🌎 EARLY SURVEYING IN THE SAN JUAN ISLANDS (UPDATED) ❖

"Straits of Rosario, Cypress Island, and
Strawberry Harbor on the right.
Mt. Constitution & Hautboy Island, the latter 
being an old name for Strawberry Island.
Hautboy is a species of strawberry,
Fragaria moschata."
Painting by James Madison Alden (1834-1922),
National archives Record 5396161
Archived at College Park, MD.
Click image to enlarge.

"Semiahmoo Bay, from bluff with Camp
Semiahmoo, Drayton Harbor, and distant view
of Mt. Baker between 1857-1862."
Painting by James Madison Alden
(1834-1922)
National Archives Record 305488
archived at College Park, MD.
Click image to enlarge.

"View from hill on San Juan Island looking south
with Ontario Roads ACTIVE & SATELLITE at
anchor near Lopez Island with Mt. Baker
in distance between 1857-1862."
Painting by James Madison Alden (1834-1922)
From the National Archives, College Park, MD.
Record: 5396161
Click image to enlarge

James Alden Jr. (1810-1877)
courtesy of Wikipedia.

   "The first marine surveying in the San Juan Islands was done by Lieutenant James Alden (1810-1877) of the US Coast Survey in 1852. He led the Hydrographic Party of the US on the coast from 1848-1860 in the ACTIVE. He said the only discovery of importance made that season was a shoal near the entrance of Rosario Strait between Sucia Island and the mainland since called Alden Bank.   
      Surveys continued for approximately a decade. In 1857 the surveyors contended with heavy smoke from forest fires which prevented them from seeing the shore. The following summer they complained of drenching rains. Another handicap was the remarkable range of refraction which distorted the appearance of the shores on exceptionally clear days.
      Work like this, far from settlements, was tough going. Between seasons winter storms washed out a base mark at the southern end of Lummi Island and Native Americans destroyed other stations. George Davidson, who supervised the surveying, concluded in the oldest Pacific Coast Pilot (1859):
      'The experience of three seasons in this locality has not increased our relish for navigating these channels in sailing vessels. With plenty of wind, no navigation could be better, but in a calm, vessels will frequently be jammed close to rocks with only a few fathoms inside of their positions, but 40 to 50 outside, and a swirling current that renders towing the boats utterly impossible.'
      Elsewhere he said, "The number of islands and intricate channels lying between the two straits we shall not attempt to describe. A proper appreciation of them can only be obtained from the chart."
      Modern marine surveying made possible much more complete mapping than in the days of sail, but this too had handicaps.
      Owners of large fishing craft expected the survey launch to get out of the way even though it was engaged in running a grid of straight lines and often the little boat was threatened with swamping or a collision. Crossing kelp beds sometimes involved chewing the long tubular stems with the propeller, stalling, reversing, and chewing the way forward again. Sometimes the work was complicated by a fathometer echo from floating kelp, added to the echo from the bottom. Grass growing two to seven feet high on the bottom of Mosquito Pass and Roche Harbor gave off a puzzling double echo. Incidentally, the deepest hole in the islands was found between Jones and Flattop, where 133 fathoms were recorded.
     The temperature of the seawater in the islands is remarkably constant from the surface to bottom. This may be because it is so thoroughly roiled it gets little chance to warm near the surface. The water stays cold all year, not changing more than ten degrees. Fahrenheit in the hot summer months. Water temperature will swing from 45 degrees in the winter to 55 in the summer. 
     Part of the assignment of surveyors was to measure the tidal currents. It meant launches had to anchor in one spot for 100 hours at a stretch to record the rate of flow every half hour. In Spieden Channel, between San Juan and Spieden Islands, where the tide runs five knots and up to six knots under certain conditions, hydrography had its thrilling aspects.
     Other fast currents are in Cattle Pass between the southern ends of San Juan and Lopez Islands, and around Cactus Island. 
     In fog, the owner of a small boat would be out of luck without knowledge of such current. In Cattle Pass, for example, with the current running top speed and the wind against it, a man attempting the passage in an open boat ought to have his life insurance paid up.
     A survey officer told me, "While the San Juans have no whirlpools in constant directions, they can produce places which must have looked pretty bad to old sailboat men."
      Juan Pantoja would have agreed with him.
     You'll hear different versions of the same story everywhere you go in the San Juans –– about the man who cruised among the islands without a marine chart. He pulled into Fossil Bay at Sucia, tied his line to a buoy and exclaimed that this didn't look like East Sound to him. When asked if he had checked his chart, he said he had none; he was using a Washington road map.
      "Where are you bound from here?" he was asked.
      "For Sidney on Vancouver Island," was the reply.
      "I don't think that road map is going to do you much good out in Haro Strait," the moorage man told him."
Lucile S. McDonald. Making History, the People Who Shaped the San Juan Islands. Friday Harbor Press, Friday Harbor, WA. 1990.


James Madison Alden trained as a US Navy cartographer, but he is best known for his landscape paintings beginning on the West Coast of the US and near the new US-Canada border while he was serving on the Coast Survey ship the USCS ACTIVE in 1854 under command of his uncle James Alden Jr. (1810-1877)

There is a historical plaque on Cypress Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA., to commemorate this artwork by James Madison Alden.

      

❖ CYPRESS AFTER THE WIND STORM ❖

Cypress Island, Skagit County, WA.
 after the wind gusts of 60 mph.
Courtesy of Lance A. Douglas,
from nearby Blakely Island, WA.

❖ ANTIQUE ANCHOR LOST AND FOUND ❖

These three great photos of the anchor during a spell
without her blanket of water in the new crate.
 Port Townsend, WA.
Photographs shared by Captain Flanagan©.

The maritime history talk in the Pacific Northwest newspapers and society newsletters has revealed  what has been "underground" for several years and underwater for many decades. 

      The artifact found by Doug Monk off Whidbey Island in 2008 has now been brought to the surface and made known to the public––it will be an interesting study to follow. There are fascinating comments submitted to the published newspaper columns, some from learned historians; those publishers and dates sited in the image below.

      Historian Steve Grimm of Seattle is giving a presentation on the research data that convinces the team they have found Captain George Vancouver's anchor, written up in the expedition log books as lost at Strawberry Bay, near Cypress Island, Skagit County, WA  in 1792. 

      Grimm's talk is scheduled for this coming Friday 20 June 2014 at the Northwest Maritime Center, Port Townsend.  Below is a clip from the site of the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend, WA. 

Aside from the possibility of the anchor being left behind from Capt. Vancouver's 1792 exploration there are no other known artifacts in Washington State surviving from that visit.  
     

From the archives of the Saltwater People we can share this 1952 b/w  photo of a very colorful mural depicting Capt. George Vancouver's visit to Kealakeakua Bay off the island of Hawaii in 1792. The English explorer is being welcomed by King Kamehameha I; this artwork hung in the transport THOMAS JEFFERSON, a former commercial passenger liner, occasionally visiting Seattle.

See a 2007 article from The Vancouver Sun newspaper found on the Bellingham Maritime Museum site here.

St. Peter's Churchyard, Petersham, Surrey, Eng.

Original, undated photo from the 

archives of the S. P. H. S.

Click to enlarge.

     A quote from a book in the Saltwater People collection, Vancouver's Discovery of Puget Sound, Professor Edmond Meany; Binford's and Mort, 1957:

      "Professor George Davidson, now of the Univ of CA, was for more than forty years engaged with the US Coast and Geodetic Survey on the Pacific Coast. A few years ago, in a letter to the present writer, he said, 'I have gone over every foot of the work done by Vancouver on this coast and I wish to say that he was a great big man.'
      This is a monument greater than the naming of an island, more enduring than an engraved slab of marble. The whole world will always honor Vancouver for his brilliant achievements in the science of geography."

❖ Mysterious Cypress Island ❖ with June Burn in 1946.

CYPRESS ISLAND, San Juan Archipelago

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

Day 44 of One Hundred Days in the San Juan Islands, one in a series of newspaper columns June Burn wrote under contract with The Seattle Post Intelligencer in 1946.

"Cypress Island has always been a place of mystery to me. I had heard that legend of the young princess who was thrown off Eagle Cliff at the north end because she consorted with the enemy. I had read Vancouver's account of entering Strawberry Bay and finding anchorage in a 'fine, sandy bottom' on the west side of the island, which, ' producing an abundance of upright cypress obtained the name Cypress Island.'
It was off Cypress that one of Vancouver's vessels, the CHATHAM, lost her anchor (would any shred of its iron be there yet?) off the rocky east side of the island.
Cypress, too, is the only one of the islands where the rhododendrons grow,  or used to grow, in rich abundance, it's dark fir-ed peaks all a-flower in May.

Native Rhododendron macrophyllum,
The state flower of Washington.
Do they still grow on Cypress Island??

But, 5,500 acres big, covering eight and one-half miles, Cypress has, ever since I've known it, been uninhabited. Yet it is near the mainland. It has two fairly good harbors, one very good one, several shallow bays and nice beaches, some lowland, and a great abundance of timber.
Perhaps it's story is another one of the sad stories of Puget Sound. Perhaps they logged it to hideous ugliness a generation ago so that it has been all this time getting back its fine coast of timber. Or, perhaps it lacks water or easy access.
Whatever the reason, people haven't lived on Cypress much or long.  I imagine it has a grand smuggling history––if smuggling can be as grand an adventure as old romantic tales have cracked it up to be. Since fish traps were outlawed in WA [1934], there has been a great deal of reefnetting off Cypress.
We hadn't meant to go ashore on Cypress, but to pass the high massive beast well to the south, on our way to Guemes. But, of course, the wind and the tide took us in tow, as always, and the first thing we knew we were practically on the boulder strewn south beach of the huge, silent island. It was getting on towards night, too. Take a look at the chart and see where the best harbor is––it'll have to be on the eastern shore, we can't get around to Strawberry Bay in this tide.
AND THAT is how we discovered for the first time that fine harbor called Deep Water Bay with the inner bay called Secret Harbor. Ha! There would be nobody at all there, not even the reefnet fishermen. We'd have this night world all to ourselves and get a little writing done before going on next morning.
We rounded the domed peak which is the southwest portion of Cypress, blew right on around into the mouth of Deep Water Bay and––why, there's a cluster of little white cabins on a low level valley between two immense wooded hills. Is this Switzerland? This is unlike anything we've seen in the islands.
Our white jib and red mainsail take us scooting on in to the dock. There is a man there. He waves. As we draw alongside we see that it is Mr. Shaw whom we used to know in Bellingham. He is running this tiny village of cabins, hasn't much trouble talking us into one of them for the night, hospitable and that he is, and Mrs. Shaw also.
This spot on Cypress seems to have been homesteaded 50 odd years ago by Joe and Mike Cadboy, relatives of the Shaws. They built a log barn back up in the valley and left a pair of harnesses in it 40 years ago which are still there, intact, except one bridle which Mr. Shaw took. I don't know whether that is a comment on the disappearance of horses, on the honesty of people around here, or on the isolation of Cypress Island!
See you tomorrow. June."

✪ Two years after June's essay is posted the below newspaper article comes to the surface: 

A party of twenty two attended a picnic at Cypress Island, Rhododendron Day, 14 May. The launch DAWN, on which the party went, brought home a large load of beautiful flowers, and all brought plants for transplanting." 
San Juan Islander, 20 May 1910.