"The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down." A. Whitney Brown.

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San Juan Archipelago, Washington State, United States
A society formed in 2009 for the purpose of collecting, preserving, celebrating, and disseminating the maritime history of the San Juan Islands and northern Puget Sound area. Check this log for tales from out-of-print publications as well as from members and friends. There are circa 750, often long entries, on a broad range of maritime topics; there are search aids at the bottom of the log. Please ask for permission to use any photo posted on this site. Thank you.

28 March 2022

SOUNDERS GRAY WHALES -- off Camano Island, WA.

 


Sounders Gray Whales
Saratoga Passage, west side of 
 Camano Island, Washington. 
Drone photograph by Brian Spanton
12 March 2022.


A special group of gray whales takes an annual detour from their coastal migration to feed on ghost shrimp in the tidelands of Puget Sound. They’re known locally as “the Sounders” and most often seen near Whidbey Island.

Normally they start showing up in March and feed for a few months before continuing north to their feeding grounds in the Alaskan Arctic. But they have been arriving early for the past two years and growing in number.

And this year, they’re exceptionally early, says John Calambokidis. He’s 
a research biologist with Cascadia Research Collective and has been studying the Sounders for more than 30 years.

“This year we had two of our regular Sounders overwinter– you know, feed through the winter – here. (They) didn't seem to make the southern migration," Calambokidis says.

This year, the Sounder known as “Little Patch” showed up in December - followed soon after by one of the very first Sounder pioneers, “Earhart.”


"EARHART"
This gray whale arrived two months earlier  
than usual, skipping the remainder of the
southbound migration to come feed.
Click image to enlarge.
Photograph courtesy of Orca Network/
Janine Harles and KNKX Public Radio.

“And then we had quite a few of the other animals show up early, in February. Now, here we are in mid-March, and we have most of the complement of Sounders present–up to 14 or 15 different individuals right now.”

Calambokidis says this change in behavior began around the same time as an unusual mortality event – a mass die-off of gray whales along the entire west coast in 2019 – that’s linked to changing food availability in the Alaskan Arctic. Scientists who have been tracking the whales using drone photography say they arrive here thin - and quickly bulk up.

“Over a period of just a week or two, the Sounders whales, are noticeably getting a better body condition,” Calambokidis says, as they gorge themselves at high tide in the shallow mudflats where the shrimp burrow.

It’s additional evidence of how adaptive the whales are, he says, and it’s remarkable to see the growing ranks of Sounders – as some are either learning from their compatriots or figuring out on their own that Puget Sound offers an alternative food source. But Calambokidis says there may be limits on how many gray whales the local supply of ghost shrimp can support.

“And that'll be the big question as we have more gray whales arriving earlier and staying longer.”

He says this year they appear to be expanding into some new feeding areas in Skagit Bay.

Words by Bellamy Pailthorp
Courtesy of the online manager at KNKX Public Radio.


10 March 2022

"MIND IN BOAT"-- the GENIUS COXSWAIN



The 1936 Olympics / Berlin

Cox Moch screaming his fellow crew first to the
finish with Hitler looking down from the stands.
Royal Brougham, the writer of this news clip,
did not brag, but he was also in the bleachers
catching the impressive story of 
Seattle on this Olympic course.
Click image to enlarge.
Gelatin-silver photograph from the archives of 
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

One year after the Olympic gold:

"Lucky Al Ulbrickson, the boys are saying. A world championship rowing crew right in his lap; all eight men back; nothing to do but sit in the coaching launch and watch them coast home with the gold-rimmed, diamond-studded crown.

Sure, all eight oarsmen are back at the sweeps but remember the little squirt who steered the boat to victory on Lake Washington, at Poughkeepsie, at Princeton, and at the little village of Grunau near Berlin? (That entire winning crew in the photograph above.)

Bob Moch--he'll be missing. 

The Huskies will miss the paperweight coxswain with the baritone voice like N.Y. Yanks would miss Lou Gehrig. Nobody knows the vital part that the quick-thinking Moch played in Washington's success.

Maybe the game Don Hume and his gallant fellows would have emerged victors in Berlin; maybe they would have won in the Olympic trials and on the Pacific Coast, but here's one observer who doubts very much if Ulbrickson's crew would have finished in front at Poughkeepsie but for the icy little man who rode the stern seat. As thrilling as their win in the Olympic Games finals, I maintain Washington's accomplishment on the Hudson was the finest bit of rowing of the year, and for that matter, of the decade.


Courtesy of The Seattle P-I newspaper

Everybody knows how Moch kept the slow-starting eight together despite the fact that the boat was three full-lengths behind, in fifth place, with a little more than a mile to go, the Husky adherents had given up the ship, and even Ulbrickson had resigned himself to bitter defeat. But Moch, shouting the Washington watchword, "M.I.B.--M.I.B.." maneuvered his crew to the most sensational triumph the historic old river has ever seen. The mysterious symbols reminded the boys to keep "Mind in Boat"--not once all year did a husky oarsman as much as steal a glance at the enemy. 

"Take ten more for Ulbrickson," he shouted as they went under the bridge.

"Now ten more for Pocock," he screamed.

"Here's California, boys--ten more big ones for mother and dad," he yelled, as astonished experts ashore thought the shell had been shot out of a gun, so rapidly did it eat up that last spread of water, to finish ahead by a length.

The picture of Bob Moch driving his Huskies to victory both at Poughkeepsie and at Berlin still thrills this hard-shelled scribe to the tips of his fingers.

All eight oarsmen back at Washington? Not a man missing from the championship shell? Maybe so, but the Little Napoleon of the tiller ropes won't be squatting in the stern, and the musclemen at the oars will have to prove to me that they can win without him."

Thank you to journalist Royal Brougham for these goosebumps written in 1937. 
Published by the Seattle P-I.  

Pocock, Moch, and the musclemen are gone but they left behind their George Pocock shell "Husky Clipper"-- archived at the University of Washington. A daughter of one of the crew tells more about the  Shellhouse here.

 



06 March 2022

LIGHTSHIPS, A DYING BREED


Lightship RELIEF doing double-duty
at her station, during the Swiftsure Sail Race.
Nautilus II, Captain Harbine Monroe, 
Commodore of the Tacoma Yacht Club,
at 5:43 rounding the lightship 30 May 1948.
(She was three hours behind that famous Dorade.
Nautilus II made up the difference and more 
 to win on corrected time.)
Fine photograph by Kenneth G. Ollar, Tacoma, WA,
Click image to enlarge.

From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society© 

 “For decades boatmen headed for the Strait of Juan de Fuca were accustomed to the sight of the Swiftsure beacon fifteen and a half miles northwest of Tatoosh Island. Frequently, the lightship Relief could also be seen moored on the south side of the ship canal, a short distance inside the Chittenden Locks, for servicing.

        The Swiftsure (WAL 536) was an inseparable part of our maritime scene. She took her name from the submerged bank on which she was stationed from 1900 until July 1961. She marked no navigation hazard—her 6,900-pound anchor was in 180 feet of water—but she was a symbol of safety and a communications center for fishermen and small vessels in need of guidance in bad weather. The light was elevated 65 feet above the sea and was visible 14 miles.
        When the Coast Guard decided that the 133-foot craft was no longer needed off the mouth of the strait because of the increased power of the light at Cape Flattery and on Vancouver Island, the Swiftsure was transferred to another position fourteen miles down the Washington coast at Umatilla Reef. Renamed Umatilla, she later became the Relief and remained in service until 1 October 1968. After being decommissioned, the vessel was used as a museum in Gig Harbor until the Coast Guard sold her to a Portland ship dismantling firm.



The COLUMBIA  
Lightship No. 88
This famous sentinel of the Columbia River entrance 
came around the Horn to her station in 1909.
After 52 eventful years, she was decommissioned,
sold, and finally located in a Seattle salvage yard. 
Funds were raised for her purchase.
Through efforts of the Coast Guard
 her lenses, horns, bell, anchors,
and chain were found and donated to the vessel.
Postcard published by Photo'neil, Long Beach, WA.
The lightship Columbia, at the mouth of the Columbia River, was the last one on the entire west coast. Now she was decommissioned in November 1979 and replaced by a large navigational buoy, 40 feet wide and 42 feet high, at the same location. The Columbia measured 128-feet long, with a 30-ft beam and 11-ft draft. She then went to the Columbia River Maritime Museum at Astoria.

        When the Swiftsure was moved to Umatilla Reef, 24 lightships were in service. The first one on the Pacific coast, the Columbia, was established in 1892, followed by the original beacon at Umatilla Reef six years later. In those days, when the lighthouse Service operated them, life aboard the vessel was extremely monotonous, and it was essential. That the men have some hobbies or take their work seriously. Chess-playing was a favorite pastime. One captain kept busy writing, another made ship models until he became interested in collecting marine specimens.
        Long periods of duty at sea were reduced when the Coast Guard took over the lightships in 1939. After that crew members alternated 16 days of shore leave with 43 days onboard.

        Clarence E. Sherman, who was for almost 40 years associated with the Aids to Navigation Division, told me a great deal about life aboard the lightships in an interview. “The worst job the mates had, was to find work for the men. They clean the paint over and over again and they were overhauling something constantly. It is surprising the members of the crew got along so well as they did, shut up by themselves on ships with no communication. Their only excitement was seeing smoke on the horizon. It relieved things when radio came in and they could have some entertainment.
        “Isolated out there, the men had to be ingenious and know how to get by without help. If a simple thing broke they couldn’t send for a replacement, they had to know how to make substitutions.
        Usually, food on board was very good, but it was a problem to keep supplies fresh before the diesel-electric ships came in. Drinking water in the early years was evaporated from seawater. This process required considerable coal. After a time it was found cheaper to make more trips with fresh water in the tender than to carry so much fuel.”
        Romantic associations centered around the Umatilla Reef lightship after Archie Binns, Washington author, spent some time there and produced one of his novels, Lightship, as a result of his experience. The Columbia River sentinel gained literary recognition when John Fleming Wilson of Portland, featured it in short stories published in the Saturday Evening Post. The same vessel gained another kind of distinction when she parted moorings in a tremendous sea and was stranded on the Washington shore for 16 months.

        Sherman could remember that episode from his boyhood, “I was taken to Fort Stevens on the Columbia in 1891 when I was six years old. My father, Edric L. Sherman, was a machinist on the construction of the south jetty and later was foreman. It was exciting around the Point Adams lifesaving station the morning after the lightship went aground. She had been anchored six miles offshore and, I suppose, blew in during the night. We couldn’t see the ship because she was on the sand behind Cape Disappointment. The weather was so bad curiosity-seekers were out to look at her.
        “While the lightship lay on the beach I went over with fishermen and saw her. Everybody thought she was there to stay, but house-movers got a contract to dig her out of the sand, put her on blocks, roll her overland through the woods and dump her in the Columbia River.

        We used to say that was the only trip a ship ever took in command of a house-mover. She went back in commission all right.”
        
Each lightship was brought in for overhaul after 11 months at sea, Sherman said, and the Relief took its place offshore. Considerable difficulty was experienced in finding a special radio-beacon set to equip the Relief because she had to have the characteristics of any station she took. Once Sherman was called out to the Swiftsure because of trouble with the air whistle and had to remain aboard several days in order to repair it. “The water was not rough, but the boat was never still. No matter how calm the sea, a lightship was always pitching; that was the nature of a vessel that led an unassuming life dangling at the end of a chain.
        The men on board loved to have a visitor to gab with. At Swiftsure and the Columbia River the crews saw and talked to lots of fishermen, but boats were not supposed to hang onto a lightship. In foggy weather and sometimes in rain they might be given a line and the rule was relaxed.
        A lightship never could leave its station. If a fisherman was observed in trouble, all that could be done was to send help by small boat, weather permitting.”

        Another old-timer in aids-to navigation work was Leslie A. Leadbetter, who retired in 1950 after 34 years in the service. He commanded two of the lightships at various times, those at the Columbia and Umatilla Reef, and also the Relief. In 1910 his crew rescued eleven men in a lifeboat from a wreck on Tillamook bar. The refugees stayed aboard the Columbia five or six days before means were found to send them to Astoria. Once Captain Leadbetter kept a crew member in cold packs 24 hours while waiting for a chance to send him ashore for an appendicitis operation.
        Captain Leadbetter told me that his most exciting memory was of the time a Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens during WW II. “We extinguished our lights on the ship, as did lighthouses on either side of the Columbia River. With lights on, we would have been an aid to the enemy. None of us wanted to meet the fate of the Diamond Shoal lightship, off Cape Hatteras, which was shelled in the WW I and sunk by a German submarine.”

Words above by Lucile McDonald. She sources her interview with Sherman and Captain Leadbetter and also information furnished by Lieutenant Comdr J.H. McElwain, USCG public affairs officer, Seattle. 
This article was published by Puget Sound Maritime in their membership journal The Sea Chest.

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