❖ ADVENTURES WITH CAPT. TARTE ❖ June Burn in 1930

From Military History Now. 

"The adventure in which young Jim Tarte was involved in Victoria, was far more serious than a mere thirty-six-mile row on the Strait of Juan de Fuca at its maddest. Even if that trip had meant death to him it would still have been less serious than the incident I am about to relate now. 
      It used to be the custom in the English navy to flog naughty sailors at 4 o'clock in the morning. Many was the time the Tarte family had heard the screams of some poor devil getting his daily dozen from the cat-o'-nine tails out on a man-of-war a mile away from Victoria. Perhaps recollections of those horrible early-dawn sounds made young Jim more willing to engage upon the dangerous job of helping one of those sailors due for such a flogging.
      The chap, a marine, was a body-servant to one of the officers. It being the custom for officers to use the enlisted personnel thus. The officer was especially overbearing, exasperating. One day the marine, suddenly unwilling to endure any more, lifted his hand to strike his master, thought better of it quickly, lifted the motion into a salute. But the officer, knowing what was meant, reported him. He was court-martialed, sentenced to be whipped and turned adrift on a hatch grating with a day's supply of food and water. 
      His fellows asked young Tarte if he would aide them to help the fellow to desert. Plans were made. Somehow they got the irons off his arms, got him ready for the rowboat. 
      'My brother and I rowed quietly alongside,' Captain Tarte says. 'They dropped his little bundle down into the boat and then dropped the marine down and we made off to the shore. When we got on land the fellow offered me $10 but I refused. I made him hold up his right hand and swear that he would touch no drop of liquor until he was out of the country. If he had spent his money for liquor, he would have got drunk and have been caught as others had been. I suppose he kept his promise. I never heard from him again. That was the only time I ever helped a deserter. It would have been five years for me if they had caught me doing it.'
      When the summer in Victoria was over, Jim bought himself a light rowboat, put it aboard the steamer Enterprise, came up the Fraser River to Ladner Landing, had himself set down with his boat. There he hired a yoke of oxen and a sled and hauled his boat to Boundary Bay when he rowed home to Semiahmoo in 1871. Later he sold that boat for $20 to a man down at Bow. 
      In 1872, young Jim shipped on the historic General Harney, owned by Capt Roeder, captained by Mason Clark. Jim was mate.
      In those days the boat would anchor in the mouth of the river at Marietta in eighteen feet of water. Ten years later the river silt had filled in the harbor eleven feet so that the water was only seven feet down. Today [1930] trees grow where the old General Harney used to stand at anchor! That seems incredible and is due, doubtless, to the increased washing from the hills because of their being logged. Bellingham waterfront has been filled in, too, but mostly by artificial means. All manner of buildings stand along our bayfront where ships used to lift and fall with the swells.
      Jim Tarte went off to Seattle for another job on a boat.
      The first thing he got at Seattle was a job loading lumber on Yesler dock. A big Siwash took the end of the lumber on the even side of the pile, leaving the smaller man the far more arduous job of handing the odd lengths. In two days he was done up. A wreck. The captain of the Colfax was looking for a man. When Jim applied the captain cursed him, said he was looking for a man and not a ghost, but ended by giving the young lad a chance. 
      Thus began two years of steamboatin' with one of the roughest old captains whoever came to the Sound.
      See you tomorrow." June Burn. Puget Soundings. April 28 1930.

Jim Tarte (c. 1850-1933) served as mate on steamers COLFAX, ADDIE, NELLIS, DESPATCH & others. His last command was on the steamer BESSIE and his last active service was as mate on the tug DANIEL KERN to Clallam at age 80 years.