❖ Captain Tarte Remembers ❖ 1930

Capt. Tarte's last paying work was on DANIEL KERN (r) To the left: RICHARD HOLYOKE, PROSPER, PURITAN, PEERLESS, LEWIS II, dated on verso 1914. DANIEL KERN (ex-MANZANITA) was built in 1879, in Norfolk, Virginia as a US Lighthouse tender. She came to the Pacific Coast in 1885. 1905 she was rebuilt for towing rock barges to the Columbia River jetty. 1918 she was bought by WA. Tug & Barge. She had a compound (16,34 x 24) compound engine with steam @ 100 pounds pressure from a single-ended Scotch boiler, developing 300 HP. Bellingham Tug & Barge of B.L. Jones purchased the steam tug in 1924. She was burned for scrap at Richmond Beach, WA. in 1939. "... he remembers Bellingham when it almost wasn’t. He watched our Sound cities grow from forests to forests of houses and skyscrapers. He has seen the baker’s dozen of folks who were here in the middle of the nineteenth century grow into hundreds of thousands of people.       He says to all the goers and comers on the Sound, Bellingham is known as the livest town in the Northwest. Its incomparable Harbor is large enough for the whole fleet with a holding ground not to be excelled, and secure from winds except along its northern rim. Bellingham leads in business progressiveness, in resources. He says that just as fish and timber have boomed us hitherto, are still enriching us, so will minerals and oil boom and enrich us steadily down the decades.       The first money little Jim Tarte earned in America he got peeling bark off trees, selling it. The last money outside his little estate out on Lake Whatcom was earned as mate on the DANIEL KERN last summer towing logs from Clallam Bay. He pays a high compliment to the captain of the tug.       “Why that young fellow, Davis, who is captain of the KERN, is only 29 years old, but he knows more about his job than many an old pilot. He is one of the most proficient masters I ever saw. They tell me he is studying for his deepwater license. He’ll get it. He’s a live one.”       “But for that matter, the company for which he works is one of the livest concerns I ever knew. It started from scratch and in just a few years has built up the finest little fleet of big tugs on the Pacific. How they keep those boats so ship-shape I don’t know. The DANIEL KERN and all of them look as if they were just down from the dock all the time. It’s marvelous how it is done. Neat as a pin. Well managed company.”        My captain has shipped on some thirty-six boats during these sixty-five years, with seven dollars as his only bill of damage in the whole time. From deckhand, fireman, flunkey, he has risen to become mate, purser, pilot, master, captain, skipper of ships of unlimited tonnage. He has watched boats and me come and go until at last there are but a handful of the old salts whom he remembers from the old days.

Captain Charlie Basford,
fondly remembered by Capt. Tarte,
is aboard the GOVERNOR ELISHA P. FERRY,
the first patrol vessel built for the service
of the WA. State Dept of Fisheries.
(Later in her life she became a trap tender.)
"Capt. B," a highly regarded captain in the PNW,
landed as an orphan in the 1800s on Shaw Island to
live with the old whaling ship captain, C.C. Reed
and his wife on Blind Bay.
Photo courtesy of the Bruns/Stillman family. 

One of these is Capt Charlie Basford, who used to run the BUCKEYE in the islands. Cap’n Basford began his sea life as a deckhand on the DESPATCH. He learned the island waters and their ways as few have known them, and never had an accident. My hero calls him one of the finest men, finest masters who ever ran a boat.
      My captain says what he would like to get into. A rowboat and traverse every mile of the routes he has taken in all of his boats. He would like to take that first fifty-mile row from Victoria to here (Bellingham) via Shaw Island. Would like to repeat that hazardous journey across the storm-swept Strait of Juan de Fuca and would like to follow every line of every route he has ever rowed, sailed, steamed, on these waters he loves tremendously.
      I think I have never spent more delightful sessions with anybody than these long evenings I have sat in Capt Tarte’s living room listening to him spin yarns. I am sorry they have ended. If there have been any mistakes in names or dates, blame my notes, and the speed with which I had to take them down. Capt Tarte’s memory is remarkable, his desire for accuracy is great."
Above text by June Burn. Puget Soundings. June Burn. May 1930. There are many other essays by June Burn on Saltwater People Log, reached by searching her name label or that of Puget Soundings.

Captain Jim Tarte and his tug BRICK can be seen on this Log HERE