I, 20 Oct. 1974:

"The publishing time and size of Volume I roughly doubled and McCurdy found he'd underrated the cost of playing godfather to a book of Northwest marine history. He financed the book through grants to the Seattle Museum of History and Industry and Museum Director Mrs. Sutton Gustison recalled:

'Every time we ran out of money, we'd call Mr. McCurdy and say, 'We need another thousand,' and he'd always come through.'

Everyone was happy, though, with the finished product. The "McCurdy History" sent saltwater buffs of our part of the world into ecstasy. Superior Publishing was so pleased that it put out a new edition of "Lewis & Dryden's History," to form, with the McCurdy volume, a handsome two-volume set. Newell continued to mix more books in with his Olympia politicking. The museum profited. McCurdy beamed. And a second volume was published to cover the following ten years of marine history to yield a fine three-volume collectible set. 

"This book is going to be the last word. It's going to belong to the ages, just like Lincoln." H.W. McCurdy.  

SOLO CANOE PASSAGE WITH TRACES OF SNOW

  

Errett M. Graham (1877-1974)
Land surveyor and County Engineer
paddling his canvas Old Town Canoe.
Circumnavigating Shaw Island,
San Juan Archipelago
on his 94th birthday. 
Photograph in the calm of June
by Babs Cameron,
from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©


Passed on to the Friday Harbor Journal was this quote by Emmett Watson previously published by the Seattle-P-I, in 1970:

        "Sometime quite soon residents of San Juan County will say goodbye to Mr. Errett M. Graham, the county engineer. What makes this goodbye rather special is the fact that Mr. Graham, now 92, just retired in May. He always paddled his own canoe into Friday Harbor for the meetings of the Board of County Commissioners–ignoring the ferries. He celebrated his 90th birthday by paddling his canoe around Lopez Island. . ."

And from the handwritten daily diary of the canoe master, Mr. Errett Graham are these words.

20 February 1951:

"Tough Trip

If I had had even a premonition of the difficulties I was fated to encounter on my return trip today, I would either have stayed over or made a very early start. I landed at a homestead just short of Limestone Pt., walked over to the point, and saw I couldn't possibly buck the tide there. The man there said that the tide split at Limestone Pt. and that once around it, I should have a favoring tide. I found a road over which I could portage and got in the water again just south of the white limestone point. I made a few hundred feet along a nice gravel beach to a rocky and forbidding projecting point at its southeasterly end. Attempting to get around this I got in some very rough water shipped several quarts and made absolutely no advance, I'm fact, I lost ground and had to land on a coarse rock beach. I took a long walk down the beach to give the tide or wind time to change and had visions of having to spend the night there. When the whitecaps quieted a bit I refloated the canoe and made another attempt, succeeding this time and heading straight for Brown Island to make the channel crossing before the tide became adverse again. Water was quite rough–but nothing like it was at Limestone Point. Evidently, the tide did not split at that Point as I had been told; passed east of Yellow Island and touched shore in Squaw Bay tired and chilled. There were traces of snow on Lopez. A hot supper and a bath, the house warmed up. O.K., now."

1951 Diary of Errett M. Graham.
Archived in the Shaw Island Historical Museum

DOGFISH OIL

Pacific Dogfish
Courtesy of the Monterey Aquarium

The viscous, malodorous extract of the skin and liver of the dogfish was at the heart of the operation of the Port Townsend, Washington area's nineteenth-century lumber industry. This rancid oil was primarily used to grease the skid roads along which lumbermen transported the harvested logs. Hides tanned with dogfish oil were used as drive belts in sawmill machinery. It was the source of nighttime illumination in the mills, which often operated twenty-four hours a day. The crude but effective lighting fixtures were the kettles, similar to and sometimes adapted from a teakettle, with spouts on two sides. The kettles were filled with foul fuel and wicks let down the spouts were lighted. The fetid odor was intensified by combustion. 

The Klallam and Chimakum extracted the oil for use as a paint base and as a seasoning and cooking agent, though not surprisingly the slightly less rank seal or whale oils were favored for edibles. Before extraction caps were established by whites, they traded with the Natives for the oil. Extraction was left to the Native women, who collected the dogfish in discarded dugouts and crushed the carcasses by climbing into the canoes and trampling them. When the fish were sufficiently squashed, the women added saltwater, allowing the mixture to decompose for days or weeks. The oil rose to the top of the noisome brew and was skimmed off. Whites did not improve much on the extraction procedure. They introduced iron-bottomed wooden troughs instead of canoes so a few could be kindled beneath to hasten the process.

Several factors in the mid-1880s marked the beginning of the end for the dogfish industry. Petroleum products, which cost less and were more efficient, became readily available. Skid roads were being phased out in favor of "lokies" (locomotives,) steam donkeys, and logging carts on rails. Carbon arc lighting, a novelty ten years earlier, was common in sawmills by the decade's end. Finally, rubberized belts were introduced into the more modern sawmills, replacing animal hides. Like the stench it created, however, the industry was tenacious, and as late as 1890, fifty thousand 
gallons of oil were produced in Washington plants.
Above essay: "City of Dreams," editor Peter Simpson. Bay Press, Port Townsend, WA. 1986.

And later still...

=======

"In 1906, Bruce Willis was in the port of
Friday Harbor, in his auxiliary sloop,
AILSA, en route to Griffin Bay to fish.
 He sold 30 gallons of dogfish oil here,  
though he says this is not as good a price,
as Anacortes. It brings ten cents more
per gallon there, the prices 
here only being .25 cents."
The San Juan Islander 2 Mar. 1906.

Photo scan from Jane Barfoot Hodde, 
a friend and neighbor of the Willis family
of Olga-Doe Bay, Orcas Island, WA.

A 1907 wanted ad in the 
San Juan Islander newspaper 
from the well-known Robert Moran, 
a new resident of Orcas Island.

=============

" The U and I, Capt. G.I. Peterson of Mitchell Bay was in port the first of the week on her way to Richardson, where Mr. Peterson will dispose of a barrel of dogfish oil to Hodgson & Graham. He is a veteran fisherman and enjoys the life. Each season he goes to Cape Flattery, and invariably makes good. Even last year, when so many barely paid for the gasoline they burned, the captain netted a fair sum. The U and I was specially built for him, after his own specifications and with her, he ventures further out than most boats and stays out in all kinds of weather. "

The San Juan Islander. Friday Harbor, WA. 14 March 1913.