❖ TRICKS OF THE TRADE by Glen Carter (1923-2002) ❖

Seattle Terminal
The top postcard was postmarked in 1927.
Click the image to enlarge.

"When it comes to preferences of newsmen's beats, I stand pat with good-enough cards.
      I have pounded a few sidewalks and regard police stations, city halls, and politicians, as look-alikes.
      But there is only one Port of Seattle.
      Besides, I can get away from my desk. Most of the action is in Seattle Harbor. But it also ranges from San Diego to the Aleutians and from Elliott Bay to the Far East.
      When somebody growls that I have missed a story, I remind him it is a big ocean out there and I cannot cover every square foot of it thoroughly. So far, so good.
      Of course, I don't cover the maritime beat alone. Hundreds of persons are involved, and there are valuable mechanical aids. My most prized is the telephone. Not to mention reference books, nautical charts, ship registers, the Marine Exchange, Coast Guard, and Navy public information, teletypes, periodicals, trade papers, and hundreds of phone numbers of who's what in the Pacific Northwest maritime business.
      

      Ask me the water depth of any place in Puget Sound. I will tell you after consulting my nautical charts near at hand. Tide books are in my desk drawer. A Port of Seattle map of piers is on the wall.
      Among my handy-dandy aids is a volume listing all American-flag merchant ships, their owners, home ports, and radio call letters. Also the length, tonnage, and horsepower of each. I know what phone number to dial to learn about ships of foreign nations.
      Ships' tonnage? There are six kinds. Please don't ask me why, but I can read them to you.
      lf you are beginning to surmise that I am not a walking encyclopedia, you are right. I don't burden my memory files with data that can be stowed and plucked from drawers and cabinets.

The bottom postcard was postmarked from 
Seattle in 1952 by a Capt. Jim ______.
Click image to enlarge.

      Bend this way a little closer, gentle reader, and I will whisper some trade secrets. Call it the confessions of a professional waterfront chronicler.
      One challenge I've grown to accept is Seattle's legion of ship-watchers. They spot odd-looking vessels out their windows and phone inquiries to me. The way to identify a passing steamship through binoculars is by the insignia on its stack. I find its listed company if the caller describes the insignia. The chart near my desk shows symbols of nearly all foreign and domestic steamship lines operating on the West Coast. Once the ship's owner is known, my books tell me what agency in Seattle represents that line. I phone the agent and ask what ship is incoming or due.
      Without helpful agents, maritime news would be dreadfully tepid. Ask a savvy agent the ship's length, tonnage, number of crewmen, nationality, captain's name, engine horsepower, and what cargo is aboard. He knows--after consulting documents.
      Ask me how much wheat is going to be shipped from Seattle this week, and I will tell you--thanks to the right phone number at the Pier 86 grain terminal.
      No brag, just fact.
      People on learning I am a maritime editor suggest that I probably meet a lot of interesting people. I usually concur but add that I hear an awful lot more phone voices.
      Keeping track of merchant-ship traffic in Puget Sound is easy. Estimated times of arrival are available a month in advance.
      If a strange-looking ship is being towed in Puget Sound, I ask the phone caller for the colors of the tug. If its stack is red, I phone the radio dispatcher at Puget Sound Tug & Barge. If the tug is green and white, I dial Foss Launch & Tug.
      Depending on the tug's colors, I phone Puget Sound Freight, American Tug Boat Co., Northland Marine, Pacific Inland Navigation, Washington Tug, Fremont Tugboat. That failing, I fall back and punt.
       My trusty phone and filing cabinets are like a security blanket. I take on all comers. But I'm susceptible to shut-in cabin fever and do get outside for some salt air.

The top photo card with the Sightseer at Pier 54
was postmarked from Seattle in 1949.

       Once I rode a tug to Alaska and back. Also, an Alaska ferry to Skagway, and a train-ship from British Columbia to beautiful downtown Whittier, AK. I usually average one night a year aboard a commercial gillnetter in Puget Sound. On Monday, my day off, I usually am tending my own boat moored in the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
      Despite attempted vigilance, I've missed the last three major ship mishaps within view of my residential neighborhood. When the Sirius caught fire and capsized, I had the day off. A tanker exploded within view of my living room while I was on vacation.
      On the last day of the same vacation, the big Sugar Islander ran aground only blocks away. I sauntered over and gazed down at it from Magnolia Bluff.
      Embarrassing for a pro.
      I vowed never again to miss another major fire, explosion, capsizing, or grounding. My chance to atone happened at 2 o'clock one Monday morning--again my day off. But the dock foreman who rousted me out of bed said it looked pretty serious. Two men hospitalized. Flames shooting.
      Again, it was visible through my living-room window. I jumped into my car and sped toward the scene--only to be stopped by police for traffic violations. I got to the scene after the fire was out but interviewed some soot-smeared crewmen. The fire could have been disastrous but wasn't.
      Spectaculars come and go, but long-ago ships in men's minds go on forever. Mention some famous old Seattle freighter in a line of type, and my telephone rings. I get mail.
      One thing leads to another, and I am knee-deep in Puget Sound maritime history. I have in my home library perhaps 20 volumes on maritime events of yesteryear. The most valuable, to me, is the massive and fact-jammed H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Another hundred or so are on various nautical subjects.
      But telephone voices are my best friends. I give information and receive it. If anybody cares enough to write to me about something, I take time willingly, to type or pen an answer.
      Sundays and Mondays are my days off. Weather permitting, I'm usually making the rounds of waterfront haunts where men earn their wages but have time to chat briefly. Either that or I'm working aboard my old gaff-rigged sloop or cruising in it.
      All of which is a roundabout way of saying that a man should enjoy his work but not take it home with him, which I don't. It's 50-50 and two-way on the best news job in town."

      Mr. Carter began work at the Seattle Times in 1967 and became marine editor in 1970. He retired in the 1980s to Carousel, his 38-ft Ingrid sailboat with the motto-- 

"If you live on the water, you'll live forever."

      This essay is an extract from his book My Waterfront published by Seagull Books Co., 1977.