❖ Crossing the Flats to Utsalady ❖

THE BLACK PRINCE

One June morning just at daylight, the Black Prince was crossing the flats from the South Fork of the Skagit River to Utsalady with a tow. It was a very foggy morning. You would call it a complete saturation. A cold Northeast breeze blew down off the snow-covered ridges of the Cascades. Bill was out on the forward deck taking soundings and calling them to the wheelhouse. It was a very shallow, and sounding pole Bill used was marked in feet. Bill shoved his pole to the bottom. He read the markings at the edge of the water and shouted the footings to the bridge. He did it again and again, shouting the depths as the bottom changed. Six-seven-eight!
      It's a cold, wet job-a'standing and a'hollering. Bille felt his a useless task. Why stay out in the cold and take soundings! The water depth was about the same, varying only by a few inches or, at most, a foot-all the way across the flats. So Bill decked inside by the boiler, relishing the warmth. Every few minutes he stuck his head outside and yelled, "Six feet, seven feet," and to himself, he muttered, "shucks, who'll know the difference!"
      How could he know that the boat hit a sand bar, that it was stuck fast a the very moment he was a'yelling out the window, "Six, seven, eight!"
      But he had a rude awakening. It came in the form of the skipper's foot––right in the posterior portion of his anatomy––with such force that it propelled Bill right over the side into a very cold and wet four feet of water.
      They dragged him aboard shivering! And Bill felt a much wiser boy and told himself he'd learned a lesson as the changed his clammy clothes. He came on deck to find a fast falling tide leaving the boat high and dry. But that wasn't the only thing high! The pitch of the captain's voice as he scolded Bill was something awful. The language he used would have made the sun hide its face in shame if it had been shining.
      Hours later the tide started back. And they told Bill to make a mark someplace outside so that the rise of the incoming tide could be measured. Bill did it carefully. And it wasn't more than an hour or so before the captain yelled to Bill to run and see how much the tide had raised since he had made the mark. Bill ran and came back, "It ain't raised none, sir," he said.
      A half-hour later the captain sent him to look again. Bill reported once more that the tide hadn't raised an inch.
      This time the captain took him by the arm. "Bill, show me this mark you've made."
      "Yes, sir," and Bill pointed very proudly to the white chalk mark drawn on the side of the hull about two inches above the waterline.

Captain M.F. Galligan
Gig Harbor, WA. 
Piling Busters Yearbook 1951 
Stories of Towboating by Towboat Men
Mitchell Publications, Seattle, WA.