SAILING THE ISLANDS WITH JUNE

Apologies to readers who are fond of the writing of June Burn, it has been too long since we've enjoyed her cheerful words. Here she comes sailing through the islands she loved so well.

Several of the San Juan Islands in view  
from a vantage on Orcas Island, WA.
Silver/gelatin photograph by J.A. McCormick
an early photographer who set up his studio in 
the drugstore, Friday Harbor, WA.
Dated 11 June 1933.
Low-res scan from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

     On the way to Friday Harbor in the Pawnee, chugging into the first southeastern of the season. The steel-blue waves come rolling up the channel towards us, our little boat climbing them merrily. What fun to feel the lift and drop, lift and drop of the light boat over waves at right angles to our keel. If they were coming side-on the heavy rocking wouldn't be at all pleasant. One might even condescend to get seasick in that case. But to go galloping over waves, up and down, is great fun. The splash of the fine spray into the face, the difficulty of keeping the footing, the delight of feeling oneself so close against the very breast of raw life––it isn't hard to understand why old sailors pine away and die when they retire!
        The islands sail by in stately procession––Speiden and the Cactus group, Flat Top, Jones, Yellow Island, McConnell, Orcas, and the shores of San Juan. Around the last point of San Juan, before the boat slides into Friday Harbor Bay, we see the new home of Dr. Frye, director of the biological station. It extends high against the sky on a grassy, rocky bluff. You will know it by its isolation, its pale rose color, and its location. Snug, sunny little houses, it looks with its many windows.
        Beautiful Friday Harbor with its wide curving bay front and the hills rising soon behind it, the white houses swarming over every hill. There are few seafront villages prettier. The waterfront has not been allowed to grow shabby. Nothing is untidy. The effect is one of freshness and charm. Even on a gray day, the village looks shining and lively.
        On the left of the entrance is the fish cannery, surrounded on any Saturday in season, by a fleet of purse seine boats home for the holiday of no fishing. I went to the cannery first thing to ask Captain Willy how many cases of salmon he had canned this year.
        A hundred thousand, he said, and called it an average year. If that is average I wonder what a bumper year would yield? I've bought Friday Harbor canned salmon in Washington, DC to California, in Florida, and wherever else I've ever lived. I dare say if one went to Hindustan, one could buy Friday Harbor salmon. Some of the fishermen out on the traps say that it has been better. Captain Willy's average is pretty likely to be nearest the truth.
        Salmon canning started in Puget Sound back before 1887. The peak was reached in 1917, with forty-five canneries running. There were fourteen in 1928. The biggest year was in 1913, with a total catch of spring, sockeye, coho (silvers), chums (dogs), pinks (humpbacks), and steelheads of a little over two and a half million fish with a total value of thirteen and a third million dollars. The total catch in 1917 was 892,244 fish, valued at $7,957,330. The next best year was in 1917 when there was a big run of pinks.
        On the extreme right of the entrance to Friday Harbor stands the pea cannery. Mr. Henry tells me that they canned 6 4,000 cases this year. The best year they have ever had, he says. The cannery itself plants 200 acres on San Juan Island, supplying itself with peas for about half the pack. The rest of the peas are bought from farmers who sell the hulled (they call them "vined:) peas to the cannery and feed the vines and hulls to their stock, thus realizing two profits from their crop. They get something like $70 a ton for the vined peas, which is the average yield from an acre. Thy hay and hulls are worth five or six dollars a ton for the four or five tons to the acre. But the cream which is produced by the hay and hulls is worth a great deal more than that so that the farmer who raises peas harvests a "right smart" crop. Moreover, the peas enrich the land they grow on.
        The quality of the peas was better this year than ever before, too Mr. Henry says. Sunny Isle and Saltair are the world's best. Sweeter, juicier, tenderer, and fuller of piquant flavor than peas grown inland. There is something about the salt air that does improve the flavor of peas, they say.

The upper view looks northeast 
towards Bellingham and Mt. Baker. 
A cruise on the mailboat route
 to various islands, from June's 
homeport in Bellingham,
  Whatcom County, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photos from the archives of 
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

        The cannery employed about a hundred workers this season, with nearly fifty more vining in the fields.
        Up the steep main street which overlooks the water, I met Captain Scribner of the Medea. That is the boat in which the biological students go afield hunting red algae and dogfish, snails, and sea urchins, sand dollars, and a thousand and one other sea plants and animals with long Latin names, most of them so little familiar that they have never been given pet names at all. If any of you want to spend a profitable and delightful summer learning things about this wonderful country of ours, take a summer course at the U of WA biological station at Friday Harbor. You will be compelled to study and work hard. I tell you, but it is the best way to get acquainted with your land. See you tomorrow. June.

Author/journalist June Burn.