TROUBLED WATERS ... A Sea Story

 

Guemes Island author
Syd Stapleton's 
new novel is set in
Anacortes and the 
San Juan Archipelago, WA.

Reading a book in your own backyard seems to give it a little extra spark. Syd Stapleton, a former ferry captain, landing craft relief skipper, and tugboat worker, among many other hats, has just released a new novel, Troubled Waters, set in Anacortes and the San Juan Islands. Locals will recognize old haunts such as Marine Hardware and The Brown Lantern. Others are given aliases but may be familiar to some long-time residents. 

        The hero of Troubled Waters is Frank Tomasini, a 47-year-old marine surveyor who lives comfortably on his boat, the Molly B, a 1937 salmon troller, which has been lovingly refurbished by its former owner, Harlan Brown, who also happens to be Frank’s best friend. When Frank is asked to unofficially survey the damage to a boat found adrift and abandoned near San Juan Island, he learns the owner, Arthur Middleton, a rich and holier-than-though environmental warrior, has disappeared. His boat, the Sound Avenger, may have been sabotaged. Ironically, the only thing that kept it from sinking was a bit of floating trash, which blocked enough water from getting in to keep it afloat.
       More alarming is that neither the local police nor Arthur’s own estranged brother, a powerful business shark with a wide net (forgive the sea pun), seem interested in finding Arthur, who was not exactly a beloved figure in the community. Although Frank and Arthur were not the best of friends, Arthur’s unexplained disappearance nags at Frank. Soon he has enlisted Harlan’s help in unraveling the mystery behind both Arthur’s vanishing and the forces behind it. They follow a trail that winds through a dive bar full of salty locals, a dying fish farm, a wreck-filled marina, several local islands, and quite a few bottles of Laphroaig. Stapleton’s writing style could be called sea-noir, with enough careful attention to detail to immerse readers in the charm and changeability of the Northwest. It even manages to make the idea of living in very tight quarters on a former fishing boat seem downright desirable. There are flashes of humor amidst the drama and Frank’s narrative is both self-deprecating and clever. Frank and Harlan’s friendship avoids the feeling of a smug bromance, instead showing a deep and caring friendship. 
       The scenes with Frank’s new buddy Alan, a young Scottish biologist with an amazing capacity for scotch – reading a book set in our own backyard seems to give it a little extra whiskey, while adding moments of lightness.
       Troubled Waters is an environmental disaster story cloaked in a whodunit. The mystery is not so much the what or why, but the who and the how, especially how corporate polluters continue to get away with ruining the ecosystem with little to no oversight. While the novel doesn’t moralize, it does show the danger of indifference, of waiting for someone else–like the obnoxious Arthur Middleton–to deal with things, 
even if his righteous anger needs to get its priorities straight.
       As in any good sea story, both the Molly B and the sea play important roles. While Frank does some land-based sleuthing, the action intensifies on the water. The Molly B is Frank’s sea-wife, described with vivid detail from its gleaming wood to the pantry, always well-stocked with coffee and alcohol. Troubled Waters relies on nautical terminology as well as comprehensive geography of the waters of the San Juan Islands, Stapleton weaves them in with seamless authenticity, but for those who 
need further explanations, there is a glossary of nautical terms in the back of the book.
       Like the Molly B, the story moves at a steady pace, giving us time to meet a colorful collection of characters, as well as conveying Frank’s secrets and his complicated relationship with Carol, an old friend turned lover. Like any good mystery, the more Frank learns, the more dangerous things get for him, threatening both his livelihood and his life. But like any good seaman, Frank has a brave and dedicated crew of friends to help him navigate this tale. 

Review by Betty Passerelli 

Troubled Waters is currently available at Amazon and your independent bookstore.

❖ THE GEODUCK THAT WASN'T ❖

GUEMES ISLAND.
Day 47 of 100 Days in the San Juans 
June Burn on contract to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; 1946

"When we woke up in our little playhouse down on the Bessner Beach, that Sunday morning, the tide had lit out from there like a scared rabbit. Water was almost out of sight. The SAN JUANDERER, completely at the end of its 150-ft tether, was a half mile this side of the water's edge, or nearly. A little more, and you could have walked all the way to Jack Island on dry land––or on firm sand, the clams spurting at you all the way.
      

GEODUCK CLAMS
Native to Washington State
Courtesy of WA. State Fish and Wildlife.

      We went up beach to breakfast at the Batleys' and then out, with them and Mr. Kemoe, to dig geoducks––our first in all our years in the islands. We took two shovels, a bucket and the camera. The sand was pitted with round holes as much as an inch and a half in diameter. Now and then a hole would be full of what looked like a bit of sandy flotsam.
       We found a very big hole with the animal there at the top––or his snout, anyway. He was probably far down in the sand. The two men fell to digging just as hard and fast as they could, one on each side for the hole. Mr. Kemoe put his hand down, burrowed for the big clam, grabbed the withdrawing neck and held on. Farrar kept digging and and at last the heavy, thick, long clam came up. The first one must have weighed four pounds, more than a meal in itself, if you ate all of it.
      We dug several more and gave them to a neighbor on the beach who hadn't enough muscle for that kind of digging. She had a host of guests to feed.
      

Horse Clams
Native to the San Juan Islands
Courtesy of Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.

By that time, the beach was full of people digging for geoducks. We felt tremendously proud of our big one. Then someone said: 'They aren't geoducks at all; they're horse clams.' And when we looked them up in our Seashore Animals, later on, sure enough they were horse clams, summer clams, otter shells, gapers or, if you prefer, Schizpthaerus nuttallii.
'This, the books says, ' is one of the largest clams to be found on our coast. Shells reach six to eight inches in length and the weight of the whole clam may reach four pounds––the clams are of excellent quality, siphon and all being used though the siphon has to be 'skinned' before it is cooked.'
      This is the clam which the Agners on Big Double call the sweet clams and that they fry and steam. The Batleys use only the white muscles, the skinned siphon, and the foot for meat. These they grind and make into patties.
      They and many other people throw away all the rest. 'But that is the very best part of the clam,' someone else will tell you. One man there on the beach said they cut away the muscles, the neck (siphon), and the foot, grind them for chowder, but fry as tasty delicacies all the rest of the clam that is tender as butter, and certainly the flavorful portion.
      If people can eat the whole oyster alive and raw, stomach, intestines, and all, why not the clam?
      (For others who also do not know geoducks when they see them, that animal has a whiter shell than the horse clam, with no dark edges on it, the shells much more clearly marked with growth rings, and the 'neck' or siphon is longer. The geoduck goes up to five or six pounds, too. My Seashore Animals gives 'goiduck' as the pronunciation of geoduck.
      Last winter, when I was on Guemes, I met Tony Naser, a retired railroad engineer who lives with his wife in a green cottage here on North Beach. He was gone but across the road we met Mrs. Whicker, the wife of an artist about whom we have been hearing about for a long time. Mr. Whicker wasn't at home, but his wife with the shiny yellow braids obligingly posed for us on the porch of their house. She was canning salmon and making doll clothes for the gorgeous rag dolls she makes as her hobby to match her husband's paintings.
     I wish we could have photographed the interior of that cabin. But Mrs. Whicker said it had been tried without success by experts. We didn't try. Of one room, it is spacious, colorful, simply beautiful and fully as utile as any pioneer cabin ever was. You can't say that humans aren't adding to the beauty of this corner of earth."
June.
      

❖ "SMUGGLER" KELLY ❖

KATY THOMAS
 ON 161054
Sloop built on Waldron Island, WA., by A. J. Hinckley in 1894,
for the Thomas brothers, Ashton, Elery, and John, of that island.
38.1' x 12' x 3.6' 
8 G.t. and 7 N.t.
Later owned by smuggler Larry Kelly, Guemes, & Sinclair Islands.
Photo from Thomas family, courtesy of the Anacortes Museum.
Vessel data from federal document (MCC) in SPHS records.

"A legendary character who sailed San Juan waters was Lawrence Kelly, better known as 'Smuggler' Kelly. One can still hear the most lurid accounts of his supposed bloodthirstiness, yet Kelly himself always insisted he was an 'honest' smuggler who never harmed his fellow man.
      The surviving evidence seems to bear out Kelly's claim. Part of the problem is that for decades Sunday Supplement writers have carelessly confused Larry with a hoodlum and sometimes smuggler named Jim 'Pig Iron' Kelly (no relation), who did terrorize the Puget Sound country during much of the same period.
      Larry Kelly sometimes trafficked in wine and Chinese illegals, but his main stock in trade was opium. In those days drugs were not illegal in the US, but they were dutiable. Uncle Sam's customs officials were supposed to see the government got its cut in the lucrative business of supplying Chinese laundry and cannery workers with their drug of choice. Kelly used to claim customs men themselves were the most active opium smugglers of all, and that the real reason they pursued him so relentlessly was to cut down on the competition.
      Kelly hailed from the Emerald Isle and went to sea as a young lad, seeking adventures that took him to the ports of Europe, Asia, and the South Seas. A ship chanced to land him in New Orleans just as the Civil War was getting underway, and Kelly decided to stay and join the fun. Records of Louisiana's Confederate soldiers show that he joined a volunteer company of the 22nd and 23rd Infantry on 2 September 1861.
      Perhaps the war wasn't as much fun as he had expected. The records show he was only present until February 1862.
      Presumably, there was another sea voyage and then Kelly landed on the shores of Puget Sound in 1865. He did some honest labor at the little village we now call Tacoma, loading lumber on board a sailing vessel.
      Sometime in the 1870s, Kelly settled on the southwest shore of Guemes Island at a spot which is still known as Kelly's Point. It afforded him a view through Bellingham Channel to the Strait of Georgia which was useful in monitoring the movements of customs boats. He married an Indian woman named Lizzie Katz and began raising a family.
      In Helen Elmore's book about Guemes, there is a description of Kelly: short, barrel-chested, wiry brown hair,  bushy beard, small bloodshot eyes, dirty shirt and overalls, bare sun-tanned feet. Bill Rosler of Friday Harbor told me years ago that Kelly also had a scar across his forehead and was a "nice fellow".
      Kelly would purchase opium in Victoria, where there were at least two factories openly manufacturing the drug. Then came the illicit dash over the border on his fast sloop, first to one of several hideouts in the San Juans, then on to some Puget Sound city with a large Chinese population. A frequent destination was Pt. Townsend, where Kelly used to land at night and let opium down the chimneys of Chinese laundries.
      Apparently, it was a most profitable business. By 1886 Kelly was able to buy up the western half of Sinclair (also known locally as 'Cottonwood') Island where he moved and became a leading citizen. He was even elected to the school board, in spite of his occupation.

William Rosler, Friday Harbor, WA. 

Son of Christopher Rosler (d.1907) 

who was one of Capt. George Pickett's soldiers 

who helped build American Camp.

(Writer Richardson interviewed Bill Rosler in 1960.)

Original photo from S. P. H. S.© 

As Bill Rosler recalled, 'everyone knew he smuggled, but the trick was to catch him.' Kelly was a first-rate sailor and pretty hard to catch. He mastered the old smugglers' trick of going out in bad weather when the law stayed close to shore. The customs boat at the time was a steamer, the WOLCOTT; but it was pretty slow in any kind of wind, Kelly could sail faster than the WOLCOTT could steam! In any case, Kelly knew every inch of coastline and if pressed too hard he would head for shallow water where the larger vessel couldn't follow.
      In time, they caught him and Kelly paid several fines for carrying contraband. But he was a thorn in the side of customs officers who were determined to 'put him away'––and they did.
      In March 1891, Kelly was traveling to Portland to board a train that, whether by accident or design, was also carrying two customs inspectors. They opened Kelly's large, new leather suitcase and found 65 half-pound cans of prepared opium. Kelly was arrested at Castle Rock and returned to Tacoma for arraignment, where he protested long and loudly that the customs men themselves had planted the drug among his effects while he was in the wash room.
      Larry Kelly wound up in McNeil Island pen for a couple of years, in spite of the petition his Sinclair Island neighbors put out for his pardon. During his incarceration, his small son was drowned in a shallow well on Sinclair.
      When Kelly emerged from the federal clink he was a beaten man. Federal agents had raided his home and seized and sold his sloop. He needed $500 to pay back bills and had to mortgage his property to raise the money. There were domestic disagreements and Lizzie moved out. By 1896, the last of the Sinclair Island property had been sold and Kelly was living in Anacortes.
      He was in and out of just about every jail on Puget Sound in the course of the next ten years. The last record of Larry Kelly in an item in the San Juan Islander for 16 May 1911, reported that his sloop had just been boarded again off the north end of Lummi Island. Kelly gave a fictitious name and claimed he was on his way to Alaska, but the boarding officer was sure Kelly was headed for Victoria for another buy.
      It's claimed Kelly finally retired from the smuggling business, went back to Louisiana and lived out his days in a Confederate soldiers' home. Some years ago this writer tried to find some documented record of Kelly's last days but a fairly lengthy correspondence with Louisiana archivists, including the curator of the state's Confederate Cemetery, failed to turn up Kelly's name.
      Kelly used several sailing vessels in his career, the last two of which were seized by agents. Some years ago the Anacortes Bulletin ran an article claiming that one of Kelly's boats, a ketch-rigged sloop, 38-ft long, weighing over seven tons, was still in use in local waters. The boat in question had been built on Waldron Island, [WA] in 1894, named the KATY THOMAS.
      In one of those strange twists Fate seems to delight in, Kelly happens to have two great-great-grandchildren still living in Bellingham. And their names just happen to be Katy and Thomas."
Above text by author, historian, long time San Juan County resident David Richardson, for The Islands' Sounder, 9 December 1981.
From the collection of the Saltwater People Historical Society.
1971: 
This year the KATY THOMAS was the subject of a news article by Marine Editor Glen Carter of the Seattle Times.
      At that time the sloop was on the hard on property owned by the City of Anacortes, next to the Washington State Ferry terminal, Anacortes, WA. She was owned by the Northwest Seaport who had plans to save her but in the next decade she fell apart and was scrapped.