❖ THEY WERE GOOD SEA BOATS ❖

Schooner CAMANO
127614
Launched in 1902, at Hall's Shipyard at Port Blakeley.
An example of a fine lumber schooner built in WA;
one written up in McCurdy's Marine History of the PNW,
(G. Newell, editor) for her fast passage full of lumber 
from Bellingham, bound Sydney, AU.
Her course of 9,500 miles she did in 53 days under
Capt. Oskar Anderson. Average speed was 8-knots.
Aboard was a well-known Pacific Northwest lifetime mariner
Lyle E. Fowler, born in the San Juans, posing in the white hat
on the foredeck. He signed on at age 17 as an A.B. and–– 
remembered to pack a camera. He grew up to be certified as a 
Puget Sound Pilot. 
Photo date 1919.
Click image to enlarge.
Oceans of thanks to Doug and Fran Fowler for the donation of a series
of photos from this schooner passage.
"After rounding Cape Horn, I thought to myself,there must be some other place on earth where seafaring is more pleasant, I found it. Life on a Pacific Coast lumber schooner was not so bad and the fo'c'sle in most of them was snug and dry.
They were good sea boats when loaded
and you kept your feet dry. It was kind of eerie when reefing down in a rising gale, the schooner heeling way over, the water rushing along and lapping over the top of the deckload to lee. But everybody knew his work and it was done in no time at all. For a while, I thought the sailing ships would last me all my life, but I was mistaken."
Captain Fred K. Klebingat (1889-1985)