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The JEFFERSON
(ex-ALASKA) passenger steamer.
1615 tonnage
Fate: Nieder & Marcus Marine Salvage Yard,
1925.
Photo from the Saltwater People Historical Society.
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The SAN JUAN
284 ton halibut steamer
built by Sloan & Hill yard of Seattle
for San Juan Fishing & Packing
(later passing to Libby, McNeil, Libby)
Fate: Nieder & Marcus Marine Salvage Yard.
1939
photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society
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The firm of Nieder and Marcus was established in Seattle in 1908 by Michael and Harry Nieder and Ben Marcus and was located on West Waterway just north of the Spokane Street Bridge, on the Harbor Island side of the channel. Their principal business was dealing in scrap metals and other used merchandise salvaged from ships. Today, the word is recycling. Their yard was littered with scrap metal and marine hardware.
Many stories have been written about shipyards and how the shipbuilders assembled or put the vessels together. In the Nieder and Marcus yard, most vessels were taken apart. Over the years, many vessels passed through the yard. For most, it was the end of the line, although a few saw the light of day again and returned to useful service. The list of vessels at the end of this story contains the names of many well-known local vessels, showing the firm was active for over thirty years.
Harry Nieder served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I and, on his return to Seattle, assumed an active role in the firm along with Ben Marcus. From the beginning of 1909 until about 1924, there were only a few vessels being scrapped. However, during World War II, the War Shipping Administration and the U.S. Shipping Board contracted for the construction of an enormous number of both wood and steel vessels to meet the needs of the armed forces. With the end of the war in 1918, the shipbuilding progress was just getting well underway, but with the end of hostilities, many contracts were canceled, and others were extended just sufficiently that the vessel would be launched rather than leave the partially completed hull on the ways. Lake Union in Seattle became the mooring ground for many of these hulls, some complete and others without machinery.
These new Shipping Board vessels, at least the wood ones, were moored at anchor side by side in two rows comprising nearly forty in number. They were of the Hough and Ferris types intended as coal-fired steamers.
Other shipyards on the West Coast turned out many wood sailing vessels even into the early years of the 1920s. At this time, there was a great demand for vessels to carry lumber from the west coast mills to Australia and the islands of the South Pacific Ocean. However, the spurt in shipping soon ended, and as the vessels completed their return to Seattle, they, in turn, were moored in Lake Union or Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island. Around 1925, the owners of older, slow vessels had replaced them with newer, larger ones. Many vessels floating in or near Seattle would never see active service again.
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Lake Union, Seattle, WA.
with a few of the inactive ships awaiting their fate,
at Nieder & Marcus Marine Salvage Yard, Seattle.
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As the owners became convinced that the shipping boom was over for good, they were finally willing to sell off those older bottoms to the scrappers. The firm of Nieder and Marcus was ready, willing, and able to reduce both the wood and the steel vessels to scrap, salvaging all that might be usable.Beginning about 1925 and continuing through 1939, a steady flow of vessels passed through the control of this firm. Generally, the vessels were brought to the yard under tow and once there, with few exceptions, it was the beginning of the end. All the deck fittings were removed for possible sale to some other ship owner. For the iron or steel vessels, the workmen with their torches started the slow but fatal task of cutting the metal first into large pieces that the stiff-leg crane could lift onto the wharf and next into smaller pieces that would fit into the doors of the blast furnaces of the steel mills.
The masts, lifeboats, davits, stairways, smokestacks, lockers, storage racks, cleats, steering wheels, tables, port lights, running lights, and even dishes were removed intact if possible and stored in a covered shed or warehouse. At the top of the vessel was opened, exposing the interior. Other possibly reusable items were taken out intact, including engines and boilers. There was a market for steam boilers for the salmon canneries of Alaska or some of the sawmills. It was seldom there as a market for an old steam engine so those beautiful pieces of machinery were cut up.
As the removal of the vessel progressed, it would rise in the water until only the bottom and turn of the bilge remained. The propeller was generally brass or bronze with a high value and could be removed without the need for dry dock. The last portions of the keel and bottom plates were often towed to the local drydock, where they could also be cut. I believe some of the vessel bottoms were beached alongside the wharf at high tide and then the workmen could complete the cutting up at low tide. All steel was reduced to the small pieces mentioned above, then picked up with an electric magnet on a crane and placed in a large pile until it was again loaded with the magnet into hopper railroad cars for shipment to the steel mill.
Wooden vessels were also scrapped by the Nieder and Marcus firm. After the vessel was moored at the firm's wharf, all that was possibly reusable was removed. The masts were cut down, with the rigging wire being saved intact, especially for the logging industry. The turnbuckles from the rigging were stored in the warehouse along with the pumps, sails, stones, windlass, anchors, chain, lanterns, tank, donkey engine, etc. The masts and the spars, along with burnable material from the yard, were piled in the hold or on deck to provide additional fuel for the final fire that consumed the hull. When all was ready, the hull was towed to Richmond Beach at a site about one mile south of the present Edmonds Ferry Terminal and beached at high tide. Wires were stretched to shore and attached to stumps and winches that had been removed from other vessels. On a selected day, the hull was set on fire. Often, a generous amount of oil had been spilled throughout the vessel to start the fire.
These wood vessels were of a most heavy construction, the builders having made use of the finest and largest timbers from the mills on the coast. Outside planking of four to six inches thick was normal. The frames were of double-sawed type from ten to fourteen inches square, while the inside planking could be up to fourteen or more inches thick. The decks were at least four-inch plans with massive deck beams to support them. All in all, there was more timber in a vessel than that vessel could carry as cargo in many cases. Hence, there was an enormous amount of fuel for a fire that was required before the ship breakers could salvage the steel fastenings.
When set afire, the blaze would rage for hours. It was common to set the fire at high tide on a summer evening, so as the tide receded, more of the hull would be exposed on the outside. The blaze would consume the deck and much of the upper portions of the hull, but on the inside, the heat from the fire would dry out the planking during low tide, so on the returning high tide, the hull would fill with water rather than float as before. Hence the desire to consume the most as possible before the tide extinguished the fire. Some supper portions would remain smoldering the next day, as the timbers being so large, they would not sustain combustion when the light plans had burned away.
When the blaze was set, the vessel's funeral pyre could be seen for miles up and down the Sound, especially after dark.
The wood hulls, when first set on the beach, would draw from ten to fifteen feet of water, but as the fire consumed the upper portions, the remaining backbone with the frames would float with the incoming tide and then be hauled further up the beach at high tide. The winches on the beach hauled away on the old frames during these high tides, so at low tides, the exposed timer could burn.
When I visited the burning sites one day in the summer, there were several hulls there, each somewhat consumed. The workmen would, at times, use dynamite to break the sections of a vessel into small enough portions that the winches could haul together like the land clearing crews do now with stumps, thereby consolidating the remnants so the fire could be kept burning. A loose or individual timber would not burn of itself.
The purpose of the burning was to recover the metal fastenings that the shipbuilder had used in construction. Some of these hulls, when burned clear down yielded 100 tons of iron bolts! At low tide, the workmen went out on the beach and gathered up any piece of metal they could find. They had made steel sleds out of parts removed from other vessels, and these were filled, dragged up the beach by a winch, then loaded for shipment to the steel mills.
My father, Capt. J.E. Shields bought considerable quantities of ship blocks, turnbuckles, wire rigging, sails, anchors, chain, spars, etc., or use on the fleet of sailing vessels. I remember one day in the summer of 1930 when he had purchased everything he could remove from the ELINORE H. We took two codfish dories from Poulsbo over to Richmond Beach. At high tide, the company crew had thrown over the side of the vessel all the loose wood blocks and several booms and gaffs. We gathered up the heavy books at low tide and put them in the dories. The booms were tied in a long string. Then, when the tide came in, the dories floated with the load of blocks and other metal rigging and hardware that was on the beach. We returned to Poulsbo, where the booms were pulled up on the beach above the tide and the wood blocks in the warehouse. It was surprising how many of these salvaged items were later used. He also bought all of the sails from some of the vessels being dismantled, these being stored in our sail loft where, over the years, they were taken out, then cut down to a smaller size for the codfish vessels, or just portions of the canvas used as tarpaulins.
The main yard of Nieder & Marcus had a warehouse where the better "goodies" were kept in the hope someone with cash would come along. There was one portion that had a second story. The flooring was salvage teak decking, 4" x 4" they had bought after it had been removed during one of the overhauls of the USS SARATOGA. Other items I remember there, as I was a frequent visitor when accompanying my father, were many coal oil lanterns removed from vessels. How I would like to have them today. However, the one item I remember most vividly was a ship's bell removed from the USS PRINCETON. I never heard a more beautiful tone from a bell. It was mounted on a wooden frame where a person could strike the bell, and then the tone could be heard for at least three minutes. The bell, as I remem ber qa vour 24" across. At the time he vessel was built, the school children of Princeton, New Jersey, had collected money for a bell. They had donated dimes, silver 10-cent pieces, which were melted down to last the bell. Therefore, the bell was solid silver! A proud ship carried this bell. I have not been able to find the disposition of the bell. Nieer and Marcus had decided that, as the bell was donated by children from their dimes, whoever bought it had to guarantee it would not be melted down to recover the silver. If any reader knows the whereabouts of the bell, we would appreciate learning from you..
Mr. John Howelln, nephew of Joe Livingston, the last manager of the firm, has a scrapbook kept by the firm, and therein is contained the only remaining history. Some photos show vessels being cut down, and a few newspaper stories have been preserved. Of interest to me were the final bill of sale documents from the previous owner to N & M. The former owner was faced with a problem of disposing of he old vessels, and a fleet of sailing vessels such as those owned by Libby McNeil and Libby went for one dollar each. When N & M had a signed bill of sale properly notarized in hand, there was no question of ownership and the possible later claim for damages to the vessel or by the Coast Guard for barratry.
The list of vessels that passed through the hands of N & M is included here. Not all were reduced to ashes and scrap for the steel furnaces. The PATTERSON, originally a survey ship, was fitted out as a motor ship and engaged in racing to Point Barrow before finally being wrecked in 1938. MONITOR became a fish reduction plant while K.V. DRUSE became a log barge. The ferry SEATTLE was towed to Alaska for use as a fish plant. There may be others that saw the deep water of the ocean or inland seas under their keel again.
Text by Capt. Edd Shields
for Puget Sound Maritime Society
Membership journal The Sea Chest, 1972.
Seattle, WA.
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