❖ Crossing the Flats to Utsalady ❖

THE BLACK PRINCE

One June morning just at daylight, the Black Prince was crossing the flats from the South Fork of the Skagit River to Utsalady with a tow. It was a very foggy morning. You would call it a complete saturation. A cold Northeast breeze blew down off the snow-covered ridges of the Cascades. Bill was out on the forward deck taking soundings and calling them to the wheelhouse. It was a very shallow, and sounding pole Bill used was marked in feet. Bill shoved his pole to the bottom. He read the markings at the edge of the water and shouted the footings to the bridge. He did it again and again, shouting the depths as the bottom changed. Six-seven-eight!
      It's a cold, wet job-a'standing and a'hollering. Bille felt his a useless task. Why stay out in the cold and take soundings! The water depth was about the same, varying only by a few inches or, at most, a foot-all the way across the flats. So Bill decked inside by the boiler, relishing the warmth. Every few minutes he stuck his head outside and yelled, "Six feet, seven feet," and to himself, he muttered, "shucks, who'll know the difference!"
      How could he know that the boat hit a sand bar, that it was stuck fast a the very moment he was a'yelling out the window, "Six, seven, eight!"
      But he had a rude awakening. It came in the form of the skipper's foot––right in the posterior portion of his anatomy––with such force that it propelled Bill right over the side into a very cold and wet four feet of water.
      They dragged him aboard shivering! And Bill felt a much wiser boy and told himself he'd learned a lesson as the changed his clammy clothes. He came on deck to find a fast falling tide leaving the boat high and dry. But that wasn't the only thing high! The pitch of the captain's voice as he scolded Bill was something awful. The language he used would have made the sun hide its face in shame if it had been shining.
      Hours later the tide started back. And they told Bill to make a mark someplace outside so that the rise of the incoming tide could be measured. Bill did it carefully. And it wasn't more than an hour or so before the captain yelled to Bill to run and see how much the tide had raised since he had made the mark. Bill ran and came back, "It ain't raised none, sir," he said.
      A half-hour later the captain sent him to look again. Bill reported once more that the tide hadn't raised an inch.
      This time the captain took him by the arm. "Bill, show me this mark you've made."
      "Yes, sir," and Bill pointed very proudly to the white chalk mark drawn on the side of the hull about two inches above the waterline.

Captain M.F. Galligan
Gig Harbor, WA. 
Piling Busters Yearbook 1951 
Stories of Towboating by Towboat Men
Mitchell Publications, Seattle, WA.

❖ STERNWHEELING ON THE SKAGIT ❖

BLACK PRINCE
ON 3866
1901-1956
On Dead Man's Slough above Sedro-Woolley 
with a tow for Bradsbury Logging Co. Top deck areCapt./Mrs. Charles W. Wright, son Vernon, Mrs. Bird, cook.
Main deck: L-R, F.M. Elwell, Frank Anderson, deck hands 
and Wesley Harbert, fireman.
Original photo from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

Though so many years had passed, nostalgic twinges gripped the writer, at times, as he seemed to hear the melodious whistle, faint and far away, of the old sternwheeler Black Prince as she boils up the Skagit with cool-headed Capt. Forrest Elwell at the wheel. 
      He can still hear people say, upon the sound of the whistle, "here comes the old Black Prince."
      Highlights of this historic steamer are contained in a letter received recently [1964] from Captain Elwell:

      "In the late summer of 1900, Capt. Charles Wright sold the City of Bothell and then the Snohomish and Skagit River Navigation Co was formed by Capt. Charles Wright, Capt. Charles Elwell, and Capt. Vic Pinkerton. It was then decided to build a boat for towing on the Snohomish and Skagit rivers.
      Capt. Elwell made the hull model and Bob Houston was given the job of building the Black Prince."
      Work was started in the winter of 1900, at the Ferry Baker Mill on the Snohomish River where the Canyon Mill stands today.
      Dimensions of the Black Prince were: Hull, 93-ft, LOA, 112-ft, 19-ft B, depth of hold, 4.6-ft, 150 G.T. according to the captain. When the hull and superstructure were completed, she was towed to Seattle by the tug Nellie Pearson, where a pair of 10 x 48 steam engines and a 100-HP brickyard boiler, 150 pounds working pressure were installed.
      "After completion, the Prince came back to Everett under her own power and then went to the Skagit to tow logs and piling," Elwell wrote.

BLACK PRINCE
photo postcard mailed 1912.
Photograph by Bayley
Click to enlarge.
from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

      The first crew on the Prince in 1901, was Capt. Elwell; Capt. (Engr.) Wright; engineer Mike Hertzberg; Capt. Pinkerton, Forrest Elwell, deckhand, and Wes Harbert, fireman.
      "In the late summer of 1901, she made a trip between Novelty and Tolt. In 1902, the Prince took a tow from Haskell Slough (near Monroe) to the mouth of the Snohomish River. 
      On 7 July 1903, loaded 50 tons of machinery at Mount Vernon  ✪ ✪ ✪ (click on "read more")