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Stuart Island,
San Juan Archipelago,
rock formation reflection...
rock and saltwater, sideways.
Photograph courtesy of the
clever Maggie Wjolter,
crew on PIA cruising this date,
14 August 2019
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30 October 2019
👻 HAPPY HALLOWEEN 🎃
11 October 2019
❖ WHEELING OUT THE GOLD DUST ❖
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Master & pilot Ralph W. Newcomb Looking back with photographs of his career in the north. Photo dated 1955. Low res scan of an original photo from the Saltwater People Historical Society© |
"Fabulous gold strikes...dog-team runs across the Arctic...inch-by-inch navigation of treacherous river channels...hard times...and gay, unforgettable times, too.
These were the memories of Captain Ralph Newcomb, one of the last of the pioneer ‘paddleboat’ skippers of the Northland who helped shape Alaska’s colorful history.
Newcomb was a youth in Wisconsin when reports of gold strikes in the Klondike lured prospectors from every corner of the nation.
Steamboat veterans of the Mississippi River were needed to man the ‘paddle-boats' pressed into service to carry gold seekers and their supplies into the booming North Country.
Among those who cast their lot with the Klondike were Newcomb’s father, Capt. Orrin J. Newcomb, and his brother, Capt. Bertram Newcomb. They went north in 1898 and young Ralph Newcomb followed a year later.
Steamers built 'outside' were dismantled and shipped to Captain’s Bay near Unalaska. There they were reassembled and towed to St. Michael, the former Russian community at the mouth of the mighty Yukon.
These early vessels carried both passengers and freight. Most were about 225-feet long and were fired with spruce cordwood. Barges were shoved ahead or lashed alongside.
Newcomb’s first assignment was as purser aboard the HANNAH, an Alaska Commercial Co. ship.
His father was the captain and his brother was the pilot. Later Newcomb served on the BELLA and the SUSIE, two other fabled sternwheelers.
His father was the captain and his brother was the pilot. Later Newcomb served on the BELLA and the SUSIE, two other fabled sternwheelers.
The HANNAH took out more than $1,000,000 in gold dust in Newcomb’s year aboard her. The gold was kept in the purser’s office, with guards posted nearby.
Newcomb, not taking any risks, placed a sheet of steel on the floor so thieves could not bore up through the floor and tap the bags.
'Good thing, too,' he said. 'Later we found some shavings and judged they drilled until they hit metal.'
Newcomb made his first trips as a purser in 1901. The next year he became a “flat pilot,” using the knowledge of the river he was able to gain the year before.
'My job was to take the boats over the Yukon Flats—the worst part of the river,' Newcomb explained.
'It was so shallow there were times we couldn’t run. We needed at least 4 1/2 of water.'
'I learned my way by just by making the trip several times. There were no charts, only what you made yourself.'
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Sternwheeler SUSIE Built 1898 Unalaska, 223' /1,130 G.t. Getting ready for a 1,600-mile run to Dawson. Last used in 1917; abandoned at St. Michael in 1942. Here, alongside her bud SARAH. Published by Edward H. Mitchell. Photo card from the archives of Saltwater People Hist. Society© |
In 1904 Newcomb became a full-fledged pilot on the SUSIE between St. Michael and Dawson, the rip-roaring frontier town.
Newcomb remembers the turn of the century when more than 150 steamers, big and little, plied the Yukon.
The St. Michael-Dawson run covered 1,600 miles. The upriver journey requires 12 days and the boats returned in half that time.
'I was a pilot for a long time,' Newcomb said. 'It took a while to become a captain with all of the experienced men around.'
In 1921 Newcomb received his first post as master of a sternwheeler, hauling freight between Fairbanks and Tanana on the Tanana River. The boat, too, was named the Tanana, owned by the American Yukon Navigation Co.
The river-shipping industry took a stiff jolt in 1923 when the long-sought Alaska Railroad was completed to Fairbanks.
'That knocked out a lot of our business.' Newcomb said. 'Then they bridged the Tanana at Nenana and the big boats couldn't get through to Fairbanks.'
Newcomb returned to piloting. He served with Capt. John S. McCann on the steamer YUKON until the famed skipper retired in 1938. Then Newcomb became master of the YUKON.
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Steamer YUKON hauling freight from Nenana, AK., at the confluence of the Tanana & Nenana Rivers. 64º33'53" N, 149º6'18" W. Click image to enlarge. original photo from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society© |
This was the era of tourist travel on the scenic canyon-walled Yukon River.
The outbreak of the Second World War snuffed out the tourist trade. Newcomb was sent to the lower Yukon to haul military cargoes between Nenana and Galena. It was riverboats to the rescue as the Alaska Railroad was swamped with emergency shipments.
The severe winter of 1946 spelled the end of the 'grand old lady of the river,' the YUKON. Ice damaged her hull, but Newcomb built cofferdams and made enough repairs to float the vessel into Nenana.
The company then decided the YUKON was too old (built in 1913 and 1914 in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory) and pulled her from the river. She was stripped and left to decay.
Newcomb 'retired' for the first time in 1947. But the river was his life. The Black Navigation Co. hired him to pilot small diesel boats on the Tanana. Later he went with the British Yukon Navigation Co., tugging barges from Mayo to Whitehorse.
I'd sailed this area in 1922 and I knew the river,' Newcomb said. 'They needed experienced people.'
In this period Newcomb served aboard the AKSALA –– formerly the ALASKA, the YUKON's sister ship, renamed by juggling a few letters.
The boatman's last seasons were 1951 and 1952, with the black firm. He hauled freight again on the Tanana. Since then he has been a full-time resident of Seattle's Ballard District.
Even Newcomb, who had seen scores of bitterly disappointed men leave the goldfields as paupers were not immune to the lure of the gold trails. He spent several winters prospecting, 'but always a hundred yards off the paystreak.'
The veteran steamboat man recalls one venture into the Yellow River in 1900, 'when I nearly starved to death.' He gave this account:
'It was a phony story about a gold strike. But we didn't know it then. To make matters worse, the last supply ship didn't get in in the fall and the few stores and missions there were mighty short of food.
'Many turned back, including my father. But I had my neck bowed and kept going to see for my self what it was all about.'
Newcomb's partner, a plucky Michigan man name Fred Bosworth, froze one foot and the men were forced to turn into an Indian village.
The only shelter available was a crude shack with a 51/2-ft ceiling.
Six feet of new snow sifted down and the would-be prospectors had to remain in the village. Their only food was fish the natives had caught nearly three months before and stacked on the ice like pieces of firewood.
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Eskimo residence Photograph by the well-known John E. Thwaites Scan from an original in the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society© |
A few weeks later the trail improved and Newcomb and Bosworth made it to a trading village 100-miles down the Kuskokwim River.
By good fortune, an army contract doctor returning from a prospecting trip arrived in the village. Bosworth was stretched out on a table. Newcomb chloroformed him and the doctor amputated a piece of a toe.
Then Newcomb returned his partner to St. Michael by sled. Newcomb walked the entire distance because there wasn't room for two on the sled.
'But he was a wonderful partner.' Newcomb said. 'I never heard a whimper or whine out of him the whole time with all the pain.
'It was rough, all right. But I wouldn't have missed it for a million dollars.'
Text by Stanton Patty for the Seattle Times March 1955.
08 October 2019
❖ FISHING THE HARD WAY ❖
November 1979 with columnist Jo Ann Morse
"Summertime travelers on ferries going between Lopez and Shaw Islands via Upright Channel often are intrigued by an array of open wooden boats, each with a tower at one end, anchored in an apparently deliberate pattern offshore of both islands. Lone figures stand motionless on each tower, staring intently at the water through Polaroid goggles.
Few onlookers, if they don't live here, are aware they are watching one of the oldest methods of catching salmon known to man, a method said to have originated with the Lummi Native Americans just north of the San Juan Islands in Whatcom County.
This is the only place in the world you'll see reefnet fishing. Here in the San Juans it's done by the white man who adopted the technique from the Native Americans. Around Lummi Island, both Indian and white fishermen set reefnet gear. Their boats and barges with outside towers are connected by nets with floats punctuating the rippled surface.
Most of the local reefnet gear has been brought in for the winter now, and we shall miss the 'set' that stood off the point a short distance from our waterfront deck. On a couple of occasions, we have managed to wheedle a salmon from the fishermen who spent daylight hours atop those towers watching for a run of fish headed north to spawn. We were close enough to hear the jubilant shouts ' Here they come!' and to watch the nimble tower-riders swoop down to hoist nets aboard, a couple of dozen salmon dancing shimmering silver in the sunlight.
Some of the young people on our island have chosen to fish in this relatively primitive fashion and we silently cheered them on with each 'pull.' the season is short. This year they were not allowed to fish as often as usual. We suspect they may not have had enough to pay for the expensive nets, but these are the same people who push for conservation.
Reefnetting carries with it an aura of native mystique. Reefnetters traditionally do not talk about what they do and discourage people from coming along to observe or photograph the operations. For one thing, there isn't much room in the narrow boats with their flared gunwales. Extra bodies are in the way and not at all welcome.
Until this summer nobody had put this strangely intriguing harvest on film. But now comes an extremely determined graduate of Evergreen State College in Olympia who earned his degree by producing an extraordinary half-hour documentary entitled Salt Water People.
Scott Miller, who never had written a grant proposal in his young life, spent four months at it. After observing that it was the best grant writing they'd seen, the Youth Grants program of the National Endowments for the Humanities awarded Miller nearly $10,000 to record this oldest of fishing arts in Northwest waters.
That was three years ago. With Sid White of Evergreen State art department as his faculty sponsor, Miller and his friend Peter Alkins produced a film that earned Miller full credit on a two-year individual contract. In the process, he spent all of the grant money plus $2,000 of his own money, lived on crunchy granola, bartered salmon in the county park campground on Shaw, and wore out his old station wagon. Evergreen supplied the technical equipment and local islanders cooperated in several ways. Miller's wife, Lisa, is an accomplished professional potter and Miller tells you frequently about the pottery sales and encouragement that kept him going.
Salt Water People was a difficult film to make, partly because of the salt water people themselves. But Miller had good credentials. Several years ago he had fished with a well-known Shaw Island reefnetter. That friendship was invaluable in overcoming innate suspicion and talking himself aboard some of the reefnet boats. He also spent arduous months making quiet contacts among the Lummi, finally persuading one venerable tribal elder to talk about the legend and lore of reefnetting among her people. It was only a few days before the final editing that he even got permission to use some color stills of the Native woman.
The film is a head-on confrontation with the state of art as practiced today. Miller wisely eschewed the obvious, and probably tempting, archeological dig in favor of quiet narrative; the elderly Native woman, white reefnetters on Lummi, Shaw, and Lopez, who have run gear for many years, and finally a young Shaw Island couple who set gear within sight of their beachfront home.
It may look romantic from the deck of a ferry, but reefnetting is hard labor, complicated by strong currents that constantly foul gear which must be kept clear of kelp and flotsam. Reefnetters stand atop their towers in the blazing sun and in summer storms that can build up waves steep enough to toss the towers in sweeping arcs nearly down to the water. They can't quit on a fishing day, regardless of weather. Those days are too few.
There is considerable footage of the competing fishing fleets that pave the Strait of Juan de Juca during the fishing season. Yet there is little bitterness in the voices and wonderfully weatherbeaten faces of the reefnetters. It's an art, a way of life, a love affair with a tough lady. They fish the hard way because they want to. One of the reefnet fishermen feels so intensely about it that he has turned some of the farmland into a final resting place for the years-old reefnet boats he finds about the country and up north near Lummi.
Right now Miller is working and trying to find some more money for prints of the film. He is a softspoken, deceptively gentle 26-year-old who began his college career on a football scholarship at Colorado State. He bagged it, soon after, and if you want to know why, 'My next film may be about the insanity of college football...'
Like its producer, Salt Water People is low-keyed and gentle, but it's full of throat-catching qualities that make me think it's an important one. The reefnet fisher may not be among endangered species––yet––but neither is it proliferating. The film tells you about the people who fish and how they do it. These are not the taciturn, grunting deckhands of a corporate commercial fishing vessel, pouring tons of salmon into cavernous holds. These are happy gamblers with nature because reefnetting is a kind of gamble and the reefnet fisherman admires his prey.
Nets are set, lines strung to make the fish think they are approaching a reef. They swerve to avoid it and theoretically will swim right over and into the net. It's a critical moment that requires good timing. Sometimes they get away. In this film, they do get away. A young couple wearily resumes posts on the towers, and the gal excitedly calls across to her husband. 'Wow! I wonder if they feel like I'd feel if I got away!"
Text by Jo Ann Morse Ridley, for Enetai. 7 Nov. 1979
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Jim Sesby & Ed Hopkins, reefnet fishermen, Off Squaw Bay, Shaw Island, center of the San Juan archipelago, WA. Dated 1983 Photo courtesy of Gear 7 owners, Ed and Kathy Hopkins. click image to enlarge. |
Few onlookers, if they don't live here, are aware they are watching one of the oldest methods of catching salmon known to man, a method said to have originated with the Lummi Native Americans just north of the San Juan Islands in Whatcom County.
This is the only place in the world you'll see reefnet fishing. Here in the San Juans it's done by the white man who adopted the technique from the Native Americans. Around Lummi Island, both Indian and white fishermen set reefnet gear. Their boats and barges with outside towers are connected by nets with floats punctuating the rippled surface.
Most of the local reefnet gear has been brought in for the winter now, and we shall miss the 'set' that stood off the point a short distance from our waterfront deck. On a couple of occasions, we have managed to wheedle a salmon from the fishermen who spent daylight hours atop those towers watching for a run of fish headed north to spawn. We were close enough to hear the jubilant shouts ' Here they come!' and to watch the nimble tower-riders swoop down to hoist nets aboard, a couple of dozen salmon dancing shimmering silver in the sunlight.
Some of the young people on our island have chosen to fish in this relatively primitive fashion and we silently cheered them on with each 'pull.' the season is short. This year they were not allowed to fish as often as usual. We suspect they may not have had enough to pay for the expensive nets, but these are the same people who push for conservation.
Reefnetting carries with it an aura of native mystique. Reefnetters traditionally do not talk about what they do and discourage people from coming along to observe or photograph the operations. For one thing, there isn't much room in the narrow boats with their flared gunwales. Extra bodies are in the way and not at all welcome.
Until this summer nobody had put this strangely intriguing harvest on film. But now comes an extremely determined graduate of Evergreen State College in Olympia who earned his degree by producing an extraordinary half-hour documentary entitled Salt Water People.
Scott Miller, who never had written a grant proposal in his young life, spent four months at it. After observing that it was the best grant writing they'd seen, the Youth Grants program of the National Endowments for the Humanities awarded Miller nearly $10,000 to record this oldest of fishing arts in Northwest waters.
That was three years ago. With Sid White of Evergreen State art department as his faculty sponsor, Miller and his friend Peter Alkins produced a film that earned Miller full credit on a two-year individual contract. In the process, he spent all of the grant money plus $2,000 of his own money, lived on crunchy granola, bartered salmon in the county park campground on Shaw, and wore out his old station wagon. Evergreen supplied the technical equipment and local islanders cooperated in several ways. Miller's wife, Lisa, is an accomplished professional potter and Miller tells you frequently about the pottery sales and encouragement that kept him going.
Salt Water People was a difficult film to make, partly because of the salt water people themselves. But Miller had good credentials. Several years ago he had fished with a well-known Shaw Island reefnetter. That friendship was invaluable in overcoming innate suspicion and talking himself aboard some of the reefnet boats. He also spent arduous months making quiet contacts among the Lummi, finally persuading one venerable tribal elder to talk about the legend and lore of reefnetting among her people. It was only a few days before the final editing that he even got permission to use some color stills of the Native woman.
The film is a head-on confrontation with the state of art as practiced today. Miller wisely eschewed the obvious, and probably tempting, archeological dig in favor of quiet narrative; the elderly Native woman, white reefnetters on Lummi, Shaw, and Lopez, who have run gear for many years, and finally a young Shaw Island couple who set gear within sight of their beachfront home.
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L-R: Ed Hopkins, Doug Fawcett, Kathi Melville, Doug Baier, Roger Melville, Shaw Island reefnet fishers waiting for the tide. Gear 7. Photo courtesy of Ed & Kathy Hopkins. |
It may look romantic from the deck of a ferry, but reefnetting is hard labor, complicated by strong currents that constantly foul gear which must be kept clear of kelp and flotsam. Reefnetters stand atop their towers in the blazing sun and in summer storms that can build up waves steep enough to toss the towers in sweeping arcs nearly down to the water. They can't quit on a fishing day, regardless of weather. Those days are too few.
There is considerable footage of the competing fishing fleets that pave the Strait of Juan de Juca during the fishing season. Yet there is little bitterness in the voices and wonderfully weatherbeaten faces of the reefnetters. It's an art, a way of life, a love affair with a tough lady. They fish the hard way because they want to. One of the reefnet fishermen feels so intensely about it that he has turned some of the farmland into a final resting place for the years-old reefnet boats he finds about the country and up north near Lummi.
Right now Miller is working and trying to find some more money for prints of the film. He is a softspoken, deceptively gentle 26-year-old who began his college career on a football scholarship at Colorado State. He bagged it, soon after, and if you want to know why, 'My next film may be about the insanity of college football...'
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"Winter Storage" Lineo cut block print, 1977 by Rex Brandt, N.A.(1914-2000) former summer resident of Shaw Island, WA. |
Like its producer, Salt Water People is low-keyed and gentle, but it's full of throat-catching qualities that make me think it's an important one. The reefnet fisher may not be among endangered species––yet––but neither is it proliferating. The film tells you about the people who fish and how they do it. These are not the taciturn, grunting deckhands of a corporate commercial fishing vessel, pouring tons of salmon into cavernous holds. These are happy gamblers with nature because reefnetting is a kind of gamble and the reefnet fisherman admires his prey.
Nets are set, lines strung to make the fish think they are approaching a reef. They swerve to avoid it and theoretically will swim right over and into the net. It's a critical moment that requires good timing. Sometimes they get away. In this film, they do get away. A young couple wearily resumes posts on the towers, and the gal excitedly calls across to her husband. 'Wow! I wonder if they feel like I'd feel if I got away!"
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Photo postcard, a winter haulout scene. Blind Bay, Shaw Island, WA. by Rod Peterson© |
Text by Jo Ann Morse Ridley, for Enetai. 7 Nov. 1979