🌎 EARLY SURVEYING IN THE SAN JUAN ISLANDS (UPDATED) ❖

"Straits of Rosario, Cypress Island, and
Strawberry Harbor on the right.
Mt. Constitution & Hautboy Island, the latter 
being an old name for Strawberry Island.
Hautboy is a species of strawberry,
Fragaria moschata."
Painting by James Madison Alden (1834-1922),
National archives Record 5396161
Archived at College Park, MD.
Click image to enlarge.

"Semiahmoo Bay, from bluff with Camp
Semiahmoo, Drayton Harbor, and distant view
of Mt. Baker between 1857-1862."
Painting by James Madison Alden
(1834-1922)
National Archives Record 305488
archived at College Park, MD.
Click image to enlarge.

"View from hill on San Juan Island looking south
with Ontario Roads ACTIVE & SATELLITE at
anchor near Lopez Island with Mt. Baker
in distance between 1857-1862."
Painting by James Madison Alden (1834-1922)
From the National Archives, College Park, MD.
Record: 5396161
Click image to enlarge

James Alden Jr. (1810-1877)
courtesy of Wikipedia.

   "The first marine surveying in the San Juan Islands was done by Lieutenant James Alden (1810-1877) of the US Coast Survey in 1852. He led the Hydrographic Party of the US on the coast from 1848-1860 in the ACTIVE. He said the only discovery of importance made that season was a shoal near the entrance of Rosario Strait between Sucia Island and the mainland since called Alden Bank.   
      Surveys continued for approximately a decade. In 1857 the surveyors contended with heavy smoke from forest fires which prevented them from seeing the shore. The following summer they complained of drenching rains. Another handicap was the remarkable range of refraction which distorted the appearance of the shores on exceptionally clear days.
      Work like this, far from settlements, was tough going. Between seasons winter storms washed out a base mark at the southern end of Lummi Island and Native Americans destroyed other stations. George Davidson, who supervised the surveying, concluded in the oldest Pacific Coast Pilot (1859):
      'The experience of three seasons in this locality has not increased our relish for navigating these channels in sailing vessels. With plenty of wind, no navigation could be better, but in a calm, vessels will frequently be jammed close to rocks with only a few fathoms inside of their positions, but 40 to 50 outside, and a swirling current that renders towing the boats utterly impossible.'
      Elsewhere he said, "The number of islands and intricate channels lying between the two straits we shall not attempt to describe. A proper appreciation of them can only be obtained from the chart."
      Modern marine surveying made possible much more complete mapping than in the days of sail, but this too had handicaps.
      Owners of large fishing craft expected the survey launch to get out of the way even though it was engaged in running a grid of straight lines and often the little boat was threatened with swamping or a collision. Crossing kelp beds sometimes involved chewing the long tubular stems with the propeller, stalling, reversing, and chewing the way forward again. Sometimes the work was complicated by a fathometer echo from floating kelp, added to the echo from the bottom. Grass growing two to seven feet high on the bottom of Mosquito Pass and Roche Harbor gave off a puzzling double echo. Incidentally, the deepest hole in the islands was found between Jones and Flattop, where 133 fathoms were recorded.
     The temperature of the seawater in the islands is remarkably constant from the surface to bottom. This may be because it is so thoroughly roiled it gets little chance to warm near the surface. The water stays cold all year, not changing more than ten degrees. Fahrenheit in the hot summer months. Water temperature will swing from 45 degrees in the winter to 55 in the summer. 
     Part of the assignment of surveyors was to measure the tidal currents. It meant launches had to anchor in one spot for 100 hours at a stretch to record the rate of flow every half hour. In Spieden Channel, between San Juan and Spieden Islands, where the tide runs five knots and up to six knots under certain conditions, hydrography had its thrilling aspects.
     Other fast currents are in Cattle Pass between the southern ends of San Juan and Lopez Islands, and around Cactus Island. 
     In fog, the owner of a small boat would be out of luck without knowledge of such current. In Cattle Pass, for example, with the current running top speed and the wind against it, a man attempting the passage in an open boat ought to have his life insurance paid up.
     A survey officer told me, "While the San Juans have no whirlpools in constant directions, they can produce places which must have looked pretty bad to old sailboat men."
      Juan Pantoja would have agreed with him.
     You'll hear different versions of the same story everywhere you go in the San Juans –– about the man who cruised among the islands without a marine chart. He pulled into Fossil Bay at Sucia, tied his line to a buoy and exclaimed that this didn't look like East Sound to him. When asked if he had checked his chart, he said he had none; he was using a Washington road map.
      "Where are you bound from here?" he was asked.
      "For Sidney on Vancouver Island," was the reply.
      "I don't think that road map is going to do you much good out in Haro Strait," the moorage man told him."
Lucile S. McDonald. Making History, the People Who Shaped the San Juan Islands. Friday Harbor Press, Friday Harbor, WA. 1990.


James Madison Alden trained as a US Navy cartographer, but he is best known for his landscape paintings beginning on the West Coast of the US and near the new US-Canada border while he was serving on the Coast Survey ship the USCS ACTIVE in 1854 under command of his uncle James Alden Jr. (1810-1877)

There is a historical plaque on Cypress Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA., to commemorate this artwork by James Madison Alden.