⛵️ VESSELS SPIRIT II, SIR TOM, and the GENIUS OF DESIGNER/SAILOR TED GEARY ⛵️

SPIRIT II
48' x 28' with 1,275-ft of sail.
Built by Adolph Rohlfs and Merrill at their 
new plant on the East Waterway.
Photo dated,  8 June 1909
Seattle, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
Photographer unknown.

Photo from the Carl Weber Collection,
Archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©
 

SPIRIT II, 1909
Ted Geary, 1885-1960 (center)
designer, helmsman
with Dean and Lloyd Johnson
ready for launching, Seattle, WA.
click image to enlarge.
Photographer unknown.
From the Carl Weber Collection, 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

SPIRIT II
Dated 29 June 1909
Seattle, WA. 
Photographer unknown .
Carl Weber Collection,
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"I never heard from my father––or anyone else––when or how he and Ted Geary and the Griffiths boys all got together as young sailors, but it must have been shortly after Dad built the WINONA. Ted Geary, whose full name was Leslie Edward Geary, was born in Kansas in 1885. When he was still a boy the Geary family moved to Portland, and soon on to Seattle, where Ted grew up on the waterfront. Two of his childhood friends were Dean and Lloyd Johnson, who later became my dad's partners. In fact, Ted and the Johnson boys circumnavigated Seattle in a sailing canoe sometime before the turn of the century, and at that time, the feat required portaging between Salmon Bay, Lake Union, and Lake Washington.
      Ted went to high school at the old Broadway High on Capitol Hill, and I think he was probably designing boats even before he graduated in 1904. After he finished high school he enrolled at the U of WA, and in 1907, joined the Seattle Yacht Club when it was still known as the Elliott Bay Yacht Club.
      The first yacht design that really brought Ted any acclaim was for the SPIRIT, launched in 1907. SPIRIT II was launched two years later. Ted designed her while still at the university, and she was built mostly by the Johnson brothers in a former firehouse on the top of Queen Anne Hill. A fire station bay in those days was about the right size to build a fairly good-sized boat. The SPIRIT was a 42-ft sloop, built to challenge the Canadians for the Dunsmuir Cup, and, skippered by Geary, she beat the Vancouverites entry, the ALEXANDRA, and won the cup from the Canadians in 1907.
      The next year, the SPIRIT lost to the ALEXANDRA, so the SYC commissioned the SPIRIT II in 1909. Well, this second design was to the then-new Universal Rule, developed by Nathanael Herreshoff. And what Geary did was design the SPIRIT II with a keel that went from nothing and then was not totally straight down, but steeper than most. Practically all the English keel designs, like the Canadians' ALEXANDRA, were the long, sweeping profile. So the SPIRIT II beat the Canadians the next season.
      In fact, I heard that they got so badly beaten that the measurer demanded that the SPIRIT II be hauled out so he could measure it, and he called this slight variation in design a notch in the keel. The first measurement was made in the notch. Of course, it wasn't a notch at all, it was just kind of a corner. There've been thousands, tens of thousands, of boats built like this since. But this episode caused a rift between the Canadians and the Americans that was not patched up until 1912 when Sir Thomas Lipton visited Seattle and brought about a truce.
      Around 1907, Geary left Seattle to study naval architecture at MIT. He returned to Seattle in 1910 with a degree in naval architecture and soon had many commissions for yachts as well as work boats.
      Ted Geary could make a sailboat sail faster than anybody else. He was probably the savviest helmsman on the west coast. He could sense changes in wind, things like that, with incredible accuracy. So for a good ten or eleven years, the SIR TOM was never beaten.
     

SIR TOM
L.O.A. 38'+ L.W.L. 23'-0" x 7'-10" x 5'-6"
Displace 8,500 lbs;
Lead Keel 4,500 lbs.
Sail area 400 sq. ft.
Rating 19.99
Built by the Johnson brothers
and Blanchards.
1914-1956
Seattle, WA.
Throughout most of her racing days,
she was skippered
by her designer, Ted Geary.
back-stamp date of  July 1937.
Original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

 WW I interrupted competition in sailing, so when the war was over people were anxious to get sailing and racing going again. I recall it must have been in the early spring of 1919 when one Sunday a bunch of the fellows came over to get my dad and go down and have a look at the SIR TOM, which was sitting on the ground leaning against a fence at some commercial shipyard down on the waterfront. I was included in this expedition, and I don't remember why, because I was still pretty young. So we went down to this shipyard, and the TOMMY was sitting there with the entire first 18 or 24 inches of her bow missing. During the winter of 1916 and '17, there had been a record-breaking northwest wind and freezing conditions, and quite a few of the fleet at the SUC had broken loose. Some of them would up unharmed on sandbanks, but more of them were badly damaged, and the SIR TOM had pounded her snout off on her mooring float.
      This was a big shipyard, but at the time it was more or less down to a maintenance crew. They had steam locomotives in those yards and it was no problem for the yard to fire up one of the steam locomotive cranes on a weekday and set the TOMMY back in the water. Quent Williams or somebody with a power boat picked her up and brought her up to the Blanchard Boat Co. They built a new nose on her, and that first year, 1919, she still sailed with her gaff rig. 
      The Vancouverites had a brand new boat called the LADY VAN, and she was a hard- chine design. She was designed by someone up in Canada, and Geary was successful in shipping both boats down to California, so right away he could see the handwriting on the wall; he had to put a new rig on the TOMMY. At that time, in the early 1920s, the original syndicate that owned the SIR TOM was pretty much intact, and old Capt. James Griffiths would say, "C-mon now, you're going to put up another $150 so Norm can build a new mast for the SIR TOM."
      In 1922, the Pacific Coast Championship Regatta was held in Newport Harbor, CA. My dad had built a cradle for the SIR TOM and she was towed afloat down to the Pacific Coast Steamship dock for the trip to CA. I think they put her on the EMMA ALEXANDER. We were there and the boat did not have lifting eyes at that time, so they used automobile slings and spreaders and lifted her into her cradle.
      The races were off Newport Beach, which was nothing much but a beach. Newport Harbor had been made by dredging out a natural salt-water marsh. The big red interurban cars ran on standard railroad track out to the end of the peninsula, where they made a circle and stopped. About 50 or 100 yards from the end of the peninsula was the Newport Harbor Yacht Club. It was about the size of a triple garage, big enough for a bar and not much else.
      The SIR TOM won all three races and was still the west coast R Class champion. Geary's career blossomed. In addition to commissions to design working boats, he had considerable success with bigger motor yachts after the SAMONA was built, and to name a few, the ELECTRA, the CANIM, the PRINCIPIA, the BLUE PETER, but those boats were all built at the Lake Union Dry Dock. He also turned out some fine sailboats like the schooner KATEDNA, which we know as the RED JACKET. And in 1927, he designed a new class of small sailboat for the juniors. These Flatties, as they were called, were built at the Blanchard Boat Co.
      Ted continued to work in Seattle as a naval architect until after he married for the second time in 1927. His success continued in S. California. He designed the big, steel-hull yacht in 1930 for John Barrymore, that we know as the THEA FOSS.
      The last time I had a good contact with Ted was when he came up here to design the new rig for a MALABAR VII, a John Alden-designed schooner. I had redesigned a 22-ft Phil Rhodes sloop into a 25-footer, so Ted came over and laid out the sail plan for me, and we had a nice visit. Ted passed on in 1960; he was undoubtedly the finest helmsman I ever sailed with and had the pleasure of knowing."

Words by the well-known boatbuilder/mariner Norman C. Blanchard. 

Knee-Deep in Shavings. Victoria, B.C. Horsdal & Schubart. 1999.

      

      

❖ Flattie to SIR TOM ❖ ❖ ❖ ROY W. CORBETT ❖

From 1905 to 1969, the Blanchard Boat Co of Seattle was renowned and respected for its well-built vessels, large and small, sail and power. Today hundreds of graceful Blanchard boats still ply the sounds and inlets of Washington, Alaska, and B.C.
      Norman C. Blanchard is the son of Norman J. Blanchard, founder of the firm; here follows one of his abridged stories he wrote for Knee Deep in Savings with Stephen Wilen. (Search link below.)

R boat SIR TOM 
L-R: Andy Joy, Roy Corbett, J. Swift Baker, and
SYC Commodore Ted Geary, helmsman.
The 1930 crew after winning back the Lipton Trophy
at the P.I.Y.A. race at Cadboro Bay, Victoria, B.C.
These original photos from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

"Roy W. Corbett arrived in Seattle about 1920. I don't have any idea what brought him here. I don't think Roy even had a job when he got to Seattle, but within a short time, he did find work selling Cadillacs. Just how he got hooked up with L. E. 'Ted' Geary and the SIR TOM gang is a mystery, because when he first arrived in Seattle Roy Corbett didn't know sickum about sailing or sailboats. Over time, though, he managed to become a pretty good sailor.
      My acquaintance with Roy was made when he was having his first sail with Geary on the SIR TOM. I think he thought Ted was going to buy a Cadillac from him, and I'm just as certain that Ted thought that Roy was going to have himself a yacht. They remained good friends for life. It was probably around 1921 or 1922 when this occurred, and I think that Capt. Griffiths' two sons, who had been part of SIR TOM 's crew, decided they were getting a little too old for the game. So in the summer of 1922 Roy Corbett crewed on SIR TOM, with Geary at the helm, and my dad, who was the foredeck man, Colin Radford, and one or two others.
      Now, this was the time when the SIR TOM was being campaigned heavily. She always finished first, and her crew practiced very seriously right off our company dock. In time Roy became a very adept sailor and was the main sheet man on the SIR TOM under Geary, and later with Jack Graham at the helm.

Roy Corbett
Sailing a one-design Flattie, 1931,
designed by L. E. 'Ted' Geary.

Later called a Geary 18.

Photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

      Roy, to my knowledge, never sailed in any catboats, but, when Ted introduced the design for the Flattie, Roy was one of the first to put up the $150 and order one from my dad. I think that Roy mainly wanted the boat for their daughter, Mary Helen, to race. She became a pretty good sailor herself and was the 1929 Seattle Yacht Club Flattie champion.

      Finally, Roy bought a real boat from Geary, a Marconi-rigged ketch, c. 50-ft, built on speculation in CA. After C. W. Wiley died, Roy bought ALICE, renamed her MAHERO and won the SYC Opening Day Class A Race in 1932 and in 1937. Roy was commodore of the SYC in 1933, and active in the Barnacle Bill cruises that had been started by Bill Hedley. Roy kept the MAHERO until early in WW II when she was taken over by the Coast Guard."

DEBUTANTE,
Roy Corbett, 1937, Seattle.

Above text; Knee-Deep in Shavings by Norman C. Blanchard.

Book search here.

❖ Remembering Seattle Sailing Yacht ❖ ALOTOLA

ALOTOLA
226859 
The vessel owner, Charlie Frisbie, is aft.
Dated 1949, 
by mariner/photographer Dolph Zubick, Seattle.
Original from the archives of S.P.H.S©

 "The rest of the gang struggling the new mast onto the deck

for transport to a crane for stepping. 

This was early in my sailing days,

I was not acquainted with many of the adult waterfront gang.  

I recall some articles stating this was the tallest 

yacht mast in the PNW." Quote from Miles McCoy. 

Original photo by Dolph Zubick, Seattle, 1949, present this day.

From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©.

1949 at Karl Seastrom's shop.

Original photo by sailor/photographer Dolph Zubick, Seattle. 

See identification in the following text.

From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©.

ALOTOLA is receiving a new mast as seen in the following photographs by Dolph Zubick.
      "This smiling bunch are the ones that got the job done. The man on the left is Anton Peier. Anton, for many years was the head machinist for the Seattle Fire Department. He had wonderful experience and skill with metal work, casting, and machining. Most of the halyard and sheet winches and sailing hardware in the Seattle area, at the time, were made by Anton Peier.
      Second from left is Charlie Frisbie, the proud and friendly, owner at this time, of ALOTOLA, home-port Seattle.
      I believe the tall man in the felt fedora is Karl Seastrom. Karl was a woodworker of the first order--the shop was a long, narrow, old building, ideal for spar-making. Karl was noted for making helms and steering wheels for all types of craft.
      The nice man in the plaid jacket is Rudy Peier, brother to Anton. The Peier brothers were icons on the Seattle sailing scene and boat building world. Rudy Peier was the head accountant for the Fischer Flour Mill family and went on to be chief accountant/purchasing agent for Vic Franck's Boat Company. Rudy was the designer and had much to do with building the new mast in the photo as well as many other spars in the Seattle area.
     I was a crew member on ALOTOLA several times with the new rig. I do not recall any big wins during my time on board, but everyone always had jolly good times and came away with fond memories sailing with Charlie and Betsie Frisbie."
 Above text:
Miles McCoy, who has been forever sailing the breezes of West Sound, WA. He found himself in the islands to skipper WESTWARD-HO in the summer of 1950 for the beautiful Four Winds-Westward Ho Camp on Orcas. 

Below text: The Adaptable Stephens Brothers,
Wooden Boat Issue #175 page 32.
Written by Barry Ward.
"The 57-ft ALOTOLA was built side-by-side with her full sister TAMALMAR for a San Francisco businessman in 1927. She went through a succession of owners before coming into the capable hands of a Seattle yachtsman [Charlie Frisbie] who bought her in 1947, recognizing the pedigree of Stephens Bros., and designer George Wayland.
      In 1949, he converted her into the largest active racing sloop in the Northwest, giving her a new 86-ft mast and a sail area of 1,552-sq. ft. She responded by winning or placing high in many of the Puget Sound racing events of the 1950s and was named boat of the year in 1950. But distant shores were to beckon, and in 1958 she departed the Northwest on a 15,000-mile world cruise down the West Coast to Panama, through the canal to Colombia, and through the Windward Passage to Jamaica. From there, her owner sailed her to Nassau, then Bermuda, and on to Nice, France, where Frisbie was born and lived until age 16. The cruise continued to Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. There a Greek yachtsman made an irresistible offer, thus ending ALOTOLA's American registry in 1960."

Mariner memory from 1959:

"Charlie Frisbie almost postponed our wedding. We went to opening day of boating season at the Seattle Yacht Club the May before we were planning to marry (in June 1959). Charlie approached Robin and asked if he would help sail ALOTOLA from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean Sea. Robin turned him down because he was getting married the next month. I thought my future husband was crazy. You don't get that chance often in my world, and a wedding could be postponed. But Robin didn't go."

Kae Paterson, Maritime Historian.

Gig Harbor, WA.

       Mr. Norm Blanchard devoted a chapter to his close friends and mentors, Rudy & Anton Peier, as well as a chapter highlighting his "silverware collector", life-long friend, Charlie Frisbie, in his book Knee Deep in Shavings, Horsdal & Schubart, Victoria, BC, 1999.

In 1981 ALOTOLA was captured by the Danes from the north.