❖ WAWONA'S NEW SPARS ❖

Tall donation by four timber companies
and turned by the Cascade Pole Co. of Tacoma.
Original photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

Note Mr. Vallentyne swinging from the hook.
Cropped from an original 10"x14"
photo dated 1966
from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

Three New Masts for WAWONA

Save our Ships member, James D. Vallentyne*, swung from the hook of a Port of Seattle crane at Pier 46 in October 1966, as he began preliminaries for replacing the rotten 103-ft masts of WAWONA.
      Foss Launch & Tug Co donated the towing, Port of Seattle donated use of its crane, and Longshoreman's Union (Local No. 19) paid the salary of the crane operator.
      In May 1968, three new masts for the schooner were taken off a flatcar at Pier 46. The sticks were donated by four timber companies and turned by the Cascade Pole Co., Tacoma. The WAWONA, berthed at the north end of Lake Union, needs some work before the masts are stepped; Hunter Simpson, president of Save Our Ships, which owned the schooner was quoted as saying the group is hoping to make her into a museum ship.
      The WAWONA, built in 1897 by Hans Ditlev Bendixson, distinguished herself as a codfisher on her maiden Bering Sea voyage with Captain Charles Foss, for bringing home the largest catch of cod surpassing records on the Atlantic coast to 1914. The enthusiastic Captain Foss was quoted, "the staunch vessel could not have performed better if she had been built especially for codfishing."
      Being unable to get a towboat after arriving in the Strait of Juan de Fuca that year, she sailed into Anacortes and slid in next to her wharf, without the aid of a tug. Highliner was Second Mate Emil Isakson with a catch of 17, 036 fish. An Anacortes reporter noted she was discharging at Robinson Fisheries, Anacortes.
      The famous Capt. Ralph "Matt" Peasley, hero of Cappy Ricks sailing yarns, was WAWONA's skipper from 1900 to 1906.

Author Ernest K. Gann:
"WAWONA lives still and she is not going to die tomorrow or even the day after because her heart and physique are both mighty. And because she was created the old way when things were built to last.
      WAWONA will survive for a few more years even without your help. But then she will be gone. Forever. Not for you to see. Not for our kids to walk her decks and at least dream of voyaging under sail. Never.
      We are going to lose WAWONA to time and in her final weakness to the elements which she defied so bravely for so long."

WAWONA was scrapped in 2009.
Notes from The Seattle Times, 1966 and 1968.
Two photos from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

*In the following year of 1967, Mr. Vallentyne, a past president of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society and owner of Vallentyne's Marine Repair, was lost off the Columbia River Bar in a storm, while bringing a vessel up the coast to Seattle.

Book search here
Pacific Schooner Wawona 

❖ STEAMER MOHAI ❖

Steamer MOHAI, 1961.
L-R, Murrey Amon, Mark Freeman, "Capt." Jim Vallentyne,
A touch of the past as they chugged through the
Montlake Cut in the rebuilt steamboat MOHAI

also known as AFRICAN QUEEN.

Photo by Johnny Closs for The Seattle Times.
Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.

"This little boat had been one of two sister work boats carried by the Bureau of Indian Affairs supply ship NORTH STAR to carry goods ashore in Alaska at places without docks. When they came up for bid, Dad (Doc Freeman) bought one and Lloyd Frank bought the other. Lloyd built her into a small tug and installed a 165-HP gas engine. Today she is known as TWOBITTS and I think Elwood Avery still owns her as a pleasure boat. 
      They were both open boats; ours had a 115-HP Chrysler Crown and we used her just the way she came for shifting all the big boats Dad had at Northlake Boat Sales. 
      Our friend and employee, Jim Vallentyne ran her for me as an assist boat. Jim and Dad got to talking about making her into a steamboat. Frank Prothero donated a Model K Navy engine c. 1900 and Jim rebuilt it. They found a real Scotch Marine Boiler that would burn coal or wood. They installed the engine and boiler and fitted a rebuilt 24-inch diameter propeller and had the wheel repitched to 40" and it was just the right combination. We still used her as a tug but you had to build up steam before you could shift––we all had a lot of fun with her. We even took her to opening day in 1961 disguised as the AFRICAN QUEEN with empty cases of Gilbey's gin stacked on the aft deck just like Humphrey Bogart would have done.
      Dad died in December of 1963; mother and I gave the steamboat to Jim Vallentyne and his wife Loretta. Jim and our old engineer, Edmund Anderson, built a house on her and renamed her the DAVID T. DENNY. 
      Jim drowned on the Columbia River Bar trying to deliver a 50-ft Chris Craft [NUNY II] from San Diego to Seattle when a huge Pacific storm caught him [in October 1967.]
      The steamboat was sold and ended up in our moorage at Fremont Boat; I understand it was shipped to Europe to do the canals and now is somewhere in the Eastern US."
Text written by Mark Freeman.