❖ HOME FOR CHRISTMAS with Log Tow ❖ 1949

Across the Strait of Juan de Fuca
Text by Captain Ray Quinn

BARBARA FOSSDiesel 1200 HP; Ocean Going
Original photo by Roger Dudley, Seattle.
From the archives of the S. P. H. S. ©

Captain Ray Quinn
Undated original photo from
the archives of the S. P. H. S. ©

I was on the BARBARA FOSS and we'd just come into Seattle from Alaska. It was about eight or nine days before Christmas. So they told me I was going over to Esquimalt to get a tow of logs and bring 'em around to Port Townsend. The engineer, Doc Templeton, he said, "to hell with that. I'm gonna have Christmas at home––I'm not gonna go." I went in and told the dispatcher that and he said, "well, Jack Gilden is on his time off, and he's down in Port Angeles. When you get through with the customs clearin', the first assistant can run the engine to Port Townsend, and you can pick up Jack there." So I said, "ok, that's fine." So when we got through with customs and started out, we got down to Pt. T, and Jack Gilden was there at the Standard Oil dock.
      We picked him up and went on to Esquimalt. It's right next door to Victoria. We went through customs, and we were gonna wait until daylight. So at daylight, we found the tow and looked it over and put some extra gear on it. It was 64 sections of bundles rafts. A bundle raft is a truck load. They bring 'em down to the water, and before they dump the logs into the water they put a band around 'em and cinch 'em up good and tight, and the bundle can take a lot of weather. You can get more footage of logs in the tow. So that's what they'd done. But there was one stick in the middle raft––the end was pulled out, but they had a jury rig with wire on it, so we put another wire on it and doubled it up so it wouldn't give us any trouble.
      That morning we started out, and when we got out to the entrance of the Esquimalt harbor, I heard two tugs off Pt. Angeles talking, the ARTHUR FOSS, Capt. Jay Thurston, and the MATHILDA FOSS, Capt. Ray Cook. But they had a tow that was goin' up on the American side. They were goin' up around Dungeness. They said there was a little swell, but they were gonna try it anyhow. I got thinking––before we left Seattle I talked to Walt Headwall, the dispatcher. I asked him, I says, "any objection to me goin' across the Strait and getting on the American side and coming up to Port Townsend?" He says, "I don't care, you can go right up for Dungeness Spit, I don't care." So I said, "ok, I'll think about it." I told Jay Thurston, I said, "I think I'll come across, head up for Dungeness." So he said, well, you'll  be home for a white Christmas one day or another."
      Anyhow the tide was ebbin' pretty good yet, so we took the tow down toward Race Rocks, and the flood tide started to come, and we headed up for Dungeness Spit. The tide was runnin' like hell; it was a big flood. Anyhow, when we went by Dungeness Spit, we's about three miles off of the end of it. We were pullin' across the current. And about that time the tide run out, so we's kind of anglin' across the current, tryin' to get in behind Dungeness Spit. 
      The MATHILDA FOSS gave me a call and he says, "say, we got a couple of hours to kill up here," he says. "We're a little ahead of ya, if ya want me to, I'll come back and give ya a little pull." I told him, "Come on, everything's welcome!" So he did, he come back and got alongside the raft and put his tow line on and pulled there for a coupla hours, and so we skidded right in behind Dungeness, between Dungeness and Discovery Bay. And then the next tide, they were gonna go inside the island. The MATHILDA had let go and gone up to his own tow. So I asked Jay Thurston, "You goin' inside the island, Protection Island?" and he said, "Yeah!" I told him "Well, if you can make it in to Port Townsend, goin' inside the island, I can come outside the island and make it in to Townsend, too." So he said, "Well, it's a good idea." So we did, we headed up outside the island, goin' pretty good with a small flood.
      

Map drawn for The Sea Chest by
the Honourable  Ron R. Burke, Editor
of Puget Sound Martime Historical Society.
See PSMHS on Favorite Web Site List

In the meantime, the MARTHA FOSS was in Port Townsend. He was gonna go from Pt. Townsend to New Westminster, up the Fraser River with two sawdust barges. So he was up to the custom man, he says, "The BARBARA FOSS'll be in here this afternoon with a tow of logs for the mill."
      And he says, "Aw, no. I generally get the papers on those logs eight or nine days ahead––I haven't got a thing on 'em." Bill Ericson was cap'n on the MARTHA FOSS, so he was lookin' out the window, and he says, 'I got news for you." He says, "the BARBARA FOSS is comin' around Pt. Wilson right now." So the guy grabs the telephone and called the mill, and they said. "Oh, no, we got lots of time to get the papers to ya." He says, "Ya have like hell––ya have 'em up here in an hour, 'cause that's the time they're gonna be in here." And I guess that's why it hit the fan, 'cause they called Seattle, and the guy was raisin' hell. He says he didn't want his logs out in the Strait of Juan da Fuca.
      So anyhow, Bill Ericson come down from the custom house, he gives me a call on the radio, and he says, "Hey, Ray, kill a couple of hours to get the tide right goin' up the Fraser River. If you want me to, I'll come out and give ya a pull for a little bit." So we'd gone on by Pt. T. and over towards Marrowstone Point with the tow. We's trying to fight our way in to Pt. T. Bay. There was a lot of counter currents in there. There's the big eddy behind Point Wilson, so we stayed away from that. Anyhow, we's pullin' back into the Bay, so Bill come out and give us a pull for a coupla hours, and then he left. By that time we's up where the tide didn't bother us so much.
      We got up to the log moorings, and the mill tug was out there. He had the superintendent of the mill, and the head boom man, and all kinds of people to look this raft over to see if it was injured in any way. All it was, was a little bark washed off the side where we'd hit a little swell out in the Strait, but not much. Anyhow, 26 hours from the time we left Esquimalt, we was tied up in Pt. T.
      When I called in to Seattle, Sid Campbell answered the radio. He wanted to know if we'd had any trouble or was anything broke on the raft. I told him, "No, only this one stick had an end pulled out of it, and that was before we left Esquimalt. We'd doubled up the gear on that so it was no trouble at all. All it did was wash a little bark off." So he said, "Ok, come on home." So I got back to Seattle. I left Jack Gilden off on the Standard Oil dock, his wife was comin' from Pt. Angeles to pick him up––that's where he lived. So we left him there and went on in to Ballard. 

Looking down on 3 towboats with many sections,
from Deception Pass Bridge, Summer 1941.
Capt. Quinn decided on an alternate route.

Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S. ©

If we'd have went around, up through Deception Pass and up through the islands and then into Wasp Pass––if we'd had eight days of good weather, it would have taken us eight days. When we got to Seattle, I called Doc Templeton at home. When the phone rang, he answered and he says, "where the hell are you at?"
      I told him, "we're in Seattle." He said, "what'd they do, cancel the job?" I told him, "no, they didn't cancel the job. We went across the Strait and come up. You could have measured the trip and still been home for Christmas." He couldn't believe it, that we'd gone across the Strait. And a lot of other people didn't believe it either, but that's what we did. We went across there with 64 sections of logs in bundle rafts,* and I don't know whether anybody's ever tried it since or before––I don't know.

ANDREW FOSS

 was another old-timer that was built for the US Army in 1905.
In 1923 she became part of the Foss fleet and spent
much of her time towing logs in the Straits. 

Longtime skipper Bill Erickson loaned Ray her 450-HP 
to help the tow across Pt. Townsend Bay.
Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

*"Bundles" are made up by wrapping an entire truckload of logs with flat steel straps. After dumping, they float about four feet out of the water and are assembled into a raft for towing. Bundle size will vary from eight to twelve logs depending upon their diameter.

Master Mariner tug Captain Ray Quinn was well known in the Puget Sound maritime community. He served as chief mate on several Victory ships during WWII and obtained his Master's license. In 1954 he was accepted into the Puget Sound Pilots and served for 20 years. 
Essay from the quarterly membership journal 
The Sea Chest, December 2002.
Courtesy of Puget Sound Maritime, Seattle, WA.



      
      

❖ The Canadian in Deception Pass ❖ My Experiences in a Flood Tide

By Capt. Ray Quinn

Tugs MARY D. HUME and IRENE,
 Deception Pass, 1938.
Original photo from archives of the S.P.H.S.©

"This is a story about takin' off through Deception Pass. We picked up a tow out of Skapna on DOUGLAS, and we'd picked up a tow in Olympia and gone for Anacortes. We'd got to Coronet Bay, which is a little bay inside of Deception Pass where you can tie up your tow  and wait for weather and tides. So we was in there for four or five days, and the weather was bad outside, so we couldn't go out. The other tugs had come in and tied up too, so when we did get good weather, we was all gonna go out at once, on the same tide.
      The Gilkey Brothers' tug SOUND, she was a tug of about 280-hp. She had a tow, and she was gonna be the first boat out. So she pulled away from the moorings in Coronet Bay. Then there was two little boats had a 12-section raft, they went around in back of the island in Coronet Bay, and they were gonna come out and go second. DOLLY C. was gonna be the third boat. Then our turn come--we's gonna be the fourth boat. We had three sections of logs. There was two little ones from Gilkey Bros., they had eight sections apiece, so they doubled their raft up. One of 'em was gonna tow the logs through the pass, and the other one was gonna tail his raft out. Then there was a coupla other little boats there that had eight sections apiece. They were gonna be the last ones out.
       So we all started out, and the tide was floodin' pretty good yet. SOUND, he got right up into the Pass pretty close to the entrance to the Pass, and he looked out, and so did I--I happened to see it , too. Here come a Canadian tug with 32 sections of cedar logs, comin' in on the last of the flood, somethin' that was unheard of. You couldn't judge the tides along there enough to do that. Anyhow, in he come, and SOUND, he pulled over behind Pass Island and got out of the way. These two little boats stayed behind the island. They were in the clear, but DOLLY C. was right off Strawberry Island. He was in the main channel, and he had a double raft of about 16 sections. So in this guy come. The Rogers brothers, they saw him too, comin', so they run out and got on the tail end of his raft and tried to help him steer it, but the last of the flood was settin' on what we call Gobbler's Knob, a point of rock on the Whidbey Island side of the Pass. The bridge pier sets on it now, comes down on the Gobbler's Knob. But anyhow, the last section hit that and spilled some logs, and he kept vomin' in. The cedar raft, the logs were floatin' pretty high in the raft, and the tow that DOLLY C. had, it was hemlock and it was pretty low in the water. The cedar raft hit DOLLY C.'s raft, and the cedar went right over the top of the hemlock logs and knocked the lantern jack down about a third of the way in on the section, and they were kind of locked together. I was right behind DOLLY C. so I could see what happened. We let our tow line run up against this Canadian raft, and he pushes off of the top of DOLLY C.'s raft and over towards Strawberry Island, but the tide was runnin' pretty hard yet, so he got clear. He hollered at me as he went by, he says, 'Where can I go? Where can I go?' I told 'im, 'You can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned!' But anyhow, we got this cedar raft off of DOLLY C.'s hemlock.
      So then we took our towline in again and started pullin'. So then SOUND, he come back in, and the tide and started to change, so he went out, and these two little boats behind--I can't remember the name of that island--they come out of the hole and went on out, then DOLLY C. went, and then it was our turn. By that time the tide was ebbin' like hell, but the Rogers brothers, they had two little tugs, and they were tailin' every tow that went out. So we cleared everything, and soon as we got outside the narrowest place, the tail end of the raft was still in the fast current, and the front end of it was in the less currrent. We's pullin' on that anyhow, but then the raft tried to tie knots in itself. Everything went all right--the gear all held. We got clear and went on up into Burrows Bay and caught the next tide in to Anacortes. Everybody did. The last two guys out, they only had a single raft apiece, about eight sections, and they really got a ride. The Rogers brothers done an excellent job of tailin' everybody and this Canadian tied up to the dolphin moorings in Coronet Bay. They told him when to leave and everything. I guess he was goin' to Seattle with them. I don't know. I don't know where he went, but nobody hit 'im.

Tugs with tails, 
towing through Deception Pass.
Date unknown.

      One guy tried years ago. He went out on the last of the ebb in Deception Pass. He got out to where the stake light is, the entrance to the place. He got that far, and the tide started to flood, and he started goin' backwards, he couldn't hold 'em, and he dropped his anchor, and the anchor finally fetched up, and it jerked the twin' machine off of the deck, and the towin' machine acted as an anchor and kinda held the raft in a straight line, and it went through the Pass backwards by itself. Nobody ever tried it after that, goin' out on the last of the tide."
By Captain Ray Quinn
Transcribed to Jean Burrows,
Courtesy of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society
The Sea Chest
March 2008

The late Captain Ray Quinn was a well-known master mariner and tugboat captain. In 1954 he joined the Puget Sound Pilots and served in that capacity for 20 years. Many of his stories have appeared in The Sea Chest, a journal for members of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Seattle, WA.
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