"The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down." A. Whitney Brown.

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San Juan Archipelago, Washington State, United States
A society formed in 2009 for the purpose of collecting, preserving, celebrating, and disseminating the maritime history of the San Juan Islands and northern Puget Sound area. Check this log for tales from out-of-print publications as well as from members and friends. There are circa 750, often long entries, on a broad range of maritime topics; there are search aids at the bottom of the log. Please ask for permission to use any photo posted on this site. Thank you.

15 December 2011

❖ RELOCATION OF THE SMITH ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE LANTERN ❖ by Captain Leiter & Ruth Hockett

Story takes place July 1959.
Essay from author to web admin in 1997.
Published in Water Work, Hockett, L. W. (Trafford) 2005.
Smith Island Light Station, June 1949.
In 1858 the station was 200-ft from the cliff edge.
In 1949 sand & clay banks had crept to within 40-ft.
The two buildings at left center are the keeper's homes.
Further left are the power house & control buildings,
water tower, and wartime barracks.
Photograph by the US Coast Guard.
Original in the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.©

"Smith Island is at the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The lighthouse stone work, materials, cast-iron lantern- house, lens, and auxiliary equipment were shipped from the east coast around Cape Horn. The structure was built in 1857; the lamp lit 18 October 1858.
      After a century of wasting waves at the confluence of currents, a recorded Haida attack, and numerous earthquakes, the Coast Guard replaced the lighthouse with an unmanned airway-type light on a steel tower set farther east. The solid stone block house was about thirty-feet from the edge of the bluff at the time.
      Jim Gibbs, former editor of the Marine Digest and former Coast Guard lighthouse keeper had acquired the lighthouse and asked me to remove the lantern from the tower, set it up on his property on the bluff above Skunk Bay, several miles northwest of Point No Point.
      While raising the F.V. MIDWAY, in June 1959 near Partridge Bank, I had the tug AMAK take me to Smith Island to check it out. On 4 July 1959, we left Ballard with my 88-foot crane barge, the MV- 41. Jim Gibbs was aboard with Bob Butts and Ralph Mote.
      Arriving at the island we anchored in four-fathoms near the bight on the south side of the Island. That night a southeast blow caused us to weigh anchor and shift into deeper water; we returned inshore in the morning to work.
      Jim went ashore to look over the tower and lantern with me; he did not want the floor plate or railings. I radioed Bob Monroe to send a float plane for Jim. When the plane arrived in the afternoon he wished us well and departed.
      The brick light tower was approximately forty-feet high. On top was the ten-sided lantern housing from which the window glass, lens, and auxiliary equipment had been removed. It was made of cast iron segments bolted at their bottom to a circular cast iron floor, eight-feet in diameter and 1.8-inches thick. Inside, a square hatch opening was cast at the side of the floor with a hinged cover at the top of the spiral iron stairway.
       The lower part was made of solid panels with ventilators in the center of every other one. On the outside of the panel, at the ventilator openings, was an integrally cast box open on the bottom. Inside was a radial disk damper that could be adjusted from open to closed to accommodate the original oil lamp. On top of each intersection of the panels was a mullion that supported the conical top and framed the window glass. The top was made of ten triangular shaped castings that, when bolted together, formed a conical roof of approximately half-pitch that was fitted with a finial ventilator.
       Around the outside of the lantern was a brick walkway with eight forged-iron railing stanchions, equally spaced and mortared in. They supported three one-inch round iron railing rods that penetrated the stanchions. These rods were joined by tubes slipped over the ends and riveted. We had rigged an "A"-frame to hang over the side with a block and a manila line to lower the lantern parts. They had been assembled with 5/8-inch bolts, with pump rod threads and cast iron square-nuts on each end. Disassembling the structure was as easy as if it had been installed the previous month.
      Having lowered the thirty-one components of the lantern we cut the railing rods, dug the stanchions out of the brickwork, and threw them down. We dug the floor casting loose from the brickwork, pried it up, blocked it, then tied a line on a toggle through the hatch hole and prevailed upon the Coast Guard to yank it off of the tower with their Jeep.
      The back porch was of three granite steps, 7.5" x 11.5" x 48". The Coast Guard obligingly transported the pieces to the water's edge where we loaded them with my crane at high tide in about one-fathom of water and right in the kelp.
      Loaded, we moved to the ferry dock at Kingston. Arriving on 7 July 1959 at 0530, we off-loaded onto my crane truck then delivered the load to Jim's site above Skunk Bay. There we assembled the lantern of the floor plate on the ground.
      The granite back porch and steps were sandblasted of what appeared to be a yearly coat of hard, coast-guard-gray paint and are now on the patio in our back yard forming a solid and child-proof table.
      The lantern has been installed on a wood frame small scale lighthouse. It is named Skunk Bay Memorial Lighthouse, privately maintained, and showing a continuous, low-power, red light in the USCG Light List. The lens is part of the collection at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle. The house and tower are rubble at the bottom of the bluff on the west side of Smith Island".
Business card from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society.
Below Text:
James A. Gibbs
West Coast Lighthouses
Superior Pub., 1974
SKUNK ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE
Official since 1965.
Original photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©
"Skunk Bay Lighthouse is the only official privately-owned lighthouse on Puget Sound. It is a navigational aid by accident. It was an oversight one night that caused the writer [Gibbs] to leave the light blinking in his 'retreat' lighthouse on the shores of Skunk Bay off Admiralty Inlet.
      The structure was built in 1959 and fitted with the lamphouse from the abandoned Smith Island Lighthouse. But the idea of it being a permanent light was only a lark. When the flashing lighting apparatus was accidentally left on one night calls poured into the Coast Guard headquarters from confused navigators and from air pilots at the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. Fearing nefarious schemes to lure vessels astray, high ranking officers appeared next day to reprimand the culprit. After inspecting the structure, they labeled it as good a lighthouse as any in the district, and gave strict orders to either keep it lit or to keep it off. The former course was followed, it became official in the Light List, and a red light has been displayed every night since from a lamphouse that dates back to 1858.
      The unit was sold to the Skunk Bay Lighthouse Association in 1971, a group of several owners."

The autobiography of Seattle's Captain Hockett's sixty years of boatbuilding, commercial hart hat diving, marine surveying and related endeavors.
This book is out of print.
Book search here

11 December 2011

✪ ✪ ✪ STUBBY OLD BEAVER ✪ ✪ ✪ The First Steamer to Ply North Pacific Waters

The BEAVER, London register No. 154 of the year 1835.
Location, date, and photographer unknown.
Original from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©
" The first steamer in North Pacific coast waters rounded the Horn and came chugging into Puget Sound in December 1836 [175 years ago]. She was a sturdy, stubby, little craft named the BEAVER, only 101-feet with a beam of 20-feet and of only 100-tonnage.
      She was built on the Thames and from the day when her keel was laid until she was launched and set out for her remote destination she was an object of keen interest and speculation. When she was launched King William IV, and 150,000 persons of all classes were present and it was a gala event indeed. Almost nothing was known of steam navigation at that period and still less of the faraway coast of the North Pacific. It seemed an heroic and almost daredevil venture for so small a craft to set out for an almost unknown land on the other side of the world.
      She was, of course, a wood burner and, as sufficient fuel could not be carried for the voyage, her side wheels were not attached and she was fitted with sails and rigged as a brig under the command of one Captain Horne. The bark COLUMBIA sailed as a consort, but the BEAVER out-stripped her by nearly a month and arrived at the mouth of the Columbia, via the Hawaiian Islands 10-days from London.
      Her arrival at Fort Vancouver was announced with a broadside from her batteries, which raised echoes from the surrounding forest and brought everyone at the fort rushing to the waterside. Carpenters set to work putting her side wheels into place and soon her paddles were resounding down the river on a trial run.
      Almost at once the BEAVER went into the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, which then controlled virtually all of the Pacific Northwest country. She left outward bound, never to re-enter the Columbia. For years she ran up the coast as far as Sitka and in and out of virtually every bay, river, and inlet between Sitka and Fort Nisaqually. Men were kept busy chopping wood for fuel.
      Her paddle wheels were small and set far forward. She carried a crew of 30 men (one wonders how they found quarters in such a little craft), had an armament of four six-pounders, and was liberally supplied with small arms. Her decks were protected by boarding nettings to prevent access by the natives except by the gang planks. More than 30 natives were never allowed on board at one time unless they were accompanied by their wives and children as an evidence of their peaceful intentions.
      After paying for herself several times over, she was considered too small and too slow for the company's increasing business, so the OTTER, a propeller craft, was brought out in 1851; the BEAVER was used as a supplemental vessel, cruising up and down the coast, carrying men and supplies to the various posts and collecting gold and furs.
      In 1852 she was seized on a charge of violating United States revenue laws. When the watchman was ashore the BEAVER got up steam and made haste to get out of American waters. The trouble ended there. During the Indian War both the BEAVER and the OTTER were placed at the disposal of the American authorities.
      When the Hudson's  Bay Company's charter expired the BEAVER passed into the hands of the Imperial Hydrographic Office and for years was in that service, exploring coasts and sounding harbors. With the coming of more modern craft, she degenerated into a tramp, doing odd jobs up and down the coast.
      In 1874 she was refitted as a tugboat and sold to a private firm. She served as a tug for 14 years and then was given a license as a passenger boat and went into service on Burrard Inlet. Finally, after 53-years of faithful and valiant service, she went on the rocks at the entrance to Vancouver Harbour in a fog and there she lay for years, with rags of rigging swaying mute appeal for help. At long last in a storm the sturdy old BEAVER broke up and so ended her days. Her boiler is preserved in the Washington State Historical Museum in Tacoma".
Just Cogitating column
Text by C. T. Conover (1863-1961)
The Seattle Times, 29 March 1951

06 December 2011

❖ SALVAGE OF DIAMOND KNOT'S CARGO ❖❖ by R. H. "Skipper" Calkins


DIAMOND KNOT, 
Moored Seattle, WA.
Undated, original photo #3061-9 
signed by Joe. D. Williamson
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society.©
"During the many years I covered the Seattle waterfront, I wrote numerous shipwreck and cargo-salvage stories but none equaled the dramatic recovery of much of the valuable cargo of the Alaska freighter DIAMOND KNOT which sank in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, half a mile from the protected shores of Crescent Bay, 13 August 1947.
      It was men against the sea, victory over baffling handicaps in one of the most hazardous and difficult salvage operations in the annals of shipping.
      On her ill-fated voyage, the DIAMOND KNOT, a motorship owned by the US Maritime Commission, was en route from Bristol Bay, Alaska, to Seattle. The 5,525-ton freighter made her way through choppy waters of the Straits of Juan de Fuca with her valuable cargo of choice red, chum, king, and coho salmon. En route to sea from Seattle was the 10,681-ton freighter FENN VICTORY. This vessel had only 200 tons of freight and her bow was high in the water as she steamed for Cape Flattery and the open sea.
      In the early morning darkness, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca covered with a shroud of fog, the two ships collided at a point about three miles off Race Rocks.
      The bow of the FENN VICTORY cut into the DIAMOND KNOT a distance of more than 14-ft on the ship's starboard side between No. 1 and No. 2 holds. It was evident that the FENN VICTORY had struck a fatal blow. The decks of the DIAMOND KNOT were awash. The bow of the FENN VICTORY, riding high in the water, had become entangled with the heavy crosstree on the mainmast and rigging of the DIAMOND KNOT, and the two ships were held in a death grip as they drifted down the strait with the fast-ebbing tide. On the rescue tug SALVAGE CHIEFTAIN, which had answered the distress calls of the two ships, was burning equipment. It was taken aboard the DIAMOND KNOT and the two ships finally were cut free.
      The MATHILDA FOSS and FOSS 21, the first tugs to find the distressed ships in the early morning darkness, placed lines on the DIAMOND KNOT and began towing her, stern first, toward the protected waters of Crescent Bay, Olympic Peninsula. It was planned to beach the DIAMOND KNOT and save her precious cargo. However, water rushed into her No. 2 and No. 3 holds, posing a serious problem.
      There was further trouble ahead for the rescue tugs. The strongest currents in the Strait of Juan de Fuca are at the entrance to Crescent Bay and off Tongue Point, which forms a gateway to the east of the entrance. Of almost equal strength are the currents that run their course off Crescent Reef, guarding the entrance to the west.
      Caught in these vicious waters, the mortally wounded ship rolled over on her side and disappeared in 135 feet of water, only half a mile from the shores of Crescent Bay, at 8:55 a.m. On that 13th day of August 1947, the tired and anxious crews of the MATHILDA FOSS and FOSS 21 watched the sturdy freighter go to her death.
      The sinking of the DIAMOND KNOT resulted in the largest collision cargo loss in the waters of the Pacific Coast.
      News of the ship tragedy immediately was sent to the Seattle branch office of the Fireman's Fund Insurance Co, one of the principal underwriters, where machinery instantly was set in motion to indemnify those assureds who had sustained economic loss of staggering proportions. The initial Insurance Co. work led to the prompt payment of a claim to one cargo owner in an amount totaling $982,258.55. This payment was made jointly by the Fireman's Fund Insurance Co and the Sea Insurance Co, who with their reinsurers, share this business of the shipper. In quick succession, a second check was issued through the Seattle office of Fireman's Fund in the amount of $2,053,365.68. Four days later, a third principal assured made claim to Fireman's Fund and promptly was paid in the amount of $369,767.10. Under a separate cargo policy, Fireman's Fund provided indemnity to the owners of the fish boat RUTH B. which was lost from the deck of the DIAMOND KNOT. The claim, an amount exceeding $16,000 was paid for the RUTH B, and miscellaneous under-deck shipments. Under a second seaman's form of policy, Fireman's Fund also paid claims totaling $12,000 for the personal effects of the crew of the DIAMOND KNOT.
      Fireman's Fund then turned to the possibility of recovering and restoring the lost cargo of much-needed food to the world's critically depleted markets. For this task, a salvage team had to be selected.
      Walter L. Martignoni, of Pillsbury & Martignoni, was hired to direct salvage operations. Next assignment, as prime salvage contractors to supply equipment and personnel required for the operation, went to the Foss Launch & Tug Co.
      Extraordinary daring of 16 deep-sea divers under the direction of Walter A McCray of Seattle, stocky, dynamic, adventurer, who was in charge of all undersea work; and the unexcelled skill of Walter L. Martignoni of San Francisco, who contrived two giant siphon pipelines, which literally sucked canned salmon cargo from the holds of the DIAMOND KNOT, were responsible for this spectacular salvage feat.
      Martignoni's underwater vacuum cleaner brought up from a 135-ft depth where the DIAMOND KNOT was lying on her side, 5,744,496 cans of the 7,407,168-can cargo of the vessel, valued at $3,500,000. The total gross salvage recovery of salmon exceeded $2,100.000 in value.
      Walter McCray, a fearless, capable worker below the waters, is known throughout the entire Pacific Northwest for his daring, and there have been few underwater salvage undertakings in the history of maritime disasters in this area in which McCray's ability does not loom high. Fred Devine, a master diver of the Columbia River district, was appointed to assist McCray in the undersea operations.
      It was admitted that defeat or victory in the battle against the seas covering the DIAMOND KNOT and her valuable cargo was to be determined by these carefully selected captains of the salvage team.
      Martignoni decided that cutting out the ship's side and removing the cargo into barges by lifting with magnets was impractical, due to the small amount of tin in the cans. Removing the cargo by stevedoring methods also was impractical because of the vicious tidal conditions and the depth of the water at the scene, which would allow divers to work for only limited periods.
      There was only one method remaining for the salvage of the cargo--to build two 12-inch siphon pipelines which would suck the sought-after treasure of canned salmon from the holds of the DIAMOND KNOT. Siphons had been used in removing water, gravel, and small lumps of coal and coin from limited depths, but there was no record to show that such a method would raise one-pound cans of salmon from a water depth of 135-ft.
      The siphon plan required the creation of tremendous volumes of air to be forced into the siphons at great depth. To accomplish this, large air compressors were necessary to free the cans of salmon from their cartons. Powerful Navy fire-fighting jet pumps were obtained for this purpose. Two large caterpillar tractor-crane hoists, secured on a barge, were used to lower the cumbersome siphon pipelines into holes cut in the ship's side.
      McCray sent urgent calls to port cities from Canada to Mexico, bringing the most skillful divers to the scene*.

Lead diving boots once used
by Al Abrahamsen.
Artifact from the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©
Much equipment had to be provided, including decompression chambers, diver's suits, helmets, lead belts & shoes, and miles of air and communication lines.
      Finally, expert divers, including skilled burners from the Puget Sound Navy Yard, went over the side of the salvage-equipment barge and began the work of cutting the ship's skin with the latest development in underwater burning equipment. These tools consisted of a hollow carbon rod through which the diver released a mixture of oxygen passing through the carbon rod, created terrific heat, and burned away the ship's skin.
      The ingenious cargo-siphoning plan worked as divers below guided the ends of the pipelines within a few feet of the cartons containing the salmon. Out of the twisting pipes came partially disintegrated cartons and cans--golden one-pound containers of salmon--that glistened in the sun as they fell on the receiving barge.

Canned salmon salvage from the wreck of

the DIAMOND KNOT, 1947.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©
      However, it was far from a one-sided battle. The crews on 12-hour shifts fought the fury of winds and rains that rushed in from the open sea. Lines were snapped and the siphons were bent and buckled by the force of the waves. Many times, divers were forced to the surface by vicious currents that strained on their lifelines and tore at their suits as they clung to the ship's skin. These barrel-chested men would be pulled up in haste, without time to decompress, and were it not for the mechanical aid of decompression chambers, their fate would have been the dreaded afflictions resulting from the bends. There were serious cases of this disease before the operation was completed.
      When tide and current conditions were at their best, divers remained below to feed the siphons sucking their way into the cargo. Under favorable conditions, each siphon sucked an estimated 1,000 gallons of water per minute and deposited c. 800 cans of salmon on the receiving barge.
      More than 90% of the port side of the DIAMOND KNOT eventually was cut away and the two underwater vacuum cleaners were lowered from hold to hold to suck at the canned salmon cargo.
      The victorious salvage operation continued until 29 October when air and water leading into the siphon pipeline manifolds were shut off and the work brought to an end. Only 10,000 cases of canned salmon remained in inaccessible sections of the DIAMOND KNOT. One of the most dramatic salvage projects in the history of the maritime industry had been brought to a successful conclusion."
   
Words by R.H. Calkins, High Tide. The Marine Digest Publishing Company, Inc. 1952.


*Al Abrahamsen (1909-1979)
born and raised
 at Doe Bay,
Orcas Island, WA.,

was one of the divers chosen for the
deep-sea work on the Diamond Knot

He was the last diver to man
the business end of a siphon hose below.
Al revisited the wreck site the following
year to attempt more salvage. He 

 succeeded in laying claim to the Ruth-B, 
 renamed the Susan A for his wife;
 he used it for the next 15 years in his private
diving business, often with his brother Harry.
Above newspaper clip from the Seattle P-I, 30 October 1947.

26 November 2011

Stowaway put ashore on San Juan Island ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

The S.S. ALAMEDA
Alaska Steamship Co.,
 passing Turn Point Light, Stuart Island, WA.
Photo by Louis Borchers, Light House Keeper
His hobby was taking photos of every passing vessel,
prior to his death in 1923.
Notes from the late historian D. S. Egan, Edmonds, WA.
"On the bleakest shore of San Juan island, miles from the nearest habitation, without food or shelter, a 15-year-old boy, a stowaway aboard the steamer ALAMEDA, was put ashore by Captain Johnson on Friday.
      The boy was found in steerage soon after the vessel left Valdez and was put to work by members of the crew. All went well until Captain Johnson learned that he was aboard and determined to put him ashore before Seattle was reached.
      Several of the passengers who had learned of the boy's plight appealed to the vessel's master, offering to give double the amount of his passage if he were allowed to continue the voyage, but Capt. Johnson was deaf to their intrusion.
Aboard S. S. ALAMEDA.
Original photo postcard
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      In a life boat in charge of the third mate and two sailors, the boy was landed on the beach, and left to walk without food or money to the nearest ranch.
      Soon after the return of the lifeboat and when the passengers learned that the little lad was thinly clad and did not even have a coat, a meeting was called and resolutions protesting against the treatment of the little fellow were adopted. A wireless message was also sent to the Alaska Steamship Company advising them of the action of their employee.


Steamers docked Friday Harbor, WA.
GEORGIA and ROSALIE, undated.
Original photo, Saltwater People Historical Society©
   
The boy walked across the island to Friday Harbor and took the ROSALIE here at noon for Seattle. He claimed he bought a ticket through to Seattle, but lost it. He appeared to be well dressed and did not seem to have suffered from the experience.
      The stowaway, whose name is Albert Swan, reached Seattle Saturday morning, and is visiting an uncle there. It was learned from the crew that the boy refused to work and when reprimanded by the captain, used abusive language. According to the testimony of one of the passengers the captain was justified in putting him off the boat."
The San Juan Islander
Front page, 17 November 1911

20 November 2011

❖ The Steamer ROOSEVELT ❖ by Captain Ed Shields

Steamer ROOSEVELT
Original Photo from archives of the S.P.H.S.©
"The ROOSEVELT was a steam powered towboat that operated on Puget Sound and in adjacent waters for many years. She was constructed in 1905 for Robert E. Peary to transport him and his supplies as far north as possible in Davis Strait and then land on the coast of Greenland. She was of exceedingly heavy construction, being 600 T-burden, 194-ft L x 35-ft B; she was built to withstand the ice flows of Davis Strait.
   
Robert E. Peary and the ROOSEVELT

Two antique postcards cancelled 1911.
Bottom: "Capt. Bartlett, experienced with Peary in the
privations of the Arctic region, indicated by the cross.
Men who were willing to brave unseen perils and dangers
in the cause of conquest and honor to their mother country
––such were these men; their efforts
were crowned with success."
Click to enlarge.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©
      After Peary's return to New York, the vessel was sold to Puget Sound interests and brought to the northwest via the newly opened Panama Canal. One of the first noteworthy events the ROOSEVELT participated in was the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, on 4 July 1917. She led the flotilla of vessels through the canal that day.
      In 1923 the ROOSEVELT was owned by the Washington Tug and Barge Company of Seattle. She was employed in towing three former WW I wood hulls, which were serving as barges, loaded with lumber from Puget Sound to San Diego. They were towed one at a time. One loading on Puget Sound, one unloading in San Diego, and the third at sea. The ROOSEVELT would bring an empty barge to the Puget Sound mill, take the loaded barge in tow to San Diego, and on arrival, the other barge was now unloaded and ready for the return trip. She was able to make two round trips per month and hauled 2,500,000-board feet of lumber each time south bound. She was the best tugboat on the coast for this form of ocean towing.
Mammoth log booms towed from the Columbia River
down the Pacific Coast to San Diego, CA.
Saltwater People Historical Society archives.
     In 1924 the ROOSEVELT, along with two other smaller tugs, took a flotilla of barges loaded with lumber to Miami, Florida.
     In 1931 the ROOSEVELT was dispatched to Cape Flattery to tow the schooner VIGILANT into Puget Sound, after her race from Hawaii with the COMMODORE. Extreme weather produced violent seas and several of the ROOSEVELT's pilot house windows were smashed; however, she accomplished her task.

Seattle Tug ROOSEVELT
 and the Schooner VIGILANT
A 1932 Seattle Times page from the scrapbook of
 PNW Captain W. C. "Pappy" Beachum (1906-1980).
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©
1932 found the ROOSEVELT towing large ocean going log rafts south to San Diego.
On 3 May 1934 the motor ship CHILDAR was outbound across the Columbia River bar when she was battered onto Peacock Spit on the north side of the entrance. The USCG Cutter REDWING succeeded in towing the stricken vessel from the grip of the breakers. They could not cross the Columbia River bar to return Astoria or Portland due to the exceedingly high breakers, so both vessels proceeded north. The next morning the ROOSEVELT took over the tow and brought the stricken CHILDAR into Esquimalt, BC.
      The last voyage of this famous tug was in 1937. She was sold to the California Towing Co in San Francisco. She set out on her final trip towing the former USN collier JUPITER from Puget Sound to the East Coast for scrapping. The tow yawed excessively and the tow line damaged the ROOSEVELT. She also experienced engine problems with her old power plant. After departing the Panama Canal the ROOSEVELT became totally disabled, turned the tow over to the New York tug RELIEF, and returned to the Panama Canal. She was laid up, and the crew finally sold her equipment, as they had not been paid. Finally, this former Artic exploration ship rotted away."
Written by Captain Ed Shields
About the Boats,1994

13 November 2011

❖ BOOK REVIEW: A Whale Runs through It ❖

Review written by Allison Hart Lengyel©
Saltwater People Historical Society



The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea
Philip Hoare (HarperCollins, 2008)

Look around and you’ll find whales are everywhere, swimming through popular culture, in toys, in art, in books and movies. They support coastal communities that once depended on fishing and now put their boats to sea for whale watching charters; they symbolize the aspirations of environmentalists who fear for the integrity of the world’s ecosystems. We are still trying to agree whether it is acceptable to hunt whales, and, if so, by modern or only traditional methods. But even if most of us aren’t hunting whales, we continue to be obsessed by them. 

This summer, hundreds of people ditched their cars along Highway 101, near where it crosses the Klamath River, to walk to the middle of the bridge and stand ogling over the side. What held their attention was a 45-foot female grey whale, circling and spouting in the shallow waters of the river, about three miles from its outlet to the Pacific. 

Female grey whale, Klamath River, California.
Photo by Allison Hart Lengyel
August 2011
Despite various attempts to help the whale leave, she remained below the bridge for several months. As reported by bluelivingideas.com, “She immediately became a tourist attraction and fascination of locals. Yurok tribal leaders viewed the whale’s presence as both a great gift and a sign our world is “out of balance” www.bluelivingideas.com. Finally, due to exhaustion, stress, an incomplete diet, too much time in freshwater—no one really knows, despite a subsequent autopsy—she began to fail and died, after beaching herself on the shore of the river. Thousands who had seen her or heard of her story grieved.

How can the whale be both a gift and a harbinger of environmental catastrophe, as the Yurok believe? Why do we care so much about whales, despite knowing so little?

Whales have existed for millions of years—long before humans—but they have been known to us in their own habitat for only a few generations. We still understand relatively little about them; the first whale was not photographed underwater until 1975. What we do know: all whales fall into two subclasses of cetaceans, the toothed whales (such as orcas, sperm whales, and dolphins) and baleen whales (including grey whales, humpbacks, and blues). Much as land-dwelling predators, toothed whales hunt their prey (fish, eels, seals, penguins, even other whales) one at a time, working alone or in packs. Baleen whales, on the other hand, scoop up vast mouthfuls of seawater, distending their jaws in the process, to strain out tiny particles of plant and animal life (phytoplankton and zooplankton)—the largest animals on earth subsist on a diet of some of the smallest, in other words. Whales have the longest migration of any mammal—up to 8,000 miles. The largest whales are far larger than the largest dinosaurs. Blue whales and finback whales are also the loudest of any animal, able to communicate across thousands of miles. And some kinds of whales may live to be more than 200 years old—but this is partly conjecture, based on the size of whales observed and what is understood about their rate of growth. 

You can learn all this and more in The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea, by Philip Hoare. In his investigation of the whale, however, Hoare was motivated as much by the mystery as the history of cetaceans. Not only scientific facts about whales, and whales’ influence on commerce and settlement patterns, but also the mystical associations people have had with whales and their sympathy—or lack thereof—for the giant sea mammals inform Hoare’s commentary. Running through his book is evidence of a lifelong fascination with whales, from early visits to aquariums to repeated readings of Moby Dick that became the inspiration for a pilgrimage to many of the places mentioned in its pages.

“Nothing else represents life on such a scale. Seeing a whale is not like seeing a sparrow in a city tree, or a cat crossing the street. It is not even like seeing a giraffe, dawdling on the African veldt, batting its glamorous eyes in the dust. Whales exist beyond the normal, beyond what we expect to see in our daily lives. They are not so much animal as geographical; if they did not move, it would be difficult to believe they were alive at all. In their size—their very construction—they are antidotes to our lives lived in uncompromising cities.” (Philip Hoare, The Whale, p. 29-30).

Leviathan or, the Whale, the British title to Hoare’s book (maybe the publishers didn’t believe Americans would know what “leviathan” means, even with the helpful second part of the title), was published in 2008. In 2009 it won England’s most prestigious award for nonfiction writing, the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize; the book became available in the United States in early 2010. Calling it “a classic of its kind,” Rachel Cooke wrote in 2008 in The Observer, that the book “cast a spell…begin[ning] as memoir, then mov[ing] deftly through biography, literary criticism, social history, and, finally, nature writing….” www.guardian.co.uk/books. Dozens of other positive reviews have followed, from the NYTimes and the Washington Post to independent booksellers and online readers’ forums. 

Why read a book devoted to whales? Why write one? Whales are both ancient and modern, their lives largely unwitnessed though they reside in all oceans of the world. Whether we regard them as graceful or fearsome, without any natural enemy or vulnerable to a host of dangers—whaling, water pollution, sonar and other noise pollution, global warming—they are everywhere and nowhere. When we look for them, what will we find? Once hunted without mercy and harvested in the tens of thousands for their valuable oil, baleen (“whalebone”), and blubber, whales have now come to represent—at least for those of us who constitute the nonindigenous west—a sort of cosy nostalgia for simpler times. Whales occupy the part of memory where we also keep wooden sailing ships and oilskin overcoats. Whales are evoked to lend charm and credibility to products ranging from kitchenware to commercial watercraft to children’s toys. Take, for example, the Playmobil whale boat, a bathtub toy piloted by an androgynous  sou’wester-wearing captain, its cargo a cute killer whale. It’s unclear whether the whale in this case is a product or a pet, but the whale, after all, sits right on deck without a holding tank. Though it looks like the two are out for a pleasure cruise, the brutal reality of what whaling really means has long been shielded from popular understanding.

Even a small whale presented a large logistical challenge for a whaler. Some towed their prizes home for processing, while, in the name of efficiency and to maximize the profitability of a single excursion, others stayed at sea and did their dirty business there. And it was a dirty business—a long, dangerous chase followed by carnage, blood, and slippery muck, and then a tedious and smelly process of reducing the mammals to strips of blubber, rendering the flesh for oil. Baleen was salvaged to be heated and molded into consumer goods such as umbrella and corset stays, Venetian blinds, and brushes. Whales could also be harried into shallow bays and inlets and forced to beach themselves, making their bodies more easily available for processing. Some people ate whale meat, but the greatest value was in the oil, which burned cleanly with minimal smoke. Whale bones were frequently turned into abstract monuments to the whalers’ gristly business—fences, arches, even whole buildings made of bone. Some still survive.
Anacortes, Washington
Whale Bone photo by Allison Hart Lengyel
Ironically, the biggest beneficiaries of the murderous business of whaling in North America were the Quakers—otherwise known for their pacifism. The moral opposition to violence apparently did not extend to fellow mammals. Quaker businessmen owned most of the boats, hired the crews, and profited from the processing and sale of whale products, as well as from commercial development that arose to support the whaling industry. At one time, New Bedford, MA was the richest city in North America, due to whaling.

Pressure on whales in the Atlantic, primarily from Basque, American, British, and Scandinavian whalers, pushed them ever north and south, extending the reach of Western whaling boats into the Arctic as well as into the Pacific; the Japanese had also long been whaling in these waters. Western whalers arrived in the Hawaiian Islands at about the same time as Protestant missionaries, in the mid-19th century. 

Whales for processing at Grays Harbor, WA.
Original Wolfe Photo, inscribed 1912, 
from the archives of S.P.H.S.©
 t

The hardest part of the book to read is the long middle section devoted to whaling. We shake our heads at our benighted ancestors who seemed to have no compassion for whales, who were heedless of the rapidly diminishing numbers, other than noticing how scarcity led to longer excursions and lower catch rates. But there is hope after all this. Hoare wraps up his book with an examination of scientific efforts to learn more about whales as well as to save various whale species from extinction.

Commercial whaling continued throughout the west until the International Whaling Commission issued a moratorium on whaling in 1986. By the mid-1970s, saving the whales from extinction had become one of the central missions of Greenpeace (founded in 1971, arising from the peace and anti-nuclear movements). International treaties followed, along with an ongoing debate about what constitutes a fair and manageable approach to our relationship with whales. Despite the moratorium, whaling continues throughout the world, by countries including Japan, Norway, Iceland, and Indonesia. Pro-whaling countries cite the importance of whaling from a cultural as well as commercial point of view, and maintain that opposition to whaling is a hypocritical attempt to limit their economic development, among other things. Anti-whaling countries cite environmental concerns, apparent cetacean intelligence, and the value of whale watching (as opposed to killing) to local economies as reasons to extend the moratorium. Are whales a sustainable commodity or an endangered natural resource? Should we be hunting them, watching them, studying them, or just leaving them alone? We are still trying to agree what whales mean.


The above review introduces the writer Allison Hart Lengyel to our log. She's lived in the islands for ten years and sails with her family on the classic John Alden cutter JOHANNA.

09 November 2011

❖ ENEMIES ON BOARD ❖


Menu from the S.S. ADMIRAL ROGERS,
Captain Landstrom 1925.
Tap image to enlarge.
From the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©



Steamer SPOKANE, ca. 1910

From the Clinton Betz Ship Postcard Collection
From the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©


S. S. SPOKANE aground.

S.S. SPOKANE 

aground at Seymour Narrows,
one of the many vessels caught on Ripple Rock

 before the huge blast conducted in 1958. 
Sadly, one woman passenger was drowned.
Photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©


 ADMIRAL ROGERS (ex- S.S. SPOKANE)
Blind Bay, San Juan County, WA. 1947.
Click to enlarge.
She was towed off to salvage in 1948.
Photo by Joe Williamson, Seattle.
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

The SPOKANE was originally an elegant passenger steamship launched in 1901 in San Francisco, the first designed especially for the Inside Passage trade between Seattle and Alaska. Her dimensions were 281' x 40.1' x 17.3'. She had a triple-expansion steam engine fueled by two coal-burning boilers made by Babcock & Wilcox. The HP was 2,000; the listed speed was 15-knots. The SPOKANE came to Seattle in 1902 where she was acclaimed as the "finest ship on the Pacific" in the press reports of her welcome. SPOKANE was lavishly decorated and steamed to Tacoma in May 1903, where President Theodore Roosevelt and his party embarked on a cruise to Seattle, via Bremerton. Four revenue cutters and sixty other vessels escorted them.
        More excitement of a different kind was in store for her that fall on her passage south for the winter. SPOKANE picked up an improvised raft with four survivors aboard who nineteen hours before, had been wrecked on Blanco Reef when the steamer SOUTH PORTLAND went down.
        In 1907 she continued running north up the Inside Passage with one good season and then striking a rock in Seymour Narrows.
        In 1912 she underwent major repairs and now looking more graceful, was back sailing with comfortable staterooms and wide berths. WW I had not meant much to the navigators of the Inside Passage. But SPOKANE got a good taste of it in November 1917; whilst southbound from SE Alaska she again struck rocks on the BC coast. It was reported that three enemy aliens had stowed away and fraternized with the crew. When the trio saw their chance they deliberately ran the steamer ashore. The two Germans and one Austrian were arrested when the crew arrived back in Seattle. It was reported she was repaired yet again and was used for transporting supplies for salmon canneries.
        In 1922 the veteran liner was renamed ADMIRAL ROGERS; two years later she came to the rescue of the city of Ketchikan when she came in close to shore to aid in controlling the flaming buildings along the waterfront. The heroic action lasted two hours with the crew credited with saving the city from destruction. Captain Frank Landstrom and crew were honored with a bronze plaque in appreciation of their assistance.
        ADMIRAL ROGERS enjoyed more cruising before she was taken over by the University of Oregon for a floating college.
        She spent time laying rather idle and forgotten on Seattle's Lake Union--fourteen years later in July 1946 part-time Shaw Islanders--Hal Salvesen and M. Haines purchased her with plans to convert her into a floating resort hotel. A brief passage in H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, Gordon Newell (Superior 1966) states that this grand dream of the Haines/Salvesen team came true but there are residents to this day who drove daily to the dock for mail during that time period but don't remember a chance to stop for a tot of rum with the ADMIRAL.
        On the high tide at 2230, 27 April 1948, locals could hear the tug straining to pull the ADMIRAL from the muddy bottom of Blind Bay. She sailed in the dark, undertow to the scrap yard down sound. Circa twenty-two years later when the Shaw Island Historical Museum was launched, a Williamson print of the old liner and her wooden wheel were two of the first pieces donated to begin the small, island, artifact collection. Rather fitting for the wheel to jump-ship at the vessel's last port of call. No chance for a dance, but she left her heart on Shaw.
Further reading: Lloyd M. Stadum wrote a piece on the steamship ADMIRAL ROGERS (ex-SPOKANE) for the quarterly journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, The Sea Chest, December 1981.

Mr. Ed Bold (1891-1983)

Was a long-time summer resident of 
Shaw Island with his DUCHESS, 
designed by Ed Monk Sr.,
built by Edison Technical School in 1939.
Here he is aft, as a passenger

on S.S. SPOKANE, c. 1911-1913.
Photo thanks to his son 'Skip' Bold,
Shaw Island, WA.

28 October 2011

❖ "CAPI" BLANCHET of the classic book ❖ The Curve of Time ❖

Of the hundreds of books about sailing and cruising along the Pacific Coast of BC--one of the most enduring bestsellers has been The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet (1891-1961). It hovers perpetually on or near the list of the ten best-selling non-fiction books in BC. It's a memoir of the Blanchet family's adventures in the 1930s and 1940s condensed as if they were from one extended voyage. 
      Here is a lovely tribute (abridged) about the author's life from Edith Iglauer Daly, author of Fishing with John, courtesy of Harbour Publishing (see website below.)
      

"When I came to live on the BC coast I was given as a sort of spiritual introduction, a remarkable little volume entitled The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet. The book was an appropriate choice, my summers were spent on a fishing boat, the MOREKELP, with my husband John Daly, a commercial salmon troller, and the area he regularly traversed partly followed the path traveled by Mrs. Blanchet and her five children on their tiny motor launch, the CAPRICE.
      The five Blanchet youngsters, led by their indomitable parent, spent four summer months for fifteen years––on a 25' boat, traveling around the west coast of Vancouver Island and as far north up the Inside Passage as Cape Caution. They explored the inlets and bays, sometimes following the trail broken by that mariner Captain George Vancouver, with whom they felt a great empathy; their experiences finally written down in a series of sketches that encompassed all the years of their journeys as if they were one. 
      The Curve of Time is M. Wylie Blanchet's only book, originally published in 1961 when she was 70-years-old. That same year she died of a heart attack, sitting at her desk where she was found slumped over her typewriter. She had lived just long enough to enjoy being a published author. 
      M. Wylie Blanchet. At first, she tried using just 'M. Wylie.' was for Muriel, the author's given name, which she hated; Wylie was borrowed from a grandparent, and Blanchet was acquired by marriage. Altogether it was the impersonal sound that she intended: she hoped the author would not be recognized by the people up the coast about whom she was writing, who knew her simply as "Capi" Blanchet. As to the nickname––wasn't she the Captain of the CAPRICE?
      In the last chapter of the book, entitled 'Little House,' Mrs. Blanchet comes off the CAPRICE to write about the family's land base on seven secluded acres of Vancouver Island's coast, from which they departed each June and to which they returned in October. The Curve of Time manages to be sentimental, imaginative and often strays into whimsy, but it is reticent about the hard facts; it reads like an impressionist painting. Its characters, whose physical appearances are never really described. We know what they do and how they feel but not what they look like or who they are other than a mother and 5 children.
      Despite the reticence, we do know the important things about this remarkable woman. She comes through as extremely courageous, innovative, and as a kind of mechanical wizard compared to most women. Yet readers close her book with a scratchy feeling of curiosity.
      Her Canadian publisher Gray Campbell was both neighbour and friend, has described her as having 'a delightful shyness, as a serious person with a delicious, dry, sense of humour.' Campbell first became acquainted with her when the CAPRICE was berthed next to his boat at Canoe Cove, a short distance from the Blanchet house, which was 5-miles from Sidney. He too was writing, and Capi used to sit in the cabin of his boat and read the chapters of his uncompleted manuscript. He has said since that it was the lack of success of the first edition of The Curve of Time, whose English publisher never bothered to see that it was stocked in bookstores either in Victoria or Vancouver, that helped to convince him that there was a need for regional publishing.
       Muriel Blanchet was born Muriel Liffiton in 1891 in Lachine, Quebec, into a well-to-do family with High Anglican principles. The Liffitons were English but the Snetsingers, on her mother's side, were pre-Revolution Dutch settlers in the Hudson Valley. They crossed the border into Canada during the American Revolution, settling in the St. Lawrence valley with a land grant downstream of the town of Cornwall. Grandfather Snetsinger was a Member of Parliament for the area and left a considerable inheritance whose final distribution was made only a year ago [c.1979]. The ancestral home is now under sixty feet of St. Lawrence River water and all the original land has been sold.
      Muriel was the middle one of three sisters and something of a tomboy.  The results of her 4-yr scholastic campaign are still evident in a row of small red leather Temple Volumes of Shakespeare. Each volume was given her as a prize for top honours in a different subject, and she never stopped until she had the whole set, inscribed to Muriel Liffiton in the heavy black script of R. Newton, Rector of St. Paul's, and bearing the motto Non Sans Droit with the school's coat of arms. Between 1905 and 1908 Muriel Liffiton repeatedly captured first prizes in Latin, French, spelling, astronomy, history, geography, geometry (Euclid), algebra and English, beginning with a modest two her first year and winding up with six at graduation. 
      Muriel Liffiton was expected to go on to university but instead at 18, she married Geoffrey Blanchet, the brother of a school friend––a decision she is said to have regretted later. 
      Geoffrey and Muriel Blanchet started married life in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The family grew to include four children, they packed them all into a Willys-Knight touring car which, according to one of the children, 'had flapping curtains and a great top that folded like an elephant sitting down,' and started driving across the country looking for an island to live on.
     The Blanchets were able to buy 7-acres at Curteis Point, overlooking the Gulf of Georgia, and they kept it until Mrs. B. died in 1961, although Little House was torn down in 1948. It was an unusual house, a strangely mystical English cottage covered with ivy, with a big fireplace and a billiard table on the first floor and four bedrooms up a rickety flight of stairs on the 2nd floor. 'It was designed by a celebrated architect, Sam McLure, and built by a crook,' said David Blanchet, who was born there.
     Their boat the CAPRICE was purchased in 1923 for $600. It had been built the year before, a cold year, and the Brentwood Ferry, near which it was anchored, managed to shove a cake of ice into the side of the boat, sinking it. She was hauled out on a nearby dock and the Blanchets bought it on the spot, with water still dribbling out of it. 'This was probably when my mother learned to deal with engines,' David has commented. 'It had to be cleaned out immediately, once it had been in salt water. We had that same engine for 20-years until it was changed in 1942.'
      Peter B. remembers the first time his mother took the CAPRICE out on her own. It was in March, on his sixth birthday, and she had promised to take him to Shell Island, a favourite spot where she liked to say she would spend her 100th-birthday. She and Peter got in the boat, which they kept at Canoe Cove, and 'she cranked and cranked that darned engine, and still it wouldn't start,' Peter recalled. 'She could see my father sitting on the Point watching to see if we would get off and she had to go and get him, which really irked her. Then she and I went fishing for the day off Sidney Spit. We caught a couple of fish which we cooked over a fire on the beach at Shell Island.'
      The second summer after the death of Geoffrey, Mrs. B rented Little House and took the children off on the boat for the first of the venturesome trips that as a composite memory became the substance of The Curve of Time. With the money she received from renting Clovelly in summer and her own small income, she was able to manage. 
      The three younger children, Joan, Peter, and David, were educated almost entirely at home, by correspondence, by their mother, and by a Scottish engineer who was a mechanic at the Canoe Cove boat works, who taught them math, chemistry, and physics. Joan, known as the rebellious member of the family, went to art school in Vancouver and then continued her art studies in New York. When she left Vancouver, she bought an old Indian dugout canoe for five dollars and paddled home. It took her five days, and she crossed the Gulf of Georgia at night, to avoid traffic and heavy seas, a remarkable feat since it required at least nine hours of steady paddling. Frances King vividly recalled hearing about her sister's arrival. 'When she rounded the point in her dugout, wearing an old red sweater, Capi and the boys were sitting on the bluff, wondering who the Indian was! Joan had expected some commendation and was amazed at Capi's anger. 'Just because I'm a fool doesn't mean you children have to be!' Capi said.
      In appearance, Capi Blanchet was of medium height, with very fine blonde hair brushed upwards so that it formed a kind of haze around her head. Her normal attire was a pair of khaki shirts, an Indian sweater, and sneakers that sometimes had holes in the toes. She had begun wearing shorts in the 1920s, long before they were fashionable, and her daughter Elisabeth has recalled that a journalist writing about people he had met on the BC coast in The Saturday Evening Post 'commented on her shorts and how suitable they seemed for what she was doing-- running a boat.'
      Mrs. B's children and friends were enormously fond of her, somewhat in awe of her all-around competence, and thought her fair-minded but domineering. She could do almost anything that men did and still be feminine.
      'She had a lot of courage or self-confidence, but she did not overestimate her mechanical ability,' a writer friend, Hubert Evans, has said. "On a run from Sidney to Vancouver, the CAPRICE was overtaken in the Gulf by a late-season southeaster, and the little boat took quite a dusting,' he related. 'Capi had several children aboard. 'I told the Lord I could take care of the boat but would he please keep the engine running,' she said to me afterward.'
      Capi Blanchet does not seem to have been particularly light-hearted or spontaneous, and she was somewhat arrogant about anyone she considered her inferior. She had a slightly Church-of-England attitude, even talking to fishermen, who were never sure how to take her. She had a good sense of humour but a rather studied laugh.
      A description from her daughter Frances exemplifies the quality of character her children and friends remember best: 'she was capable of handling any situation. If she was worried she didn't let us know.'
      On the boat Mrs. B was even-tempered under what must often have been trying conditions at such close quarters; her method of discipline was to separate her children, not argue. David remembered his mother losing her temper with him only once when he was about twelve. 'It was some silly mistake, something about an anchor, that I did my way instead of what she wanted,' he said. 'Normally her eyes were brown, but suddenly they were a turquoise colour and blazing. It was unbelievable!'
     She was one of those rare women who are mechanically inclined and enjoyed tinkering with engines and working with tools. Every so often she took apart the CAPRICE engine, a 4-cylinder Kermath, cleaned and painted it and put it back together again, grinding the valves herself. 
      An intimate friend of Mrs. Blanchet's, Kathleen Caldwell, has described her as 'not excessively domestic, but interested in people and politics, which she loved to discuss. Her house was comfortable and pleasant, and Capi could produce a beautiful meal with what looked like no effort.' In their close circle, Capi was renowned for her roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and mouth-watering pastry. Oddly enough, although she liked to eat fish, she never cooked it except outdoors on a beach because she couldn't stand the smell.
      Mrs. B liked to draw sea creatures in pen and ink, and once illustrated a fairy story she wrote with drawings in the margin. She was also a fair pianist, and in later life enjoyed playing a violin that her grandfather gave her when she was 12. It now hangs on the wall of David's living room, but his mother used it often; she had joined a small orchestra at Deep Cove, playing second violin, reputedly a quarter-tone flat.
      David fell ill before the interior of Mrs. B's new house was completed and it never seemed to advance beyond that half-built stage. She lined the whole interior with vertical cedar planks herself, but doors were a late addition to the bathroom and kitchen and knobs usually came off in hand. Her firewood was never quite dry; Kathleen Caldwell once delighted her by bringing a gift of Presto logs. When Capi's doctor prescribed a drier climate for a cough that later developed into emphysema she ignored him and instead sat with her head as far into her oil stove as she could get it for 20-minutes a day. 'That's my high, dry climate,' she said.
      As for the CAPRICE, it was never meant to have any other owner than Capi B. After the war she planned to build a new boat and sold the CAPRICE for $700––a hundred more than she had paid for it––to the owner of a boat works in Victoria, who hauled it up for repairs. While it was on the ways the entire boat works burned down, including the CAPRICE. Mrs. Blanchet did have another boat after that, the SCYLLA, but she never really used it.
      'I loved the summer journeys but I doubt if any of us appreciated quite how unique our childhood was. We just knew Capi was doing something unusual,' daughter Elisabeth writes from England. 'She used to get a bit tense if we were taking green water over the bow, wallowing about in a following sea, or running the Yaculta Rapids. Otherwise, she took everything in her stride––whether crossing the Straits at 4 am to beat the sou'wester or exploring new territory.'
      'Only fools seek adventures,' David has remembered his mother as saying at one time or another. However foolish Mrs. B's adventures may have seemed to her (which is doubtful), they have a dreamlike charm for an increasing number of readers. The Curve of Time has had a separate and ongoing life of its own, achieving its own small immortality."
Thank you to author Edith Iglauer Daly who celebrated her 100th birthday on 10 March 2017 in Madeira Park, B.C. She passed away at Sechelt, BC, 13 February 2019. 
Raincoast Chronicles Six/Ten, 1983
Courtesy of Harbour Publishing
www.harbourpublishing.com


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