SOLID GREEN WATER ::::::::: A GALE OF 1902

Green Water Ahead.
Tacoma to Durban 
Click image to enlarge.

"This is an account of one of the heaviest gales I was ever in at sea. I do not say it was worse than the other shipmates of the Thermopylae have been through, for everyone who goes to sea gets into really bad weather sometimes.
        This time of which I am writing was in the year 1902. We were bound Tacoma to Durham, South Africa with a cargo of flour and canned fruit. We left Tacoma on 17 March. The run down to the Horn was uneventful. We rounded the Horn on 15 May with a westerly gale behind us.
        It never left us till we were off the Cape of Good Hope.
        For nearly two weeks we ran before it with the seas getting heavier all the time. They would come rolling up astern looking like hills with the wind blowing spray from their crests and just when it looked as if they were going to bury the ship she would rise to them, though they generally broke on board from both sides and filled the decks to the rail.
        It became a common occurrence for seas to break onboard all the way from poop to the forecastle head and often they would break right over the top of the deckhouse and fill the boats, bursting in the covers.
        There were lifelines stretched along on deck on each side and the fore braces were led along to the bitts on the foredeck as it was impossible to stand amidships and brace the yards.
        There was no fresh water to drink as the pumps were continually underwater. We used water out of a barrel in the lifeboat but it was so bad we could hardly drink it.
        One evening in the second dog watch I was returning some mess tins to the galley. It was quite dark at the time. I worked my way along the deck on the port side and just as I came around the corner of the deckhouse I saw a tremendous sea roll up to the rail on the starboard side, shining with phosphorous. I should imagine it was about twenty feet high when it broke over the side.
        I dropped the mess tins, which I never saw again, and grabbed the lifeline. My feet were swept from under me and I was in solid green water like one drowning.
        The same sea broke in the two-inch teak galley door and washed away the winch abaft the main hatch, breaking the castings just above the deck. The winch went into the scuppers, the broken castings plowing up the deck as it went. It took about half the next watch to get it lashed; it was underwater most of the time. One man stood in the main rigging with a lantern while the rest of us lashed it to the bulwark stanchions.
       

Clipper Thermopylae 
by M. Reilly

         Just at seven bells in the 4 to 8 watch the next morning she took the biggest sea of all. I had just gone into the half-deck to call the watch below and had no sooner closed the door than it came on board with a roar. I felt the ship tremble and then she seemed to go dead as if she had settled down. It was daylight at the time and for several seconds the solid green water stood against the porthole and squirted in all around the door––and that was a deck house!

        The second mate, who was on watch, said that as far as he could see there was nothing but the three masts out of water. The only damage it did was flood the cabin, every room was awash.
        That evening the captain decided to try to heave despite the risk. We got her around all right but she still continued to keep the decks full of water. The green seas came over the bows so bad that we had to keep lookout from the roof of the deckhouse. We could tell that the sidelight was burning by watching the reflection against the water every time she took a sea. It was no use to strike the bells as the bell was tolling continuously with the motion of the ship.
        I was on the roof of the deckhouse on the lookout from ten to midnight. Just before eight bells, she shipped a sea. It must have broken exactly as it met her for she shook as if she had struck something solid. I don't know how high that sea mounted but in the darkness, it looked as if it was coming over the foreyard. 

        The main topmast staysail was stowed at my feet and when the sea struck me the clew of the sail dragged me off my feet and I seemed to go away in a solid body of water. I didn't know where I was. When I got hold of something solid I found I was on the main deck amidships, jammed between the deck spar and the bulwarks.
        The next day we found that the bulwarks were bent where that sea had hit her, several stanchions were started and the door of the wash port was gone.
        The half-deck was never clear of water for weeks. Our chests were afloat most of the time and were moored at both ends like ships at a wharf. The bunks got so wet that we had to sleep in the sail locker.
        This gale continued till we were off the African coast. We arrived at Durban on 10 June, 28 days from Cape Horn and 85 from Tacoma.
        Words by Cornishman F. Walter Hearle who later settled in Victoria, B.C. 
           Deep Sea Stories from the Thermopylae Club, Ursula Jupp editor. Victoria, B.C. 1971.

HISTORIC BRIGANTINE BOXER

 

Brigantine Boxer
US Naval Training Vessel
Arrived in Puget Sound in the early 1920s.
During her colorful career in the NW waters,
she was only commanded by three masters,
Capt. S.L.T. Whitlam, 
Capt. Isak Lystad,
Capt. E.L. Bush.

Originally a brigantine-rigged training vessel at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, the Boxer made cruises in Chesapeake Bay and under sail, attracted much attention. From the Navy, the vessel was transferred to the US Bureau of Indian Affairs and came to Seattle in 1923 from the Atlantic Coast by way of the Panama Canal, towed by Coast Guard cutters operating in relays.
          A 300-HP diesel engine was installed in the Boxer at the Todd Shipyards in Seattle and the vessel was ready for service as a government supply ship.

The BOXER
dated 1936.
"Food for Alaska was leaving Seattle aboard this 
Indian Office boat to relieve shortages caused by
the maritime disturbances. She will be followed 
a few days later by the ARCTIC, a 
government-chartered boat."
Original gelatin-silver photograph from the 
archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©
Credit to the Public Works Administration.

The Boxer on her rounds 
Nushagak River, SE Alaska.
Click image to enlarge.
Undated original from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

1942: Now retired from service, the Boxer was sought by the US engineers for an undisclosed service and soon was transferred from the Department of the Interior to the War Department.
          The log of the Boxer is as colorful as a storybook of adventure. It tells of volcanoes in the Aleutian Islands hurling fire, rocks, and ashes into the sky, of the bagging of a giant polar bear on the ice floes of the Arctic, of battles with storms in the Bering Sea, and the rescue of natives of the Far North.
          Until the motorship North Star, then in other service, was commissioned in 1932, the Boxer was the supply ship of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Arctic and made annual cruises to Point Barrow, the farthest north settlement under the American flag.

1943-1944:

The power schooner, Boxer, was sold by the government following brief use as a dormitory for security guards at the government locks, to the West Coast Steamship Company of Los Angeles. Before being transferred south she was thoroughly overhauled and a new 300-HP diesel engine was installed at Bellingham, WA. to prepare her for use in the Los Angeles-Central American trade. H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Gordon Newell, editor. Seattle. Superior Publishing. 1966.

Marine writer R.H. Calkins wrote for the Seattle Times, in 1942.

"SEATTLE'S OWN" ::::: USCG Cruising Cutter HAIDA

 

USCG HAIDA 
(1921-1951)
Crew Nickname: HAIDA MARU
Click image to enlarge.
"The Cruising Cutter HAIDA 
which the city's residents claimed as "Seattle's Own"
when she was put into service in 1922, was at the 
Puget Sound Bridge & Dredging Co. yard 
to be turned into junk and cut up for scrap metal.
Men who know her say that the Haida, which 
served as a rescue ship with the halibut fleet in Alaska
for years and patrolled the coast through peace and 
war could be made ready for duty again in a week. 
But the CG rated her as obsolete after WW II and sold 
her to the Sundfelt Equipment Co,
which decided to scrap her after attempts to find
 a buyer who could put her to use again met 
with failure. She was towed to Harbor Island
from her postwar berth at the Lake WA. Shipyards.
 Her turbo-electric engine and other equipment 
will be removed and she'll be put to the cutting torch."
from the Seattle-Times 1950. 
Original gelatin-silver photograph dated 1950 / low-res scan
from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.
Photo by John t. Closs.

The Coast Guard successor to the historic Revenue Cutter Service, received a fine new cutter in spring of 1922. Rated as a cruising cutter first class, the USS HAIDA was built at Union Construction Co of Oakland, California on 19 April 1921, at the cost of $775,000. She embarked upon her maiden cruise to the far north the following spring in command of Lt. Commander J.R. Hottel.
        The 1,780-ton steel vessel, with dimensions of 240' x 39' x 16.6' was fitted with a turbo-electric drive and was by far the most modern vessel to enter the service in the North Pacific. After remaining at Nome until after the sailing of the last commercial steamer of the season, the Victoria, the HAIDA took aboard passengers at St. Paul and St. George Islands in the Bering Sea and completed her 20,000-mile cruise at Seattle, after which she proceeded to her winter station at Pt. Townsend.

1947: The 1,957-ton cruising cutter Itasca, after flying the white ensign of the Royal Navy during the late war was returned to the US Coast Guard. After an extensive overhaul on the east coast, she was dispatched to the Pacific Northwest to replace the veteran cutter HAIDA, which was decommissioned and placed in layup on Lake Washington. The Itasca, formerly based on Puget Sound, was assigned to station at Port Angeles.
         Source: H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Superior 

1948: Sold.

1951: the HAIDA was scrapped.

Known officers and crew:
R.T. McElligott (1927-1929), Lt. Commander R.C. Sarratt
Commander R.C. Jewell, Rear Admiral Michael J. Ryan, 

Rear Admiral James W. Moreau, Rear Admiral Norman H. Leslie, 

Vice Admiral Donald M. Morrison, Rear Admiral Theodore J. Fabik.

TROUBLE IN A STORM OFF WHIDBEY ISLAND ❖ ❖

 

F.V. MIDWAY
lashed to Leiter Hockett's salvage tug AMAK
after three months underwater near
Whidbey Island, Washington.
Four were lost on 9 March 1959.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Four Seattle fishermen were lost when the 56-foot fishing vessel Midway capsized and sank in a storm half a mile off Partridge Point.
        The overturned boat was sighted by the tug Tartar and reported to the Coast Guard.
        Less than 14 minutes later the tug reported that the fishing boat had sunk.
        The men lost were Bjarne Olsen, John Eikevik, Carl Jensen, and Simon Ingebretsen.
        The Midway's 18-ft dory was found about the same day; it still had the canvas stretched over it, indicating it had not been used.
        The Midway was bound Bellingham to Seattle when the accident occurred.
        The vessel's owner, Albert Anderson, was not aboard because of an ailment.
        The vessel, a trawler, had been off the Washington Coast and had unloaded her catch yesterday in Bellingham, before departing for Seattle about 3:30 p.m. She was riding high, without cargo, and with little ballast when she capsized.
        The Midway was a sister ship of the Northern Light, which sank ten days ago in Georgia Strait. The two were launched a few weeks apart 15 years ago and had fished together much of the time.
        Text from the Seattle Times three months later.

U of W off on the BROWN BEAR TO THE ALEUTIANS :::::: 1957

 

HOME AGAIN
Betty Ann Morse, left and
Darrelyn Seman, waved from the  
afterdeck of the BROWN BEAR,
research vessel of the U of WA. 
They just returned from a 6,500-mile 
scientific expedition to the Aleutians. 
The cruise began 22 July 1957.
Tap image to enlarge.
Original gelatin-silver photograph from 
the Saltwater People Historical Society.

The Brown Bear arrived home late after a 6,500-mile expedition to the Aleutians, the longest cruise ever made by the University of Washington Oceanography Department.
        It had been a rough trip. Bunks felt much better as the Brown Bear lay tied up at the foot of the university campus than they did in storm-tossed waters.
        Betty Ann Morse, a research assistant, and Darrelyn Semon, an undergraduate student in oceanography, slept late.
        "It was a great trip," Morse said.
        "This was the first good night's sleep we've had in a long time," Semon murmured.
        The cruise was part of the International Geophysical Year program. The crew investigated the properties of the water on the two sides of the Aleutian Chain, to learn how and where there is an exchange of water between the Bering Sea and the North Pacific.
        Another subject of study was the deep water in the Aleutian Trench, south of the Aleutians.
        Dr. Paquette, a research professor of oceanography is the chief scientist for the cruise. "We found some interesting things about 25,000 feet deep in the Trench. Water is from .04 to .09 of a degree, Fahrenheit, warmer to the west."
        "The difficulty with oceanographic discoveries is that they're subtle. We don't really care about practical use. We were after knowledge."
        Words by Robert Heilman. The Seattle Times. 23 September 1957.

M.V. BROWN BEAR

Launched: 7 Nov. 1934

For: U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey and the Alaska Game Commission.

Builder: Winslow Marine Railway & Shipbuilding Company, Bainbridge Island, WA.

Cost: $125,000.

Tonnage 300 G.t.

114' x 27' x 13'

Propulsion: Two 200 H.P. Washington Iron Works diesel engines.

Speed: 8.5 knots.

Range: 4,000 to 5,400 nautical miles.

Crew: Accommodations for 16 crew and scientists.

1936: She made history's first survey of sea otters in and around the Aleutian Islands.

Owners: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; US Navy; University of Washington; National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.

Fate: Late 1997 or early 1998, she was towed out to sea and scuttled in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego.

Source of above notes: Courtesy of Wikiwand for these specifications and lots more on her "bio."