❖ HIS DREAM CAME TRUE ❖

OWEN TRONSDAL GOT HIS OWN STERN-WHEELER, 
after 40 years.

JOHN EDWARD 
On the Swinomish Channel at LaConner, WA. 
Undated postcard by Puget Sound Mail & Printing.
From the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

If Owen "Tony" Tronsdal acted like a kid with a new toy when he was around his 65-ft sternwheeler, that was because he was realizing a dream that had been on his mind for 40 years––since he was 10.
      Ever since he saw his first sternwheeler chug up the Skagit River to disgorge passengers and take on peas, oats and vegetable crops, he has had one consuming passion––to own his own sternwheeler.
      And then the dream that came true right before his eyes. A beautiful river queen took shape near Tronsdal's auto mechanics shop in Conway. 
      Neighbors and pals dropped around to watch the big flat-bottomed boat grow and none have been able to resist hopping aboard to lend a hand. 
      Glen Seehorn, Mt. Vernon, stopped at the building site in LaConner to see how his old friend Tony was doing with his new toy. He wound up spending three days getting the boat up on dollies and moving it a mile to the water.

Top: inscribed, Diesel Sternwheeler
JOHN EDWARD, Conway, WA.
April 1966
Bottom: LaConner, WA., 3 Feb. 1963.
Photos courtesy of Capt. Jack Russell, Seattle, WA.

      It was floated to Fresh Water Slough on the South Fork of the Skagit. 
      This all began in 1961 when Tronsdal and his wife decided they wanted a summer home. Tony conceived the idea of a sternwheeler that would serve a dual purpose––satisfy his life-long dream of piloting his own sternwheeler and provide a summer home at the same time.
      As the boat took shape Tony was asked by so many people to hire out for a trip up the Skagit that he finally decided he would turn the paddle-wheeler into a commercial venture and sell tours from Mount Vernon to the mouth of the Skagit, 12 miles. 
      Tony wouldn't say how much the boat cost, but did admit "you could buy a nice house, I mean, a nice modern house, for the price of this boat."
      The first thing Tony did when he decided to proceed was hire the best boat builder he could find. This was Howard Boling, a commercial fisherman in season and a boat builder in the offseason. 
      The vessel contained a 180-HP GMC Gray Marine Diesel engine for power that took it easily at eight knots. The paddle is 10-ft in diameter and 11-ft wide. The boat itself was built 65-ft overall in length and 18-ft in beam. 
      The hull is 100% Alaska cedar and only galvanized bolts were used throughout. An extra slab of concrete five and one-half inches thick backs up the heavy decking in the bow. "No deadhead is going to poke through and sink this baby," Tronsdal said.
      The wheel itself is a masterpiece. Two young men in Mt. Vernon High School, Bill and Albert Olson, asked if they could have the privilege of outfitting the paddle-wheeler with its wheel. One brother worked on it for two years and when he graduated from shop class a second brother moved in to finish the job. It is five feet in diameter and made of mahogany and teak.
      Tronsdal was asked to sell his blueprints.

      "There aren't any. This baby came right out of my head. I just drew a picture of what I wanted and some details and Boling started building her. And who's there to go to for advice on building a stern-wheeler? Nobody. They're all dead and gone."
      The vessel was named after Tony's son, John Edward Tronsdal. He was 10 years old at the time, the same age as when Tronsdal saw his first sternwheeler.
Text by Willis Tucker for The Skagit Herald, 22 March 1966
JOHN EDWARD lived to go on to other owners under the name of EMERALD QUEEN. 
Well, it is only 2 1/2 years but I said I would get back with more history on this vessel.

1979:
Capt. Owen (Tony) Tronsdal of Conway, Skagit County, formed a partnership and revived the 12-year old sternwheeler, JOHN EDWARD, with Capt. Ray Hughes of Mukilteo, a skipper for WA. State Ferries.  They called their business the Skagit Bay Navigation Co. They began by mooring her at St. Vincent de Paul's on Lake Union but loaded passengers from the Puget Sound Excursion Line dock at Fisherman's Terminal in Ballard. They hoped to cater to tourists, church groups, and senior citizens, to show the fantastic points of interest along Seattle's inland waters. Then next we see a new owner––

EMERALD QUEEN
(ex-JOHN EDWARD)
Built 1967
Capt. Alan W. Cox out for sea trials on Lake Union.
March 1987.
Click image to enlarge.
Low res scan of an original photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People Hist Society©

1987: In March the Seattle Times announced a new cruise in town with the EMERALD QUEEN, Capt. Alan W. Cox taking a test run. For a $3. ticket a person could glide all day along the shores of Lake Union on the sternwheeler. The QUEEN was licensed for 49 passengers with speed on the lake at 7-knots. Several restaurants had signed on including the Hungry Turtle, the Lakeside, Arnie's Northshore Restaurant, Franco's Latitude 47, Triples, and the Rusty Pelican. 
      


      

❖ HEWING A CANOE ❖

LaConner, Skagit County, WA.

ANDREW JOE (1892-1960)
  carving a 54-ft canoe, 1952,
LaConner, WA.
Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

Andrew Joe, 60-yr old Swinomish Indian, has carved about 30 dugout canoes in the past 42 years––but none was so important to him as the 54-ft racer now being hewn from a cedar log.

      Not only is the canoe the longest he has made, but it will carry the 11-man first team of the Swinomish in the Pacific Northwest Championship race 30 May, at the Lummi Stomish Water Carnival at Gooseberry Point, south of Bellingham.

      "This will be the first time the first team has used one of my canoes in the big race," Joe said from among flying cedar chips. "Our second team once found out one of my canoes was pretty fast, though." 

Racing canoe carved by Andrew Joe.
Four of the five canoes in the race were swamped
during the first mile of the three-mile race. 
Dated 6 July 1941; photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

      Joe was referring to a 50-ft canoe which swamped with others competing in the last Coupeville race, 6 July 1941. The second team had a good lead in his canoe when choppy water cut them out of the race.

      The large cedar for Joe's new canoe was cut before the snow last winter. He has been working on it in his spare time for about a month.

      Most of the work of carving a dugout is done with an adz, the use of which Joe has developed to an art. Much work with a plane and finer cutting tools is required to make the lines smooth and true. When completed, the sides of the hull will be less than an inch thick.

      Worm or "dead" spots in the log make patching necessary, Joe explained. Patches are fitted and glued into the hull during shaping.

Words by John Van Devanter for The Seattle Times, 12 May 1952.

❖ Recalling the Sternwheeler FAIRHAVEN

Steamer FAIRHAVEN 
Undated litho card from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

"I looked out the window of the LaConner Hotel and there was the FAIRHAVEN docked below, steam coming out around her sternwheel. I was fascinated." So reminisces Elliott Pickrell of Indianola about his first encounter with the Mosquito Fleet. Cyrus Pickrell brought his family west from S. Dakota by train in 1904, arriving on Easter Sunday and making connections the same day for Mt. Vernon on the Great Northern. From there the family took a stagecoach to LaConner. The elder Pickrell was an Indian Agent, his assignment being the Swinomish Indian Reservation. The next day the family took an 18-ft skiff across Swinomish Slough to their new home. For two years they lived there and Elliott and brother William remember well the comings and goings of the FAIRHAVEN.
      "She had no schedule such as the ferries we're used to now. She came in at high tide. She was a flat-bottomed sternwheeler and would load and discharge before getting stuck. But sometimes she'd miss and have to wait 12 hours for the next tide. Half the time she made a night run and the other half the day run. All the waters around there are very shallow. The family's occasional trips to Seattle on the steamer show what generated the Mosquito Fleet's traffic. Elliott made the trip twice, once to meet an aunt and once for family shopping.
      My recollection is that we always had a stateroom, since the trip took about eight hours. I recall eating in the galley."
      The FAIRHAVEN was built in 1889 at the Capt. John J. Holland yard in Tacoma. She was a wooden sternwheel steamer, 130.2' x 26.5' x 6.2' with a single cylinder engine of 196 ihp. She measured 319 g. tons and 240 n. tons. In 1918 she was beached after a fire and was used as a makeshift houseboat to close out her days. The FAIRHAVEN was one of Puget Sound's many 'mosquito fleet' steamers that made development of the region feasible in the early days.
Rex Lee Carlaw
Courtesy of P.S.M.H.S.
The Sea Chest, Dec. 1982
For information on PSMHS membership
here www.pugetmaritime.org/Membership.htm