"CODFISH FLEET WILL SAIL AND DAMN THE JAPANESE"–– 1940

 

Spars a'waiting to go north.
Wawona and Azalea
winter moorage, Seattle, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
Original gelatin-silver photo from the 
James A. Turner Collection
Saltwater People Historial Society©

"War in the Pacific has no terrors for officers and crews of two romantic old sailing schooners, survivors of the days of "iron men and wooden ships," preparing for deep-seas fishing operations.
      The vessels were the three-masters Wawona, down the ways in Fairhaven, CA, a year before the outbreak of the Spanish-Amerian War, and the Azalea, built in Eureka, CA, fifty-two years ago. Both vessels were owned by the Robinson Fisheries of Anacortes.
      "Unless the dangers from enemy vessels in the North Pacific and the Bering Sea are greatly increased, we will send the Wawona and Azalea to the fishing banks about 15 April, said J.E. Trafton, president of Robinson Fisheries, as he supervised the overhauling of the two sailing schooners.
      The Wawona and Azalea have two-way radiotelephones, and we will be able to keep in constant touch with them while they are on the banks. Two new masts will be stepped in each of the vessels."
      Capt. John Haugen, who has made many voyages to the banks, will command the Wawona. A master for the Azalea has not been selected.
      The 12th Naval District recently announced that plans were being made for the protection of vessels of the fishing industry in the North Pacific.
      Captain Haugen was mate of the Wawona 14 years under the late Captain Foss, who died aboard the vessel in Alaska waters, and was buried at Lost Harbor, Akun Island, in the Eastern Aleutians.
      Reputed to be the largest fore and aft sailing vessel in the world the 156-ft Wawona has a fine record for her owners. She made a voyage to the Fiji islands in the south with lumber during the first world war and since 1912, has been a unit of the Bering Sea codfish fleet with the exception of one season in the Alaskan cannery trade and her voyage to the South Seas.
      Outfitting for the Wawona and Azalea for cruises while the US was at war with Japan, recalled the experience of Capt. J.E. Shields of Seattle, owner and master of the codfather Sophie Christenson in the Bering Sea in 1938.
      Capt. Shields found Japanese fishermen with nets across the lanes followed by migrating salmon in Bristol Bay and sent a wireless message to his Seattle office asking for rifles and ammunition with which to drive the Japs from the Alaska fishing grounds. Soon after the message was sent, the Japanese left the Bering Sea and headed for Japan.
      One Japanese fishing vessel had three ninety-foot motorized scows laying crab nets, while eleven more fifty-four boats were used to gather the catches.
      Capt. Shields estimated that the fishing vessel laid 400 miles of nets."

Newspaper clipping from an unknown publisher, dated 27 February 1940.

Codfisher WAWONA
Survived the war–– she is seen here at 
Clam Harbor, the home shore of the Robert Schoens,
West Sound, Orcas Island.
Seattle photographer brothers Bob and Ira Spring
caught her in this beautiful setting in 1950.
Click image to enlarge.
Low-res scan of a gelatin-silver photograph from 
the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

THE WALKING ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ALASKA––Capt. Keen 1842-1933

 

Captain James Keen
1842-1933
"Father of the Beavers"
Sea captain and fur trader
Pacific Northwest & Alaska.
Low-res scan of a gelatin-silver photo
from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"In 1842 James W. Keen was born in Devonshire, England. As a boy, he roamed the docks of London along with many other British youths, dreaming of a day when he would be called 'Captain.'
His dreams persisted in the face of family opposition until he sailed before the mast to land halfway around the world.
        Entries of Captain Keen's life of adventure in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest are recorded in the logs of United States revenue cutters which he piloted from 1869 to 1915 when he was retired.

      The part he played in settling a boundary-line dispute between Canada and Alaska has become a matter of historical importance. Lights and buoys marking 80 danger points of the Inside Passage were placed as navigation aids at his suggestion.
      Captain Keen's father was born at sea and love of the spume and salty air was passed on to his son. At the age of 16, after an unhappy experience of shipping out as a runaway and being returned, young James was apprenticed to the Hudson's Bay Co. for five years.
      His first assignment was to sail on the bark-rigged steamer Labouche, through the Straits of Magellan. He arrived in Victoria, B.C. on his 17th birthday 1 April 1859. There he was transferred to a vessel sailing for Alaska to engage in fur trading.
      When his apprenticeship expired, Keen was 21 years old and believed he knew enough of the sea to captain his own ship. He left the HBC and took out his first license in Sitka, AK, (which then belonged to Russia) procured a schooner, and set about the business of trading on his own.
      Ermine he bought for as little as 25 cents a skin. A yard and a half of calico, carelessly measured by the stretch of an arm, was standard trade for one marten skin––valued at $6 in the Vancouver, B.C. market. A yard of heavy blanket material was worth 12 marten skins. Guns brought fabulous prices and as an example, two weapons costing $4 and $5 were traded for 70 marten skins and exchanged in Vancouver for $420.
      While plying back and forth on Alaska journeys Keen was storing up a vast knowledge of the waters and the life and language of the people of the North.
      Five years after beginning his independent business the young captain had an experience that has been told and retold in the Keen circle.
      Sailing north in his schooner, Sweepstakes, he was overtaken by an American vessel and asked to draw alongside. Capt. Chris Dahl, in command of the steamer Active, advised Keen that Secretary of State Seward was aboard and that they were bound for a vantage point on the Chilkat River to view a total eclipse of the sun and to hold a powwow with the Natives.
      Neither of the two pilots on the Active was familiar with the region and their ship had missed the inlet. Keen was asked to go aboard and pilot the ship to its destination and to act as a Native interpreter for Secretary Seward.
      An agreement was made and the Active continued on––with the Sweepstakes in tow.
      The Seward expedition resulted in Keen becoming known among the Natives as 'Father of the Beavers,' a highly complementary title. In previous years the young navigator had read astronomical forecasts and had told the Natives time and again that the Great White Father someday would make medicine powerful enough to hide the sun and make the moon and the stars come out at midday. The immensity of the boast brought derisive laughter from the Natives.
      Immediately after lunch on 7 August, Keen left his party temporarily and joined the Natives. He was well-versed in the art of interpretation and began to put on an act––moaning and groaning after the fashion of the Native medicine men. As the sun began to darken his groans increased and the Natives, terrified by the awesome twilight at midday, huddled with their blankets pulled over their heads.
      When requested to make known the reason for taking away the sun Keen answered that it was proof of the powerful medicine of his country, which had purchased Alaska the previous year. He further explained that Seward had paid $7,000,000 to the Russian government and that $7,000,000 was equal to seven barrels of gold.
      'Whey you no come to me?' asked the old chief. 'I would have sold you the whole thing for two buckets of silver dollars.'
      Even after the incident of the sun's eclipse, the Natives believed Keen simplicity and he further secured his standing.
      His word among white people was equally respected and during a dispute over the boundary of Alaska, Keen's testimony was the deciding factor that obtained the Lynn Canal for the United States.
      The Canadians laid their claim to possession by right of the Hudson's Bay Co. raising the British colors at Pyramid at the mouth of the Chilkat River.
      Keen, however, made an affidavit that although the company had traded at Pyramid, all transactions had been made from the decks of its vessels. In fact, so great was Native hostility to trespassers, Native chiefs customarily were taken aboard and held hostage at such times as it was necessary to the mate and interpreter to go ashore to measure cordwood.
      Keen's background of early-day fur trading and his reputation for uncompromising honesty balanced the scales in favor of the United States.
      The captain's long service as pilot on revenue cutters is unique. Between the years 1869 and 1915, he was attached to every revenue cutter in Washington and Alaska waters. Every safe passage and every point of danger, every pier and cove, Native village and miner's settlement, he knew in such detail as to be dubbed 'The Walking Encyclopedia of Alaska' by Gov. Henry Kinkade.
      In 1874 a scientific expedition to the fur-seal islands in the Bering Sea was undertaken by the RCS and Keen was signed on as pilot of the Reliance. In a period of ten days, 150,000 fur seals were counted on St. George Island.
      In 1933, years after his retirement, the captain told his daughter, that he was tired of sitting around doing nothing and would like to go back to sea. He was 91-years old.
      A letter went out to Adm. Harry G. Hamlet head of the Coast Guard in WA, D.C., and informed him that he would like to return to active duty and take out a ship.
      The admiral's reply came promptly, saying that he did not have a ship he could recommission at the moment but just as soon as he did he would let Capt. Keen know.
      However, the captain passed away tranquilly two months later."

Words above by Charlotte Widrig. Published by The Seattle Times. 1953.

❖ Capt. James W. Keen was famous as the pioneer pilot of Washington and Alaska as the holder of the oldest navigator's license on record and as the man whose word settled a dispute between the US and Great Britain over the Alaska boundary. H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Gordon Newell. Superior Publishing. 1965.

COOKING CRABS ON THE BEACH~~1961

Native Americans enjoying a clam bake
on the beach at Neah Bay, Washington
The early 1900s.
Click image to enlarge.
Scan of a photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"Crab-cooking is almost a traditional occupation at the small Clallam County community of Jamestown, on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a few miles northeast of Sequim.

        Jamestown's four crab fishermen are Natives, descended from the founders of the village. Their catch is cooked in drums on the beach and sold in Port Angeles and Port Townsend. From October through June, the men put their nets down in the water just outside the sand bar at Dungeness Spit, a mile away.

Cooking Pacific Ocean Dungeness crabs.
Scan of an original, undated photograph from the archives
of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

           Jacob Hall watched his grandson Harvey Adams Jr., at work tending the fire under the oil drum in front of the family home and spoke of the time when Natives had no outboards and modern crab nets. He fished for crabs himself until three years ago.

         Hall was born 5 May 1886 and has resided in Jamestown since 1910. He is one of the last few Clallams who can speak the tribal tongue. When he first saw Jamestown, its beach was lined with canoes.
        

Painting of Point Hudson, Jefferson County, WA, 
by Adeline Willoughby McCormack ca. 1890
Please click the image to enlarge.
Scan courtesy of a supportive member.

          The community, Hall said, was founded in 1875 by Clallams who had lived on the McAlmond property at Dungeness.

         'Old man McAlmond,' Hall related, 'homesteaded the land and asked the Natives to leave. They moved across to Dungeness Spit and stayed two years, but it was too hard a life. They had to carry all their water by canoe.
         A logger, Bill Delanta, owned this place. He spoke to our chief, Lord Jim Balch, and said he would sell him this tract of 222 acres for $500. Balch asked his people if this was agreeable and they said they would like to have it. The money was raised by them, some putting in $10,$15, $25, $50 until they had enough.

        The land was turned over to Lord James Balch in his name. Someone told folks they had better cut it in strips in order to keep the title straight. Everyone wanted waterfront, so that is why each piece is a few rods wide and a mile long. Our family bought our piece in 1905 but did not move here for several years.

*Adeline Willoughby McCormack
Painting ca. 1890.
Please click the image to enlarge.
Scan from a supportive society member.

        My father, Fred Hall worked around the mill at Port Discovery, doing everything except being sawyer and engineer. He met my mother when he was a fireman on a tugboat. He came home from a run to Nanaimo and the boat stopped at Washington Harbor. My grandfather was there and he said, 'Well, son, you'd better come ashore, we've got a wife for you.' That's how my father got married.'

      Hall said that the first Native homes in Jamestown were built largely from lumber salvaged from a capsized scow that had loaded at the Port Discovery mill.
      The oldest building in the community is a part of the late David Prince's white cottage.
      Jamestown had a Shaker Church which burned ten years ago. Its government school and large house which was the teachers' residence still stand, their windows missing Near them once was a longhouse; no trace of it is left.
        I'm the only Shaker here,' said Hall. 'It is a religion very little understood by the whites. The interpretation of all the movements (in the church rites) is something you have to study to comprehend.'

        Thirteen Native families remain in Jamestown. Last December, Dan Woods, the oldest citizen and son of one of the community founders, died. This left Hall the village patriarch.

        'When I go,' Hall said, 'that's the end of those in Jamestown who know the Clallam Language.'"

Text from The Seattle Times, February 1961.

Since the above 1961 newspaper article was published the people of the Jamestown Native Tribe prefer the name of "S'Klallam," a Salish term for the "Strong People."

*Artist Adeline Willoughby McCormack (1871-1954)

She was the daughter of sea captain and Indian Affairs agent Charles Willoughby who moved his family to the coastal area for his employment at Neah Bay.

        Adeline first studied with Harriet Foster Beecher, an influential artist and teacher who came over from the U of WA, Seattle, to Port Townsend, where she taught painting. Adeline then opened her own studio in 1898.

        Some of her work was featured in a show "Women Outdoors, Field, Forest, and Shore," at the Jefferson Museum of Art and History in Nov./Dec. 2021.

        Adeline wrote an account of her family's 1883 wagon trip to the Quinault reservation, describing travel and living conditions on the Olympic Peninsula in the mid-1880s. Towards the end of the 14-page transcribed document, she offers a lengthy description of the local Native Americans relating to their hunting of otters and the institution of slavery among the Quinault.

The family papers are archived under her father's name at the University of Washington, Special Collections, Collect No. 4972.

CUTLER'S GUN AND A PARK IN THE PLANNING

 

L-R: James Crook, Senator Henry M. Jackson,
with Lyman Cutler's gun, 
and Rhoda Anderson, sister to James,
standing next to the historic blockhouse 
at Garrison Bay, San Juan Island, WA.
Jackson was the chairperson of the Senate Interior 
and Insular Affairs Committee.
Click image to enlarge. 
Low-res scan of an original gelatin-silver photograph from the 
archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society© 

News Notes from the Washington State Historical Society
Vol. 5. No. 1, December 1964

"The world is full of battle monuments. It needs a few monuments to battles that never happened.
      Heed, then, the call of Senator Henry Jackson and others for national attention to be focused on a remote corner of Washington State, where an international boundary dispute almost erupted into battle, and finally, after a decade, was settled by a peaceful method ––arbitration.
      That corner is San Juan Island, the largest island in the group known collectively as the San Juans. On it are two historic sites––English Camp and American Camp. These and the area around them should be purchased by the federal government and turned over to the National Park Service who would then establish the San Juan Historical National Park.
      Some say it ought to be "Pig War" National Park. But that doesn't sound nice. Furthermore, it is inaccurate. There was a pig. But there was no war. And that's what needs to be commemorated.
      We spent last Saturday going to and from San Juan Island on a Coast Guard cutter, along with some 60 others assembled by the Washington State Historical Society, meeting with the local people at Friday Harbor and wandering about the site of English Camp, where the English blockhouse built before the Civil War still stands on the edge of a sheltered cove. Some history has to be related to understand the significance of the site: Euro-American settlers moved onto San Juan Island in the 1850s. Some were American homesteaders. Some were Hudson's Bay Co. sheep raisers. A treaty had been signed in 1946 finally settling the dispute of long-standing over the boundary between Oregon and Canada. It wasn't at 54 degrees, 20 minutes of latitude, as many had advocated, but instead was the 49th parallel and was to extend along "the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of Fuca's straits to the Pacific Ocean."
      This sounded all right in London and Washington, D.C. but it failed to specify which side of the San Juan Islands was to be considered the channel. Americans said it was on the west side. The British said it was on the other.
      Tax collectors, not surprisingly started the big row that ensued. The Hudson's Bay sheepherders wouldn't pay taxes to American tax collectors. So, 30 British sheep were seized and sold for payment of delinquent taxes. This produced an angry letter of protest from James Douglas, the British governor on Vancouver Island, to Gov. Isaac Stevens of newly organized Washington territory. But nothing was done. Then in 1859 an American settler on the island, Lyman A. Cutler, became enraged when one of the Englishmen's pigs kept invading his potato patch. In an unguarded moment, he gave vent to his rage by shooting the pig.
      He regretted his hasty action immediately and went to the Hudson's Bay agent with an offer to pay for the pig. But the Briton was angry, too, and said he would send to Victoria, for a gunboat to come and get Cutler and take him away to be tried and be punished. Cutler reloaded his gun and was prepared to defend himself, but was persuaded by his neighbors to hide so that he couldn't be found when the English came to arrest him. Then the settlers petitioned for help from the army, and a company of federal troops was dispatched from Fort Bellingham. They had no sooner arrived on San Juan, when three British warships anchored offshore and unsheathed their guns, ready for battle.
      The American commander on the island, Capt. George Pickett, showed more restraint than he displayed in later years at the battle of Gettysburg, and refused to fire the first shot. British Admiral Baynes, overruling the hotheaded Gov. Douglas, ordered the British ships not to fire unless they were fired upon.
      Gen. Winfield Scott was rushed to the scene, and he worked out a compromise agreement that called for joint military occupancy of San Juan until the diplomats resolved the question of who owned it. So for the next 12 years, while the diplomats dillied and dallied, the two nations maintained military camps on the island, a few miles apart.
      They didn't menace each other. They got along fine and visited back and forth. Finally, in 1872, the island boundary dispute was submitted to arbitration. The arbiter was the German emperor, Wilhelm I, grandfather of the Kaiser in WW I. He investigated the matter thoroughly and ruled that the channel actually was west of the islands, as the Americans had contended all along.
      Thereupon, the English broke camp, marched down to the shore, and sailed away never to return. They left several of their numbers, however, victims of drownings and accidents, buried in a little graveyard on a hill.
      Within two years a man named Crook moved onto the English campsite to homestead. His son, James Crook, lives there to this day [1964.] Senator Jackson assured him last week that he could have his wish to spend the rest of his days on the site. A man who has lived in one place for 90 years ought not to be moved.
      The federal government, if Jackson's bill goes through, would have no trouble with title insurance. No one but Crook and the State of Washington has owned the property––not since the day the German emperor resolved a dispute that began with the killing of a pig, and provided one of the few examples the world has ever seen of two nations resorting to international arbitration, rather than force, to settle an argument over territorial rights."
John M. McClelland Jr. Reprinted by permission from the Longview Daily News.

THE ONE AND ONLY -- CAPTAIN OLIVER VAN NIEUWENHUISE

 

Capt. Oliver Van Nieuwenhuise
here as master of the 
good ship M.V. VASHON.
Undated copy courtesy of 
Wayne Fowler, son of 
Captain Frank Fowler who also 
served on this ferry with the 
Black Ball Line
and the Washington State Ferries.

"Captain Oliver Van Nieuwenhuise, champion hurricane-deck printer with an alphabetical cognomen longer than a deep-sea tug's towline, always hot-footed it from one pilothouse to the other, insisting it was the only way he could maintain his schedule. 

      One Christmas, in a spirit of fun, the crew of the Black Ball ferry Vashon presented their skipper, "Wooden Shoe Ole," with a scooter--a nice new shiny ball-bearing affair, designed for speed and comfort between wheel-houses. The gift card read as follows,

'From Wheel-house One to Wheel-house Two

Is a long hard run for Ole Wooden Shoe.'

So skip on this scooter, Skipper Van Nieu,'

A merry, merry Christmas from all of your crew.'

      The gang was all standing by anticipating a big laugh and imagining their consternation when the joke backfired. Cap, as serious as an owl, accepted their gift and demonstrated his appreciation by promptly putting it into service. So now when the Vashon pulls away from her slip and you make out a blue streak along the hurricane deck, be not alarmed. It is only 'Wooden Shoe Ole' skipping on his scooter.
      Captain Van Nieuwenhuise was born in 1888 at Rotterdam, Netherlands. When the lad was ten years of age his parents moved to Montreal, Canada, and later came to Everett, WA., where Oliver resumed his school work. The lad was a very apt pupil and soon mastered his American art of spitball throwing, and quickly became so efficient that the teacher had to send him home. A few years later his father purchased a tract of land in Clover Valley near Oak Harbor where the lad dug stumps for exercise. At the age of 17, he went A.W.O.L. and started his nautical career as deckhand on the steamer Ferry running between Oak Harbor and Seattle.
      Five years later our champion spit-ball tosser received his mate's papers and was well launched on a seafaring future. He served with Thompson S.S. Co., and the LaConner Trading Co., both of which became part of the Puget Sound Navigation Co. At the age of 23, he became master of the Utopia, then the Waileale, later the Commanche, Cap says he just about wore out all three of these boats on the Neah Bay-Seattle run; 18 years is a long drag me-hearties. Oliver was very well known and very well-liked by all of the folks up Neah Bay way; he performed marriages on the boat and made a pinch-hit as obstetrician when the stork caught up with his ship.
      In 1910 Cap went over the side for Mrs. Dolly May Burcham. He came up with a round turn around his neck, swallowed the anchor, and the happy couple now have four fine boys, one in the Merchant Marine, one in the Navy, and two on Puget 
Sound ferries, all good seafaring men.
      When the Commanche was taken off the Neah Bay run and the route discontinued, Cap went over to the big ferries, was on the San Juan Islands run for a while and then to the Seattle-Victoria run. When the Frank Waterhouse Co. leased the Commanche, he was sent out on her as a guarantee, on the Vancouver-Seattle run.
      Cap has never had to put in a distress call or had an accident, outside of knocking out a pile now and then and making it tough for a few teredoes. Capt. Van Nieuwenhuise is the last one of the family, as far as he knows, all of his relatives having been lost in a German raid on Rotterdam. For 35 years the lad has been with the Black Ball ferry company.
      And Scutt says, "if you want to see a swell guy shake a mean leg on a kiddie car, climb aboard the ferry Vashon sometime and have a chin with Captain Oliver Van Nieuwenhuise––'Wooden-Shoe-Ole' to the clan."

Stewart C. Osborn ("Scuttle-Butt Pete")
Marine Digest, December 1943.

From Gray's Harbor into Gray Fury

 

FRANCIS H. LEGGETT
Built in 1903
1,606-ton steel steam schooner
Captain C. Maro
Hands lost 60 in 1914
Click image to enlarge.
Photo inscribed verso as leaving
Samoa, CA. with Eureka in background.
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"The year was 1914, just after midnight on the morning of September 18, when the steel steam schooner Francis H. Leggett foundered in a raging gale 50-miles south of the Columbia River entrance. Of the 37 passengers and crew of 25 aboard the Leggett, only two were rescued. The vessel had left Hoquiam deeply laden with lumber for California, in charge of Capt. C. Maro, and upon encountering the heavy seas off the Oregon coast, her deck load shifted, she capsized and sank.
      The Japanese cruiser Idzumo sighted the foundering steam schooner and dispatched a brief wireless message, which was intercepted by the Port of Portland station, the Portland––San Francisco liner Beaver, and the Associated Oil tanker Frank H. Buck. The warship, operating under wartime restrictions and searching for the cruiser Leipzig, made no effort to render assistance, however, and refused to give her location or any further details of the tragedy.

       The tanker was the first to find the floating wreckage marking the spot where the Leggett had gone down, picking up a passenger, George Pullman of Winnipeg, who had been clinging to a plank for the many hours since the sinking.
      The Beaver, Capt. Mason, arrived on the scene late that night, picking up James Farrell of Seattle, who had also clung to a floating timber.
Although the steam schooner Daisy Putnam and the Standard Oil tanker El Segundo also joined the search, no other survivors were found.
The Francis H. Leggett was one of the most modern of the new type of steam coasters, having been built only the previous year for the Hammond Lumber Co. At the time of her loss, she was under charter to Charles R. McCormick & Co.

      The earlier loss of the Port Blakeley-built four-masted schooner Nokomis, built by Hall Bros, in 1895, provided a tragic and ironic footnote to the loss of the Francis H. Leggett.
      The Nokomis, commanded by Capt. Jens Jensen, sailed from Astoria for Paita, Peru in January, lumber-laden. The captain was accompanied by his wife and two small children, one a babe in arms.
      The schooner carried two mates, a cook, cabin boy, and six seamen.
Off the Columbia River, southwest winds of hurricane force struck the schooner, washing the Chinese cook overboard and driving her back towards Cape Flattery in damaged condition. Capt. Jensen put in at Port Townsend for repairs to sails and rigging and the vessel was then towed to sea, but bad luck continued to plague her.
      Off the Cape, she fouled the tug and damaged her martingale, but this was repaired at sea and she continued on her voyage. After reaching latitude 20 North, she encountered heavy fog, and for some days Capt. Jensen was forced to rely on dead reckoning. On the sailing route between Pacific Northwest ports and the west coast of South America, prevailing winds made it most practical to cross the Line at about 110 degrees West Longitude in the vicinity, at 10 North Latitude, of Clipperton Island, a low-lying speck of land on the broad expanse of ocean. The Huerta government of Mexico had recently abandoned the light and fog signal on the island, and on the night of 27 February breakers were sighted dead ahead. Strong cross-currents made it impossible to put about, and the Nokomis crashed on a reef at the north end of the island. Heavy seas soon pounded her to pieces. All hands reached shore, but they were almost destitute, existing on brackish water, shellfish, and seagull eggs in addition to a few supplies which had drifted ashore,
      After five months of privation, the second mate and three seamen volunteered to set out for Acapulco, 700 miles away, in a damaged boat. They reached their objective after incredible hardships, and the USS Cleveland was dispatched to rescue the castaways, all of whom eventually recovered from their ordeal.
      After reaching San Francisco, Capt. Jensen left his family at the home of his father-in-law in Olympia and proceeded to Aberdeen, where Capt. Maro of the Francis H. Leggett had kindly offered him passage as his guest to San Francisco, where he planned to seek another berth as either master or mate of a sailing vessel. Capt. Jensen was among those lost in the foundering of the Leggett. Having survived shipwreck and almost unendurable hardships on distant Clipperton Island, he was fated to lose his life while practically in sight of his home and onboard a modern, full-powered steel steamship."

Source: The H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Gordon Newell, editor. Superior Publishing.1965. No. 338.