❖ Yacht PHOTOQUEEN ❖

Photographer Joe Williamson
Original, cropped 1951 photo from archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Scty©

Ivar's Acres of Clams, site of first meeting of the 
Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society.
Tour boat SIGHTSEER on left.
Cropped photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

Joe Williamson, photographer, historian, and captain of small boats was the sparkplug that pushed the five co-founders into a dinner meeting he arranged at his friend Ivar Haglund's Acres of Clams that resulted in the founding of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society on 1 April 1948. Joe became the first president of the Society and served in that capacity for three terms.
      Joe was born in Seattle. From his earliest days he was drawn to the Seattle waterfront––even to the point of missing his high school graduation ceremonies at Ballard High School in order to take passage on the SS NORTHWESTERN in the spring of 1928. He traveled to Sitka, AK, where he joined the Coast & Geodetic Survey vessel EXPLORER. 
      After his return at the end of the season, he joined the old Merchant's Exchange, where he worked until cutbacks caused by the 1930s depression resulted in his being out of work around 1932. A friend of his, Al Price, who had a photography business, told him to buy a motorcycle––then he would hire Joe to make deliveries and film pick-ups. Al also allowed Joe to work in his darkroom.
      In 1932 Joe married Evelyn Soames. In 1935 he was offered a job in Juneau, AK, with Ordway in their darkroom. He accepted and sailed from Seattle on the SS ALASKA, going steerage. Within a short time, he made arrangements for Evelyn to join him in Juneau. While in the north, Joe's interest in the waterfront ships and shipping led him to explore many Alaskan maritime sites, including the wreck of the Canadian Pacific Navigation's ISLANDER, salvaged in 1934 but still on the beach at Douglas Is. Joe and Evelyn sailed home to Seattle on the ZAPORA early in August, visiting many of the "outports" of south eastern Alaska, en route.
      About 1937, Joe opened his own photoshop on the Seattle waterfront. In addition to selling prints from is own collection, he also developed and printed films for customers. His Marine Salon, located on the upper level of the viaduct connecting Colman Dock with Grand Trunk Dock, soon became a haven for "boat nuts." Joe took the pledge to "photograph anything that would float." In order to assist Joe in fulfilling his pledge, a group of us planned several one-day excursions to Vancouver, BC, the Olympic Peninsula, and Portland, OR, to cover marine scenes (including the shipwrecks of the British freighter TEMPLE BAR and the Russian VAZLAV VOROVSKY, below.)

Wreck of the VATZLAV VOROVSKY
With a load of steel, wrecked on the Columbia R. Bar, 1941.
Photograph archived the Marine Salon Photo Shop, Seattle, WA.,
operated by Joe Williamson.
Original from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

      Joe moved his shop to the Marion Street Viaduct in 1940. When WW II started and it wasn't easy to take pictures on the waterfront, he began to work with John A. Barthrop who had been called into the Army's Port of Embarkation, and so Joe was able to continue his photography work.
     

Joe and his PHOTOSHIP.

       He acquired a 32-ft Fellowship fast boat that he renamed PHOTOSHIP, and which he used before and during the war. In 1945, he purchased a 48-ft Stephens and obtained a charter to Southeastern AK. During the next seven or eight years, he spent most summers with various charters of his new ship, which he named PHOTOQUEEN. 

   

PHOTOQUEEN, with Joe Williamson,

1 July 1947 at Orcas Island, WA.

This copy was purchased from the Williamson Collection archived with

the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society©, Seattle, WA.

Please check with them if you'd like a copy of this photograph.

  

      During WW II and after, Joe branched out into commercial photography for legal firms. He moved his shop to the upper level of the Colman Dock before his final move to the street level.

      Joe lost his wife Evelyn in 1960. He closed his shop in 1962, about the same time as he and the former Alice Murphy were married. They moved to Bainbridge Island where Joe had a darkroom built in a new waterfront home at Eagle Harbor. There he continued with photography until he retired in 1980.
      His vast collection of photographs was purchased by the PSMHS and is now housed at the Museum of History and Industry reference library, Seattle WA."
Text by Austen Hemion, a long-time friend of Williamson and one of the five co-founders of PSMHS. 
This piece was published in The Sea Chest, June 1994, a quarterly journal for the members of PSMHS.

      

❖ Summer Sail Race ❖ of 1895

L-R: Race winner Charlie Fischer

 with Tyee YC Commodore Joe Williamson.

Photo dated 1951.
Photo by the Seattle marine historian/photographer Joe Williamson,
from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

"Charlie Fischer's old yachting trophy, from which happy members of the old Elliott Bay Yacht Club drank to the great sport of sailboat racing one gala evening in 1895, has been brought back to Seattle from Fischer's Bainbridge Island home.
      The big silver cup was Fischer's prize for winning the yacht club's 1895 race over a 16-mile course. The race began at the club, which was on Elliott Bay near where the Union Oil Co. dock now is situated. The racers went to Four-mile Rock, then toward a buoy off West Seattle, and finished at the coal bunkers, which then were one of the most important installations on the waterfront.
      Fischer had built his boat himself and had launched her only two days before the race.

 DOLPHIN

Charlie Fischer and crew, 1895.
Original photo from Joe Williamson collection, 

from the archives of SPHS©

      The boat was named the DOLPHIN, and Fischer knew she was a good craft, but in spite of the boat and his racing skill he was in second place as he rounded the buoy and went into the home stretch. The wind was bad, and Fischer knew that common sense said to use a little caution.
      'But I decided to take a chance. I told myself, I'm going for a swim or I'm going to win. I won.'
      For more than half a century the cup which Fischer won has been a prized possession. He has shown it to anyone who has visited him at his home at Eagledale and has talked boats.
      One of the visitors whose interest in boats has never waned was Joe Williamson, a marine photographer and newly elected commodore of the Tyee Yacht Club. Williamson's wife, Evelyn, is Fischer's niece.
      On a recent visit to Seattle, Fischer handed Williamson the cup. 'I want to give this to someone who really likes boats. The cup is yours.' Fischer said.
      Fischer's life, incidentally, also has been linked to a vessel even more historic than the DOLPHIN, though not as high in Fischer's affection
      Fischer was born in Denmark. When he came to the US as a boy about 7-yrs old, he traveled in the Cunard Line's proud ship, the PARTHIA, which had been built at Dumbarton, Scotland, in 1870.

VICTORIA (ex-PARTHIA)
Shown a few years after Fischer purchased passage from Denmark to USA.
Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

      That ship calls Seattle her home. She is now the Alaska Steamship Co's VICTORIA, the oldest active ship in the American merchant marine.
Writer unknown.
Seattle Times, 28 December 1951

❖ ENEMIES ON BOARD ❖

Menu from the S.S. ADMIRAL ROGERS,
Captain Landstrom 1925.
Tap image to enlarge.
From the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

Steamer SPOKANE, ca. 1910
From the Clinton Betz Ship Postcard Collection
From the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

S. S. SPOKANE aground.

S.S. SPOKANE 
aground at Seymour Narrows,
one of the many vessels caught on Ripple Rock
 before the huge blast conducted in 1958. 
Sadly, one woman passenger was drowned.
Photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

 ADMIRAL ROGERS (ex- S.S. SPOKANE)

Blind Bay, San Juan County, WA. 1947.
Click to enlarge.

She was towed off to salvage in 1948.

Photo by Joe Williamson, Seattle.

Original photo from the archives of the 

Saltwater People Historical Society©

The SPOKANE was originally an elegant passenger steamship launched in 1901 in San Francisco, the first designed especially for the Inside Passage trade between Seattle and Alaska. Her dimensions were 281' x 40.1' x 17.3'. She had a triple-expansion steam engine fueled by two coal-burning boilers made by Babcock & Wilcox. The HP was 2,000; the listed speed was 15-knots. The SPOKANE came to Seattle in 1902 where she was acclaimed as the "finest ship on the Pacific" in the press reports of her welcome. SPOKANE was lavishly decorated and steamed to Tacoma in May 1903, where President Theodore Roosevelt and his party embarked on a cruise to Seattle, via Bremerton. Four revenue cutters and sixty other vessels escorted them.

        More excitement of a different kind was in store for her that fall on her passage south for the winter. SPOKANE picked up an improvised raft with four survivors aboard who nineteen hours before, had been wrecked on Blanco Reef when the steamer SOUTH PORTLAND went down.

        In 1907 she continued running north up the Inside Passage with one good season and then striking a rock in Seymour Narrows.

        In 1912 she underwent major repairs and now looking more graceful, was back sailing with comfortable staterooms and wide berths. WW I had not meant much to the navigators of the Inside Passage. But SPOKANE got a good taste of it in November 1917; whilst southbound from SE Alaska she again struck rocks on the BC coast. It was reported that three enemy aliens had stowed away and fraternized with the crew. When the trio saw their chance they deliberately ran the steamer ashore. The two Germans and one Austrian were arrested when the crew arrived back in Seattle. It was reported she was repaired yet again and was used for transporting supplies for salmon canneries.

        In 1922 the veteran liner was renamed ADMIRAL ROGERS; two years later she came to the rescue of the city of Ketchikan when she came in close to shore to aid in controlling the flaming buildings along the waterfront. The heroic action lasted two hours with the crew credited with saving the city from destruction. Captain Frank Landstrom and crew were honored with a bronze plaque in appreciation of their assistance.

        ADMIRAL ROGERS enjoyed more cruising before she was taken over by the University of Oregon for a floating college.

        She spent time laying rather idle and forgotten on Seattle's Lake Union--fourteen years later in July 1946 part-time Shaw Islanders--Hal Salvesen and M. Haines purchased her with plans to convert her into a floating resort hotel. A brief passage in H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, Gordon Newell (Superior 1966) states that this grand dream of the Haines/Salvesen team came true but there are residents to this day who drove daily to the dock for mail during that time period but don't remember a chance to stop for a tot of rum with the ADMIRAL.

        On the high tide at 2230, 27 April 1948, locals could hear the tug straining to pull the ADMIRAL from the muddy bottom of Blind Bay. She sailed in the dark, undertow to the scrap yard down sound. Circa twenty-two years later when the Shaw Island Historical Museum was launched, a Williamson print of the old liner and her wooden wheel were two of the first pieces donated to begin the small, island, artifact collection. Rather fitting for the wheel to jump-ship at the vessel's last port of call. No chance for a dance, but she left her heart on Shaw.

Further reading: Lloyd M. Stadum wrote a piece on the steamship ADMIRAL ROGERS (ex-SPOKANE) for the quarterly journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, The Sea Chest, December 1981.

Mr. Ed Bold (1891-1983)
Was a long-time summer resident of 
Shaw Island with his DUCHESS, 
designed by Ed Monk Sr.,
built by Edison Technical School in 1939.
Here he is aft, as a passenger
on S.S. SPOKANE, c. 1911-1913.
Photo thanks to his son 'Skip' Bold,
Shaw Island, WA.