❖ CAPTAIN OLE AND HIS BINNACLE

CAPT. OLE STOKKE
Troller BLANCO
home from fishing for sole near Tatoosh Is.
Click image to enlarge.
Low res scan of original photo dated May 1949
from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©
     

From the graveyard of lost ships, the BLANCO was prowling. Wreckage from a ship which apparently sank about 40-miles northwest of Tatoosh Island was landed at the San Juan Fishing and Packing Co dock by the fish boat BLANCO.
      The wreckage included a binnacle of a type used by old sailing vessels. A plate on the stand showed that it had been made by Kelvin's & James White, Ltd., of Glasgow. The plate bore the serial number 9011.
      The BLANCO also brought ashore a piece from a ship's bow and a piece from a lifeboat.
      The captain was fishing for petrale sole when he pulled up the wreckage from 42 fathoms of water.

      The lifeboat piece was full of holes made by teredos and because of the size of it, the BLANCO was unable to bring it to port.
      "I think the wreck was an old sailing boat," Capt. Stokke told E. A. Ruthford, vice president of the San Juan Co. "The stuff had been on the bottom a long time." The BLANCO was owned by Capt. Ole and his brother, Martin Stokke. 
      The trolling boat ROYAL sent a wireless to the Coast Guard that a hit and run steamship wrecked the Tacoma troller BLANCO at 3:30 a.m. this day off Umatilla Lightship, killing one man. The ROYAL took the only survivor, Ed Petersen to the Lightship.

1936: The 18-ton fish boat BLANCO was run down by an unknown lightship on 21 August 1936. Two of her 3-man crew were lost.
      The Coast Guard division headquarters dispatched the cutter REDWING and a plane from Port Angeles base and a lifeboat to pick up the wreckage and rescue the body of Engvald Peterson, imprisoned in the debris.
      The ROYAL also requested the Coast Guard to seek identity of the steamship. It said it could not determine whether the vessel was northbound or southbound. 
      The tragedy happened about 6-miles SE by S of the lightship, the ROYAL wirelessed." 
Text from the Seattle Times, August 1936.