❖ SMALL CRAFT, TALL CRAFT, ALL SAILORS FIND PORT TOWNSEND

Metsker's PUGET SOUND COUNTRY
with a detail highlighting
Port Townsend, WA., on Admiralty Inlet.
Click image to enlarge.

Windjammers loading lumber, grain, and 
general freight for world markets.
Location,  Port Townsend
1890s.
Click image to enlarge.
Photo print copied by Huff from an original.
Archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

U.S. RUSH
Built by Hall Brothers Yard, WA., in 1885
Anchored Port Townsend, WA.
Photo by P.M. Richardson from the archives
of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

Schooner PROSPER
Built by Hall Brothers Yard, WA.
Sailing into Port Townsend, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photo pre-dating 1911
by P.M. Richardson
from the Saltwater People Historical Society©

Barkentine KOKO HEAD
Built 1908 by Hind-Rolph
Sailing into Port Townsend, WA.
Photo by Torka's Studio, Port Townsend, WA.
From the archives of Saltwater People©

Union Dock, Port Townsend, WA. 
Dated 1908.
Litho postcard from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"Port Townsend began with homestead claims filed in April 1851, six months before Seattle's pioneering Denny party landed at Alki Point.
      By 1854 the U.S. Customs office moved here.

U.S. Customs House
Port Townsend, WA.
Litho postcard from the Saltwater People
Historical Society©

It had been in Olympia, which forced sea captains to sail the length of Puget Sound before legally going ashore. Isaac Ebey had been appointed customs collector in 1853, and he campaigned for Port Townsend to be designated as the official port of entry. From his home on the west shore of Whidbey Island, he could see ships turning in or out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and cross the inlet to clear them.
      With ships required to stop, Pt. Townsend readily grew as a supply center. Its legal services included banking and merchandising and also consul representation by Great Britain, France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the independent kingdom of Hawaii.

Union Dock, Port Townsend, WA.
SS CHIPPEWA on the left.
Click image to enlarge.
Photo by P.M. Richardson from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Pt. Townsend's 1850s economy at first depended largely on San Francisco's gold rush appetite for Puget Sound timber. By 1858 and into the 1860s it benefited from gold discoveries on the Fraser River and in the Cariboo District of B.C., thousands of miners streamed north. Through the 1870s Pt. Townsend grew steadily but unspectacularly. For a while it expected to be the West Coast terminus of the transcontinental railroad, a vain hope fostered by the appointment of Judge James Swan as Northern Pacific agent. The tracks stopped at Tacoma instead. Nonetheless, Pt. Townsend burgeoned, boosted by the population surge and overall optimism that rode the rails across the entire state in the 1850s.

Gig ashore, Port Townsend, WA., c. 1910
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

       Pt. Townsend slumbered without a major industry until 1927, when a pulp mill opened. In one way, the long lull was a blessing: handsome commercial buildings and homes were neither altered nor razed. They remain as a remarkably intact legacy from the past."
Source:
Above text: Ruth Kirk and Carmela Alexander. Exploring Washington's Past. The University of WA. Press. 1990.

Waterfront, Port Townsend, Washington
Undated photo.

Point Hudson boat harbor with
entries for the Pacific International
Yachting Association's regatta, July 1957.
Port Townsend, WA.
Photographer unknown.
Original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

1938 Danish Spidsgatter PIA
S38 D14
Aho'i and Maggie
Home Port –– Olympia, WA.
Early departure from Watmough Bight anchorage,
San Juan Archipelago, 6 Sept. 2018.
En route to meet with 300 wooden boats at the
42nd Port Townsend Wooden Boat Show.
Photo courtesy of mariner Jason Hines,
who sailed to the show in his Danish-built, SVANE.

Point Hudson

42nd Annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Show

Courtesy of PIA crew Maggie Woltjer©

September 2018.

Our roving reporter/mariner Maggie of PIA©
helps us wrap it up with flowers.
Port Townsend Wooden Boat Show, Sept. 2018.
Wooden Boats Forever.
Thank you to these talented participants;
volunteers, woodworkers, sailors, photographers, florist.