A NOTABLE DAY IN SAN JUAN HISTORY

 IMPRESSIVE EXERCISES AT AMERICAN AND BRITISH CAMPS

U.S. Monitor Wyoming 
with 200 officers and men 
even came back for the
 unveiling party. 
Click image to enlarge.
Antique postcard from the archives 
of the Saltwater People Log©

"The unveiling of the monuments at the American and British military camps, October 21, 1904, was a most notable occasion not only in the history of the county but of the PNW. The day was perfect and not a single incident occurred to detract from the pleasure of the exercises at either camp. 

Never before since the termination of the joint occupancy has there been so large a representation of the army and navy in the county, nor so large an assemblage of prominent people within its borders. If it were possible, or practicable, to assemble all the people of the county together in one place a vote of thanks would be unanimously tendered to the University Historical Society for having erected such appropriate monuments to make two of the most historical spots in the northwest.  Prof Meany, is the society's able and energetic secretary. 

Capt. Pickett was commander at American Camp. His cottage was removed to Friday Harbor after the termination of the joint occupancy and has ever since been the home of the well-known pioneer, Capt. Edward D. Warbass, who was Capt. Pickett's friend and companion for a number of years. 

Home of Capt. Delacombe and family.
He was the commander of the British Marines,
San Juan Island, WA.
Click the image to enlarge.
A low-res scan of an original gelatin-silver 
photograph from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historial Society©

Today we publish a picture of the more spacious residence of the commander at English Camp, showing Capt. Delacombe and his family on the porch. We understand that the captain is still living and for some years past he has occupied the position of high constable at Derby, England. The building was destroyed by fire about ten years ago. It occupied a most beautiful location on a wooded hill above Garrison Bay, overlooking the Canal de Haro and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The monument erected Oct. 21 now marks the site. 

Following the program of exercises as they took place at the two camps:

AMERICAN CAMP

March from shore of Griffin Bay to American Camp.
Music by the artillery band.

"The United States Army," by Capt. McCloskey, commanding the troops from the Puget Sound artillery district.

Address by Hon. Geroge H. Williams, the present mayor of Portland, read by Prof. Maynard Lee Daggy, of the University of Washington.

Music by the artillery band.

BRITISH CAMP

March from the shore of Garrison Bay to British Camp.

Presiding officer––Judge Cornelius H. Hanford, of the United States district court. 

Unveiling of the monument: music by the Puget Sound artillery band––"America" or "God Save the King."

National salute by U.S.S. Wyoming.

Address of welcome by Rev. C.C. Pratt, of Friday Harbor.

"First United States Customs Officer at San Juan. After the Arbitration Decision," by Mr. Frank H. Winslow, president of the Washington Pioneers' Association. 

Letter from Gen. Hazard Stevens, special commissioner under President Grant to adjust claims by British landholders on the San Juan Islands, read by I. A. Nadeau, of Seattle.

Music by the artillery band. 

Greetings from Wisconsin State Historical Society by President Robert I. McCormick.

Address by Hon. Bernard Pelly, British vice-consul at Seattle.

Benediction by Rev. R.I. Bussabarger, of Seattle. 

March to the shore with music by the artillery band.

Source: Text from the San Juan Islander, 29 October, 1904."

LOG OF THE M.V. INDIAN – 1948

 

The M.V. INDIAN
dated 23 May 1948, 
home dock, Seattle, WA.
One or both Spring brothers 
 were on board the Indian for this trip
north and managed this shot 
of the waterfront at 5:30 a.m.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photo signed by
Bob and Ira Spring,
from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society.©

"Fifty-two ports along the 2,000 miles of Puget Sound shoreline receive regular calls from a small fleet of freight boats, and another 50 had docks at which occasional stops were made. The boats traveled south to Olympia and Shelton, and north to Bellingham and Powell River, B.C. There were six boats in the fleet, the Indian, Lovejoy, Seatac, Belana, Warrior, and Skookum Chief. The third name is derived from Seattle and Tacoma and the fourth name from Bellingham and Anacortes. The freight boats were of shallow draft. Most of them had a large lower deck that ran the full length and width of the boat. The freight was loaded on small sleds at the warehouses. These sleds were carried aboard by gasoline-driven lift trucks and placed on the long, lower deck. At the ports, the process reversed, the freight-laden sleds carried off to the docks. The boats carried crews of 12, including the skipper, other officers, deckhands, lift-truck drivers, and last but far from least important, the cook. 

Want to take a trip on one of these boats? Here is a sample log of the motor vessel Indian on one of its trips to Bellingham and the San Juan Islands, Washington State.

Monday, May 23 1948

5:30 a.m. left Pier 53, home dock in Seattle, loaded with general merchandise for Anacortes, Bellingham, and other ports. A photographer aboard.

6:15 a.m. Point Wells, unloaded empty oil drums and took on full ones.

10:50 a.m. Headed through the swift waters under Deception Pass Bridge.

1:20 p.m.

Arriving Bellingham waterfront
1:20 p.m. 
where the Osage was tied up
Photo by Bob and Ira Spring
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historial Society©

Tuesday 4:53 a.m. 

The Indian slips into Friday Harbor,
San Juan Archipelago, WA., 
4:53 a.m. as logged by the 
photographers, Bob/Ira Spring for 
this amazing shot. 
Click image to enlarge.
The M.V. Vashon is standing by
on the left border 
watching over new arrivals.
Original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

7:40 a.m. 

The Indian arrives at 7:40 a.m.
at Roche Harbor,
San Juan Island, WA., 
 to load sacks of lime 
from Roche Harbor Lime Works.
This original photo is dated May 1948
but the photographer is unknown.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

9:45 a.m. Headed through Pole Pass (225 ft wide) between Orcas and Crane Island.

11:10 a.m. Arrive Anacortes, Skagit County, WA. The last stop on return home. General merchandise was unloaded at Anacortes Port dock."

From an article published by the Seattle Times. No byline.

Crew and officers aboard:

Homer Stroup, Master

Arie Millenaar, Mate

Merrill Fleck Quartermaster

William Carlson, Chief engineer

Other crew: M.H. Roen, Clyde Durham, John Barr, Erwin Duly, Clarence Ostrom, and cook Helen Scott. 

An Airplane Aboard

The KAYAK

A floating cannery on Lake Union, Seattle,
with one bright red seaplane 
attracting attention.
Photograph dated Oct. 1951 
by Harold Smith 
Click image to enlarge.
from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

A ship with a seaplane on deck attracted considerable interest among persons traveling along the east side of Lake Union.

        The ship, the Kayak, a floating cannery that had recently returned from Alaska waters. 

        The plane was used to keep in touch with land, for such purposes as carrying mail for the fishermen. 

        The Kayak was operated by the Kayak Packing Co. which was owned by Stanley B. Dahl, Dick Wilson, and Jack Most.

Text from the Seattle-Times

FRIDAY HARBOR SHIPBUILDERS

Noted Friday Harbor Shipbuilders

Shipbuilder Frank Jensen

Admiring a photo of the boat VERDUN
built in 1919
for himself and his brother Joseph.
Click image to enlarge.
original photograph Dated 1960.

A family tradition that reaches well back into the 19th Century, was carried on at Friday Harbor, in the San Juan Islands. The shipyard of Albert Jensen & Sons, Inc., was a Jensen family enterprise since the early days of the island’s settlement.
      Nourdine Jensen, the last owner of the company was the third generation of Jensen family boat-builders. His father was boatbuilder, Albert Jensen.
      Nourdine’s grandfather, Benjamin Jensen, was a shipbuilder in Bergen, on the north coast of Norway, in the 1860s and 70s. He also sailed some, making several trips to Canada. Finally, he came to the New World for good and settled on San Juan Island in 1883. With him were his sons Joe, Albert, Frank, and Pete.
      At the time of this interview, Frank Jensen was 86 and retired. He was keeping up his interest in the activity at the shipyard, making occasional trips to “see how things are going.”
      The Jensens lived for a while at San Juan Town, or “Old Town,” as it was called by the old-timers. After three months there, the family moved to a farm on Griffin Bay, building a house on a spit just below the bay now known as Jensen Bay.
      Along with their farming, Benjamin and his four sons began building a few boats, almost as a sideline. The “sideline” turned into a regular thing, but Frank Jensen recalled they never considered that they were running an organized business.
       “We were no company at all,” Jensen said. “We just built boats.”
      Among the boats the Jensen “just built” were the sailing ships NORTH STAR and the NELLIE JENSEN. The NELLIE JENSEN, on the ways for three years, was the largest sailing vessel the family built. It was 59 feet long, and carried a crew of five. Later it was given a steam engine.
      Other early vessels they built were the steamships GRIFFIN, MESSENGER, and the VALIANT
      The last boat to be built at Jensen Bay was the Adventurer. The NELLIE JENSEN burned to the water, years ago, off Dungeness while carrying a cargo of shingles. The GRIFFIN was wrecked and is on the bottom of Lake Washington. The VALIANT was lost on the beach at California, and another Jensen boat was wrecked in Alaska on the Chignik River.
      Jensen says he doesn’t know of a single life being lost in any of these mishaps.
      In 1901, Frank Jensen got the gold fever and went to Alaska. He never struck it rich, but worked for wages shoveling dirt. He didn’t stay long in Alaska. Years later, he made another trip to Alaska, landing at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. By 9 o’clock that night, he was on his way back to Seattle.

      In 1905, Frank married, a few years later, moved to Friday Harbor. About this time, the family became involved in a sawmill operation, but before long the Jensens were back to building boats again. In 1910, they acquired property on a bay a mile south of town and built the shipyard which was long in operation.
      Frank and Joe married sisters, Emily and Alice Guard. When Joe died, his wife, Alice, stayed on with Frank and Emily Jensen in the country place Frank built east of the shipyard, across from Turn Island. The Jensens lived in that house 29 years.

The ISLANDER,

new launching at Jensen's Yard
Friday Harbor, San Juan Island,
all dated 1921.
Click image to enlarge.
The work crew is so far unidentified.
Can you help?

      One of the largest boats the family ever built, and no doubt the best known, was the ISLANDER––a 106 ft freight and passenger boat. The business “Life Line” of the San Juans for many years, the ISLANDER made regular trips through the islands from Anacortes and Bellingham.

clips courtesy of the
Friday Harbor Journal.
Click image to enlarge.

      Later, the ISLANDER was sold to the Puget Sound Freight Lines and renamed the MOHAWK.

Cannery tender NEREID
Moored in her home port of Friday Harbor.
Jensen built in 1911.
Original photo from the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      The first boat built at the new yard was the NEREID, a boat used for decades by the Friday Harbor Canning Company. Julia Jensen says the NEREID also was designed by her husband and was his favorite of the boats built by the family.
      During WW II, Albert Jensen and Sons built a fleet of 36-ft tugboats and a dozen wooden barges for the war effort. Another shipyard started up during the war adjacent to the Jensen yard. Both companies specialized in building pleasure boats in the under 90-ft category, as well as fishing boats, and occasionally other types of craft.
      A recent Jensen boat that attracted the attention of numerous boating journals was the 55-ft MECO, built for Archie Morgan, of a Seattle electrical contracting firm.
      Altogether, Nourdine estimates his company built about 50 boats of more than 20 ft each in the years since the war, for an average of two and one-half boats a year.

      Nourdine’s brother, Frits, carried on the family tradition as a prominent Seattle naval architect.
      Frank Jensen was one of the county’s longtime residents. He recalled the island’s settlers well, and could recite the names of all the farmers and businessmen who had “places” on San Juan at the end of the past century.
      Frank doesn’t consider that his family pioneered in the usual sense; he recalls there was very little vacant land left on the island when they arrived.
      Of all the Jensen-built boats, Frank’s favorite was the one built for his own use, the 40-ft VERDUN (pronounced with the accent on the first syllable.) He made four or five trips to Alaska with her, and has sailed her  throughout the San Juans many times.
      When he was home, Frank kept it anchored in the bay off Turn Point, where it was a familiar sight for many years. Next, the VERDUN saw service in the San Juans as a fishing and workboat owned by Sherman Thompson of Deer Harbor, Orcas Island.

Words by the late author, historian David Richardson, formerly of San Juan and Orcas Islands in the Archipelago. Published by the Seattle Times.

The Port of Friday Harbor purchased the Jensen Shipyard which was reported here.

 

TROUBLED WATERS ... A Sea Story

 

Guemes Island author
Syd Stapleton's 
new novel is set in
Anacortes and the 
San Juan Archipelago, WA.

Reading a book in your own backyard seems to give it a little extra spark. Syd Stapleton, a former ferry captain, landing craft relief skipper, and tugboat worker, among many other hats, has just released a new novel, Troubled Waters, set in Anacortes and the San Juan Islands. Locals will recognize old haunts such as Marine Hardware and The Brown Lantern. Others are given aliases but may be familiar to some long-time residents. 

        The hero of Troubled Waters is Frank Tomasini, a 47-year-old marine surveyor who lives comfortably on his boat, the Molly B, a 1937 salmon troller, which has been lovingly refurbished by its former owner, Harlan Brown, who also happens to be Frank’s best friend. When Frank is asked to unofficially survey the damage to a boat found adrift and abandoned near San Juan Island, he learns the owner, Arthur Middleton, a rich and holier-than-though environmental warrior, has disappeared. His boat, the Sound Avenger, may have been sabotaged. Ironically, the only thing that kept it from sinking was a bit of floating trash, which blocked enough water from getting in to keep it afloat.
       More alarming is that neither the local police nor Arthur’s own estranged brother, a powerful business shark with a wide net (forgive the sea pun), seem interested in finding Arthur, who was not exactly a beloved figure in the community. Although Frank and Arthur were not the best of friends, Arthur’s unexplained disappearance nags at Frank. Soon he has enlisted Harlan’s help in unraveling the mystery behind both Arthur’s vanishing and the forces behind it. They follow a trail that winds through a dive bar full of salty locals, a dying fish farm, a wreck-filled marina, several local islands, and quite a few bottles of Laphroaig. Stapleton’s writing style could be called sea-noir, with enough careful attention to detail to immerse readers in the charm and changeability of the Northwest. It even manages to make the idea of living in very tight quarters on a former fishing boat seem downright desirable. There are flashes of humor amidst the drama and Frank’s narrative is both self-deprecating and clever. Frank and Harlan’s friendship avoids the feeling of a smug bromance, instead showing a deep and caring friendship. 
       The scenes with Frank’s new buddy Alan, a young Scottish biologist with an amazing capacity for scotch – reading a book set in our own backyard seems to give it a little extra whiskey, while adding moments of lightness.
       Troubled Waters is an environmental disaster story cloaked in a whodunit. The mystery is not so much the what or why, but the who and the how, especially how corporate polluters continue to get away with ruining the ecosystem with little to no oversight. While the novel doesn’t moralize, it does show the danger of indifference, of waiting for someone else–like the obnoxious Arthur Middleton–to deal with things, 
even if his righteous anger needs to get its priorities straight.
       As in any good sea story, both the Molly B and the sea play important roles. While Frank does some land-based sleuthing, the action intensifies on the water. The Molly B is Frank’s sea-wife, described with vivid detail from its gleaming wood to the pantry, always well-stocked with coffee and alcohol. Troubled Waters relies on nautical terminology as well as comprehensive geography of the waters of the San Juan Islands, Stapleton weaves them in with seamless authenticity, but for those who 
need further explanations, there is a glossary of nautical terms in the back of the book.
       Like the Molly B, the story moves at a steady pace, giving us time to meet a colorful collection of characters, as well as conveying Frank’s secrets and his complicated relationship with Carol, an old friend turned lover. Like any good mystery, the more Frank learns, the more dangerous things get for him, threatening both his livelihood and his life. But like any good seaman, Frank has a brave and dedicated crew of friends to help him navigate this tale. 

Review by Betty Passerelli 

Troubled Waters is currently available at Amazon and your independent bookstore.