FRIDAY HARBOR SHIPBUILDERS

Noted Friday Harbor Shipbuilders

Shipbuilder Frank Jensen
Admiring a photo of the boat built in 1919
for himself and his brother Joseph.
VERDUN
Dated 1960.

A family tradition that reaches well back into the 19th Century, was carried on at Friday Harbor, in the San Juan Islands. The shipyard of Albert Jensen & Sons, Inc., was a Jensen family enterprise since the early days of the island’s settlement.
      Nourdine Jensen, the last owner of the company was the third generation of Jensen family boat-builders. His father was boatbuilder, Albert Jensen.
      Nourdine’s grandfather, Benjamin Jensen, was a shipbuilder in Bergen, on the north coast of Norway, in the 1860s and 70s. He also sailed some, making several trips to Canada. Finally, he came to the New World for good and settled on San Juan Island in 1883. With him were his sons Joe, Albert, Frank, and Pete.
      At the time of this interview, Frank Jensen was 86 and retired. He was keeping up his interest in the activity at the shipyard, making occasional trips to “see how things are going.”
      The Jensens lived for a while at San Juan Town, or “Old Town,” as it was called by the old-timers. After three months there, the family moved to a farm on Griffin Bay, building a house on a spit just below the bay now known as Jensen Bay.
      Along with their farming, Benjamin and his four sons began building a few boats, almost as a sideline. The “sideline” turned into a regular thing, but Frank Jensen recalled they never considered that they were running an organized business.
       “We were no company at all,” Jensen said. “We just built boats.”
      Among the boats the Jensen “just built” were the sailing ships NORTH STAR and the NELLIE JENSEN. The NELLIE JENSEN, on the ways for three years, was the largest sailing vessel the family built. It was 59 feet long, and carried a crew of five. Later it was given a steam engine.
      Other early vessels they built were the steamships GRIFFIN, MESSENGER, and the VALIANT
      The last boat to be built at Jensen Bay was the Adventurer. The NELLIE JENSEN burned to the water, years ago, off Dungeness while carrying a cargo of shingles. The GRIFFIN was wrecked and is on the bottom of Lake Washington. The VALIANT was lost on the beach at California, and another Jensen boat was wrecked in Alaska on the Chignik River.
      Jensen says he doesn’t know of a single life being lost in any of these mishaps.
      In 1901, Frank Jensen got the gold fever and went to Alaska. He never struck it rich, but worked for wages shoveling dirt. He didn’t stay long in Alaska. Years later, he made another trip to Alaska, landing at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. By 9 o’clock that night, he was on his way back to Seattle.

      In 1905, Frank married, a few years later, moved to Friday Harbor. About this time, the family became involved in a sawmill operation, but before long the Jensens were back to building boats again. In 1910, they acquired property on a bay a mile south of town and built the shipyard which was long in operation.
      Frank and Joe married sisters, Emily and Alice Guard. When Joe died, his wife, Alice, stayed on with Frank and Emily Jensen in the country place Frank built east of the shipyard, across from Turn Island. The Jensens lived in that house 29 years.

The ISLANDER,

new launching at Jensen's Yard
Friday Harbor, San Juan Island,
all dated 1921.
Click image to enlarge.
The work crew is so far unidentified.
Can you help?

      One of the largest boats the family ever built, and no doubt the best known, was the ISLANDER––a 106 ft freight and passenger boat. The business “Life Line” of the San Juans for many years, the ISLANDER made regular trips through the islands from Anacortes and Bellingham.

clips courtesy of the
Friday Harbor Journal.
Click image to enlarge.

      Later, the ISLANDER was sold to the Puget Sound Freight Lines and renamed the MOHAWK.

Cannery tender NEREID
Moored in her home port of Friday Harbor.
Jensen built in 1911
Original photo from the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      The first boat built at the new yard was the NEREID, a boat used for decades by the Friday Harbor Canning Company. Julia Jensen says the NEREID also was designed by her husband and was his favorite of the boats built by the family.
      During WW II, Albert Jensen and Sons built a fleet of 36-ft tugboats and a dozen wooden barges for the war effort. Another shipyard started up during the war adjacent to the Jensen yard. Both companies specialized in building pleasure boats in the under 90-ft category, as well as fishing boats, and occasionally other types of craft.
      A recent Jensen boat that attracted the attention of numerous boating journals was the 55-ft MECO, built for Archie Morgan, of a Seattle electrical contracting firm.
      Altogether, Nourdine estimates his company built about 50 boats of more than 20 ft each in the years since the war, for an average of two and one-half boats a year.

      Nourdine’s brother, Frits, carried on the family tradition as a prominent Seattle naval architect.
      Frank Jensen was one of the county’s longtime residents. He recalled the island’s settlers well, and could recite the names of all the farmers and businessmen who had “places” on San Juan at the end of the past century.
      Frank doesn’t consider that his family pioneered in the usual sense; he recalls there was very little vacant land left on the island when they arrived.
      Of all the Jensen-built boats, Frank’s favorite was the one built for his own use, the 40-ft VERDUN (pronounced with the accent on the first syllable.) He made four or five trips to Alaska with her, and has sailed her  throughout the San Juans many times.
      When he was home, Frank kept it anchored in the bay off Turn Point, where it was a familiar sight for many years. Next, the VERDUN saw service in the San Juans as a fishing and workboat owned by Sherman Thompson of Deer Harbor, Orcas Island.

Words by the late author, historian David Richardson, formerly of San Juan and Orcas Islands in the Archipelago. Published by the Seattle Times.

The Port of Friday Harbor purchased the Jensen Shipyard which was reported here.