AN IRRATIONAL ACT .... with added chart detail

NOAA paper Chart 18434
7th edition corrected April 2008

This captured detail depicts
Grindstone Harbor, 
and associated rocks on the coast of
Orcas Island, San Juan County, WA.,
and the WSF dock at
Shaw Island, SJC, WA.
Since this chart edition, the name of 
Harney Channel has been officially
changed to Henry Cayou Channel.
Click image to enlarge.
Chart from the archives of 
Saltwater People Historical Society

Album cover
from the 
Saltwater People Historical Society Archives©.

Graphics by Al Hamilton.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Words below by Matt Pranger

Published by the Journal of the San Juans

10 September 1999

 Remembering the ELWHA 

"The Washington State Ferry ELWHA is immortalized in song and as a geological feature. 

        A rarely seen rock was named for the ELWHA, which rammed it on 2 October 1983. Located 500 yards west of Grindstone Harbor off Orcas Island, Elwha Rock is visible at zero tide. The U.S. Board of Geographic Names officially christened the rock on 14 June 1990.

        A Native American word for elk, the ELWHA has a tragic-comic history. In a sworn affidavit, the ferry's captain said he showed a woman her home in Grindstone Harbor about 6 p.m. when the vessel hit the rock at 17.5 knots–full speed for the 382-ft, 2,813 G.T. ship.

        Calling it a 'totally irrational act,' the ferry system manager  compared the crash to a 'Pan Am pilot flying a 747 jumbo jet under the Tacoma Narrows ridge on the way to SeaTac.'

        After the crash, the captain proceeded to Shaw Island, unloaded and picked up passengers, and headed to Orcas before his vessel lost steerage. [The Orcas Island Fire Department met the ship with pumps to aid in the water coming aboard through the gash in the steel hull.]  

        According to a passenger, the ferry did a donut in the middle of [Henry Cayou] Channel. The crash rattled windows on shore, but no announcement was made to passengers that anything extraordinary had happened until 35 minutes later when the boat docked at Orcas.

        The ferry skipper, who had a history of skimming the shoreline and tooting ship's horns for female islanders, retired and was forced to turn in his pilot's license. The woman was dubbed the Siren of the San Juans.

        

THE ISLAND CITY JAZZ BAND
Band members: 
Lynda Travis 
Gary Provonsha, Tom Skoog, 
 Don Anderson, Tom and Bill Bassen,
Skip McDaniel, Vern Conrad,
George Burns, Don Smith. 
This press photo 
 was published by the 
sponsoring Jazz Festival in 1985.
Click image to enlarge.

The wonderful photo was taken by 
Al Hamilton, formerly of this port.
He tells of the car being a 1937 Cadillac
owned by the Tarte family of Roche Harbor.

The injured ferry was repaired,
 the rock in Grindstone Harbor was christened
with a name, and the much loved band
played on for happy islanders
 for many years.
Capt. Fittro lost his master's license and his job;
 Capt. Nick Tracy, the general manager
of the WSF also lost his job with the state.
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

        Elwha On the Rocks was penned by island musician Gary Provonsha. His group, the Island City Jazz Band, recorded the tune with George Burns; it became popular in island watering holes and Seattle area radio stations. 'A light-hearted joke at what the Island City Jazz Band considers the best ferry system in the world, run by some of the most professional captains, skippers, and pilots. What can be said of a system that has safely carried millions of people through small islands, over shoals and sandbars, with no major incidents–well, almost no incidents,' the band stated on the 45 rpm record's jacket.

        Drinks, called 'Elwha on the Rocks,' were poured in local bars, and residents of the shoreline near the rock dubbed a half-mile road west of Grindstone Harbor, 'Elwha Road.'

        The ELWHA also made headlines in January 1994, after it lost power and drifted sideways into the Anacortes dock, causing $500,000 in damage to the ferry loading bridge. The ship was out of service one week after that rash.

        The ferry's most recent notable mishap occurred three years ago when it grounded briefly at the south end of San Juan Island. The vessel, servicing the international run from Anacortes to Sidney, B.C., was making a rare trip through Cattle Pass.

        ELWHA, a Super Class ferry, went into service in 1967 and underwent a $25 million renovation in 1993. She was retired from state service in 2020." 

Here's a sampling from Maribeth Morris's "Action" column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1983; lyrics and music by Gary Provonsha, Friday Harbor, WA.

"Out in Friday Harbor where the jazz bands play,

You can take a ferry out there almost any time of day.

You can cruise through Grindstone's Harbor and when the ferry docks,

You pour a long, tall, cold one called Elwha on the Rocks.

With the lady in the wheelhouse, you can cruise along the shore.

You can blow the ferry's whistle as you pass by her front door.

You can blame it on the steering if the ferry rams the dock.

And we'll pour a long tall, cold one called Elwha on the Rocks.

We love our ferry system–it's always in the news:

We're changing to computers cuz computers don't drink booze.

As we cruise from Grindstone's Harbor and she comes around the bend,

The captain has her cruising–at three sheets to the wind.

You can have your Margueritas. You can have your toddy's hot.

But all we're drinking here tonight is Elwha on the Rocks."

ORCAS ISLAND WELCOMES BACK OLGA STORE !!!!! APRIL 2024

WSF service has had trials with 
crew who cause cancellations
 for the interisland ferries this week.
This dock at Olga, Orcas Island,
 is just below the newly re-opened
OLGA STORE.
How convenient-- get out your chart.

 

                                                                        

                                                                        

Photos courtesy of L.A. Douglas on 22 April 2024.

The bottom photo card was mailed from the 
Olga Post Office in 1955.

Click image to enlarge.
These 3 photo cards by Ellis and Jacobson,
are from the archives of the 
of the Saltwater People Historical Society.©

Five years with buckets of money, hard work, lots of volunteer hours, and hired professional help, a class act; congratulations to you all. Adult beverage, boat moorage within yards, hot coffee, partnership with the Orcas Food Co-Op, you have it up and running, soon to be joined by the US Post Office. 

For more please see the official HERE.

FROM THE DEPTHS OF BLIND BAY TO THE KNACKERMAN

Brochure from the 
chartering days of the 
beautiful MORNING STAR
(1956-2023)
when she was owned 
by her penultimate skipper,
Captain Lee.

THE MORNING STAR

"She was a Chesapeake "Bugeye" designed by Luther Tarbox. Bugeyes date back to 1830 and were used to dredge oysters and crabs, haul freight, and buy catches from their sloop version, the skipjack. 

MORNING STAR was built in Seattle by master shipwright Harvey Graham. Her keel was laid in 1956. Built entirely of Alaska yellow cedar, she is a strong work platform, finished as a live aboard and a powerful sailer-cruiser. She was 56 feet overall, 48 feet on deck, 13.5 feet beam, and 38 inches draft with the centerboard raised. She carried 1,034 square feet of sail." Above words by Tony Lee.

This spring she was raised from the muddy bottom of Blind Bay, San Juan Archipelago, and escorted to a haulout at Deer Harbor to end her happy sailing days in the San Juan Islands. 

A SALTY BIO BY ROBERT F. SCHOEN LATE OF CLAM HARBOR, ORCAS ISLAND, WA.

CHANTEY 
Sailing the honeymooners,
Bob & Mary Schoen,
to Orcas Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
1946.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"My name is Robert F. Schoen, pronounced Shane. I lived in Seattle at 10th and Ravenna Blvd. I went to Univeristy Heights grade school, John Marshall Jr. High, and Roosevelt High School, graduating in 1936, and the U of W in 1943. (The war intervened.)
        When I went to high school we were living in the Kirkland area on the east side of Lake Washington, Homes Pt. Drive. I was boat CRAZY. During high school, I met John Adams and Anchor Jensen, and we all had a love of sailing. Bill Garden was our mentor and teacher.
        Jack Kutz, John Adams, and I all had 28-foot boats. Kutz had a gaff-headed cutter, John had a clinker double-ended teak lifeboat schooner, and I had a V-bottom John Hannah ketch, gaff main, Marconi missen.
        We were out cruising every moment we could get away, winter and summer. We learned to sail our boats well. On the first of August 1941, I joined the Coast Guard. Kutz went into the Navy, and Adams finished his architecture at the U of W, then entered the Navy as an officer.
        My boating experience served me well. I went into the Coast Guard because I wanted to work in small boats. I was stationed in West Seattle after 7 Dec 1941. I was made Chief Boatswain Mate before being transferred to California from Seattle in 1942. From Government Island, Oakland, CA, we were sent to Borneo. Several weeks later we arrived at Hollandia for our assignment vessel, a 155-foot Uniflow steam tug, L T 218.

Bob's first ship in the South Pacific.

As he inscribed verso.
From his estate papers for the 
archives of the Saltwater People
Historical Society. 

     

         We were in the invasion of the Philippines, towing three barges of aviation gas to White Beach, near Tacloban.
         I had never seen so many ships of every kind, over 10,000 boats, rather exciting. Our tug broke down when we returned to Hollandia. It looked like it would be a long wait. I opted to take a transfer and went to Samar and duty on a US Army F. boat at a P.T. base. We followed behind the P.T. boats as they strafed the Japanese-held islands. We supplied fuel and ammunition and at times carried Japanese prisoners back to the base at Samar.
         We stopped at Iloilo where the army was mopping up the Japanese soldiers in the village. We were across a river, away from the fighting. From there we went to Zamboanga and waited for an escort to take us to Balikpapan, Borneo.
         From Hollandia, I went to Manilla where the Philippine sailors took over the boat. In Manilla, we boarded a transport for San Francisco and home by train to Seattle. Nov. 19, 1945, I was discharged from the Coast Guard. It was a great experience to be in the Coast Guard and I am proud of it.
        My sailboat, 29' Marconi cutter, W.H. Dole design was at the Tony Jensen Boat Yard and I stopped to check in and told Anchor to get her ready for me to take her north for a few days and then continued to mother's house with all my gear and shared that I was going for a short cruise in Chantey. She responded with "Haven't you had enough boating?"
         I got hold of a couple of buddies and we headed for Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands. It took us a few days and all of a sudden they decided one had to get back to register for college. The other had a girl he just had to see.
        About this time I remembered that I had just met a lovely young gal from the Juanita Beach area. I headed back and looked again. In July of 1946, we were married. It's been 53 years and we are still here.
        We sailed up to the San Juans in CHANTEY on our honeymoon and decided this looked like home.
        One of the things I did in the interval before we got married, I bought and learned to fly an airplane. When we were on the island I had the only plane on the island and I was working at various odd jobs such as sliming fish in the Deer Harbor salmon cannery and helping build a garage for the school bus near the Orcas ferry landing.
         I was frequently asked by loggers and people wanting things from Bellingham, such as medicine and auto parts. Bellingham had a large airfield built during the war, eighteen minutes by air from Orcas. This made me decide to purchase a four-place plane and enter pilot training in the U.S. Veterans Flying School on Bellingham Airfield.
        That was a great experience, lots of fun. In two and a half years I operated and founded the Orcas Island Air Service on Orcas. Just before I sold the service we had a major fire at the Orcas ferry dock which burned up the store section of the dock and part of the oil dock.
        Things worked out that I could purchase the dock which included the Union Oil Co distributorship and agent for the Black Ball Ferry system. This kept me very busy.
        In 1950, we took CHANTEY to Port Ludlow for a New Year's party of cruising sailboats, about twenty or so. This was the first party since WW II.
        We departed Orcas the day before New Year's Day and after passing Point Wilson we headed for the channel between India Island and Hadlock. HOLY COW, there was now a bridge and the old NORDLAND lying on the beach on the Hadlock side.

NORDLAND

Official No. 228932

Class: Ferry

34 G.T., / 30 Net tons.

L, 58.1 x 22.4 b.

Home Port: Port Townsend, WA.

Built in 1929 at  

Hadlock, Jefferson County, WA., 1929.

Construction: wood

Power: WA. Estep 2 cyc. 26 HPR diesel

With the author of this essay at his 

dock, next to the Orcas ferry landing.

Click to enlarge.

From the archives of the 

Saltwater People Historical Society©

       On returning north from the Port Ludlow New Year's party and passing the Nordland on the beach I had inspiration hit me between my eyes. This is just what I need at Orcas to supplement the oil business. I stopped at Port Townsend and looked up Blair Hetrick and Zelma, old-timers here. Blair was a hard hat diver in the area. I told him my thoughts about the vessel, and he told me it was for sale on a sealed bid. He took me up to the county courthouse and I went into the commissioner's office and they referred me to the county attorney. I went into his office and he said, "Kid, that thing is a pile of junk, forget it and save your money." I went back and told Blair about this and he said I'll get a bid form from one of my commission friends, I told him to get me two bid forms. I'll mail one in and I'll mail one to you to give to your commissioner friend and have him open it at the end of the opening. I got the bid by fifty bucks.
It took me six months to get those papers and only after I went back to the commissioners in person.
        It was a learning experience handling the old girl. She would slide sideways as fast as she went forward, with her 26 HPR  engine, not very powerful, and her reverse not too hot. BUT she could carry a hell of a load. And with her ramp, you could load and offload easily. It was something like learning the operation of an air-starting heavy-duty engine.
        You learn to love those wonderful machines. If you keep oiling them and keep the diesel coming they run forever, the engineer that ran the Nordland said 'They never shut the engine down the full length of WW II.'
        

Home port for NORDLAND

ORCAS LANDING
DATED 1954.
Click the image to enlarge. 
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©.

Our first jobs were delivering fuel to loggers on islands without ferry service which involved filling steel 55-gal drums along with tractors, and logging equipment, not all at the same time. We had a loading area just west of the Orcas ferry landing, one at Obstruction Pass, and several others. We landed on various beaches all over the county. We always tried to land them on the highest part of the tide and immediately reverse and get off the beach. If we missed and couldn't get off, we could be stuck till the next tide, 6 or 8 hours later.

        Working the tides was very crucial to the job. When delivering fuel, the logger had to be there with a tractor or some men to roll the drums up above high tide or a full drum of fuel would drift away.
        I have hauled, over my 12 years of operating the NORDLAND; cattle and sheep to a Lopez slaughterhouse, broken aircraft, 1,000 sacks of cement, mobile homes, everything.
        The development of Blakely Island was started with Nordland. Four years later they built their own barge.
        The Orcas Power and Light Co used NORDLAND in several inter-island cable laying and repair jobs. I did most of the early years running of the boat usually alone or with my wife and kids. I had help from Miles McCoy and he later ran it as stand-by.
        In 1963, I sold NORDLAND to Wayne "Corkey" North of Deer Harbor. He moved the wheelhouse to the stern and raised it so he could look over the vehicles and cargo on board.

      In 1968, NORDLAND was sold to Bob Greenway of Friday Harbor. He remodeled the wheelhouse again, installed a marine toilet, and replaced the WA Estep diesel with a 671 G.M. engine. The old WA-Estep was dumped out on a sandspit near Jensen Shipyard in Friday Harbor. A diesel engine school in Bellingham came over and picked up the old engine and rebuilt it as a school project. Somebody in the last few years purchased it and took it to California for another old boat.

      Al Jones, who has homes in San Francisco and San Juan Island, purchased the NORDLAND in 1976.
      Finally, it was from Alaska Packers haul out at their plant on Semiahmoo in Blaine, WA that I came upon the SEMIDI.

SEMIDI

ON 214876
Built Astoria, OR 1917.
36 N.t./ 45.95 Gross t.
Oil screw, 59.0' x 16.4' x 7.05' 
Atlas Imperial Diesel engine
4 cyl. 135 HPR
Purchased by Robert F. Schoen
5 Oct. 1959
Sold 11 July 1965

      I used this boat for log towing, worked with Orcas Power and Light Co in servicing the cable laying, helped locate and service cable recovery, hauled cased goods, and barreled products. Many times I worked the two boats together on a job.

The author Bob Schoen
off watch with his wife, 
Mary, at the helm.
August 1961
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Hist. Society.©
Photos and essay by Mr. Robert Schoen,
Clam Harbor, Orcas Island, WA.

❖ NO ROADS? With June Burn ❖

 

CHICKAWANA
San Juandering with writer June Burn on 
Orcas Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

In the old days, there were no roads. Many now living can remember when the first wagon was driven from Olga to East Sound. "No limousine ever looked so bright and beautiful and luxurious," said one of those early settlers.
      I suppose the earliest settlers boiled over from the Fraser River goldrush into this section as they had come to the Olga neighborhood. Mr. King, who settled here over 45 years ago, said he came to Orcas instead of to Whatcom county because it was so easy to get here. There were no roads back into the vacant land of Whatcom in the early 1880s, but the road to the islands has always been clear. Somebody had told him he ought to come to see the islands. He came, he saw and was conquered, and he and his wife live yet in the cedar log house which he built down by the bay way back yonder in 1885 or '86.
      We drove in the 75-cent moon down to the King Ranch, going on up first to see the moon path across Cascade Lake and saw instead the long white tracks where the skaters had been.
      This beautiful house, built of squared cedar logs, stands as securely as it stood forty years ago, the very same mortar perfectly solid in the chinks. Mr. King and a helper got the cedars out of the woods, squared them with an ordinary ax, set them up, and finished the house in two months. Logs go all the way to the points of the gables and inside the house, the walls are whitewashed logs, very attractive. Even the cracks in the logs (not between them) are interesting, and the huge fine old square piano set against one of these handmade walls books perfectly at home, as if music were no hifalutin' snob.
      On the wall inside the piano hangs a panel on which five pairs of deer horns are mounted. Mr. King killed them all one night thirty years ago, though he says he shares the honors with his wife. "Yes," she agrees," I held the lantern while he shot them and I stumbled over one dead deer after another following after him and I got my skirts bloody." The deer these days ate the gardens faster than the settlers could eat the deer. The Kings were raising strawberries and blackberries for the market. Also, there was road work. These two slender sources of income plus the garden and the deer made up their living. The schools lasted only three or four months, Mrs. King used to teach the school at Doe Bay for $23 a month and her board. When the three-month term was out then she would come over to East Sound and teach for another four months. At Doe Bay, she used to board around between the Vierecks, the Moores, and the Greys, walking to school of course--walking, if need be, all the way to East Sound.
      The mailman used to walk, too, with his pouch of mail on his back, following that long road three times a week. Sometimes he rode what Mr. King calls a cayuse.
      

Eastsound, Orcas Island, 
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      There used to be a lime quarry near East Sound and the limerock is still there in paying quantities. But a syndicate bought up the land, stopped work for some reason, and so we still have as much limerock as ever. Shattuck kept store in the old days. He had a bolt of calico, a strip of bacon, and a pair of overalls," and what else was there to want?
      The Kings have lived off the land a good deal trying to keep up with their children in their goings and comings. But now that the children are all settled the two young old people have come back to the log house where they spent their first years together. Mrs. King is busy piecing a quilt of the pattern "glittering star," her stitches tiny and many. There are the flowers, too, and the grapes, the garden, the wood-getting, the canning and a swarm of things to keep them as busy as they used to be, and I declare they seem as happy as any young couple I ever saw just starting out. I tell you, there is some magic about this pioneering way of life which for the right people makes the most real happiness anybody can know.
      It was the gayest, warmest sunniest morning of the "cold spell" when I took the Chickawanna once more to go on to Orcas another village at which I had never stopped. East Sound slipped back against the bright background of island green as the little boat clicked off down the bay and disappeared as we rounded the west prong of the big island. There are worlds of interesting things and people at Olga and East Sound which I have not mentioned but there will be times again to come San Juandering. See you tomorrow. June.

June Burn 

Puget Soundings

22 January 1930

❖ GREEKS ON THE ROCKS OF ORCAS ISLAND ❖ 1965

Harbour & Shipping
Cover May 1965.
Published in Vancouver, B.C. by
Progress Publishing Co Ltd.
Click image to enlarge.
From the collection of life long mariner,
Robert Schoen late of Orcas Island. 
See below for photos from the day.

Cover Story:

"On her maiden voyage, the big 25,000 ton Greek freighter Olympic Palm ran aground on Orcas Island in the San Juan Archipelago.
      Partly loaded with lumber, she was on her way from Port Alberni to Nanaimo to take on more cargo. Unable to pull herself free, the Olympic Palm relayed her plight to shore and the two tugs Island Mariner and Island Monarch were dispatched to her aid. Together, the two powerful tugs were able to lever the ship clear at the next high water.
      Once refloated, the Olympic Palm returned to Esquimalt under her own power to undergo a damage survey. Throughout, the weather remained calm and this plus the ability of Island Tug and Barge Ltd to be quickly on the scene saw a safe ending to the incident."

OLYMPIC PALM
1965
Shore of ORCAS ISLAND, WA.
These six photos are courtesy of 
Orcas Islander, Nick Exton, in the audience. 

OLYMPIC  PALM
Lumber cargo from Port Alberni, B.C.
Headed to Nanaimo, B.C.
via Orcas Island, WA.
1965

OLYMPIC PALM
Captain on the bow?
1965

Hope it went well in Esquimalt,
OLYMPIC PALM.
Orcas Island, WA. 1965

OLYMPIC  PALM
Maiden voyage to the coast of Orcas Island,
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
1965.

Tugboats from Victoria, B.C., arrived
to aid the OLYMPIC PALM, 1965.
Photos courtesy of Nick Exton.
Thank you to Dean D. for the digital help. 

❖ A Bout with Surf ❖

One Hundred Days in the San Juans

Day 57 with June Burn

Inside this published map of the
Resorts in San Juan County,
most of the mentioned are situated on Orcas Island.
Locals began advertising their waterside cabins
and hotel rooms in the local newspapers beginning
in the late 1800s as restful retreats for tourists.
From this cropped detail of the double-sided
9" x 15" map we can trace the wake of the Burns,
in the essay below, as they rowed along the north shore.
Click image to enlarge.
Publishing date unknown,
suspected to be the 1950s.
Original from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historial Society©

"North Shore, Orcas Island. How different are the islands! How like the different countries even the different shores of the same island. This northeast shore of Orcas is a strange land, steep, high, with dark, forbidding beaches. Along the part that is the waterline of Mount Constitution, the trees seem to lie flat, they look as if one bank of them grew out of those below. The kelp beds are close against the bank which means deep water very close to shore.
      

BUCKHORN LODGE
The view from the water as mariners,
June and Farrar were rowing west to Harnden's beach.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Log©

As we near Buckhorn Lodge, a sleek, new mahogany boat upholstered in blue leather comes flashing out to meet us. Ten seconds ago it was at its moorings, now it is alongside us and Mr. Payson from Tacoma, the owner of these 115 leashed horses, offers us a tow to wherever we are going. We accept. The wind failed some time ago. We've been rowing a long way. A tow for five minutes behind this boat will take us nearer to our night's camp-spot than we could walk with our arms in two or three hours.
      The Harndens live somewhere along this north shore. We have an invitation to camp on their beach. It is past six o'clock, time to camp.
      People all along here are picnicking down on their beaches, fishing, or sitting on porches, talking dreamily. Houses sit on bluffs, hidden, secret. Or they cluster together low on the beach, friendly, gregarious––but which house is the Harndens'––they who used to live on Sucia Island? 'About a mile down the shore,' a girl shouts out to us. We have let our horses go back too soon.
      Slowly, we ease along this shore, looking for a comfortable beach. Underwater boulders left here by the glaciers are strewn over the low tidelands. We'd go aground, or a-rock, on one of those and never get off! On and on.
      This is low land, now––the isthmus at the head of East Sound. Just a mile down there is the village. We'll go over there tomorrow and spend the day talking to some of the most interesting old-timers in all the islands.
      Sand dollars! My stars, look at them all over the bottom of this bay! Black, standing up on edge, they look even stranger than when we find them on beaches, white and dead, mere skeletons, their star-shaped centers cut out with holes like the doors of an old kitchen safe.
      This tall white house with the luscious garden and the flowers, all with such a ship-shape look––this must be the Harndens. I'll just go ashore to say we're camping on their beach tonight––and they are not home.
      We camped anyway, not far away, on a shallow beach below the old salt marshes which are now fertile fields. It had the feel of prairie there––a new feel in the islands. We got a sudden sense of homesickness for the prairies of Oklahoma which we both have known. Home! How many places turn out to be home. How many places are wonderful and dear for some sudden sharp likeness to a little spot on which you stood to watch a meadowlark on a fence post, maybe.
      But that night another north wind came up. We had awakened to a sunrise clear and pure, the old ball rolling up over Lummi Island and shining straight across to us, still comfortably abed. Then all at once, without the slightest warning, there was the wind and in two minutes flat, surf rolling in over this flat beach.
      'We'll be aground in 10 minutes,' Farrer shouted as he ran down the beach, throwing off pajamas and grabbing on garments as he ran. I follow only one button behind him. At the water's edge, we were fully dressed, but we shouldn't have been, for in two more minutes we were fully wet pushing off the boat. But we managed to load it before it could quite come ashore.
      And so, away again, breakfastless, tickled at our first brush with surf in our lives.
      We'd row on around Point Doughty to Orkila, the YMCA boys' camp, we said. They had invited us. We could dry out there and ––maybe!––they might ask us to breakfast.
      But if it had been any later than five o'clock in the morning, we'd never have made it. It took us nearly three hours to row those few miles, for the wind wasn't going our way and, for once, we didn't propose to go its way. Finally, we rounded the point, slide down the bay to Orkila.
      And, sure enough, a man came down the beach to meet us. It was Mr. Emory, director of the Queen Anne 'Y' in Seattle. 'You'll have breakfast with us?' he said and we said you bet and in no time at all, boys had secured our boat in the lesser surf on this beach. Boys had built a fire in the big dining room and a day at Orkila had begun.
      We met 125 boys and 30 staff members. 

Beach Haven Resort
Click to enlarge.
Original photos from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

We went down the beach to see Mr. Kimple's and his two partners' Beach Haven resort, where Dr. Turner of the University's new medical college caught five salmon the first time he ever fished in our waters, met Mrs. Fleming, wife of Seattle's superintendent of schools, sitting on a log knitting, had some cookies made by Mrs. Kimple. That's all for today! See you tomorrow. June."
      If you have been following along with this Log there are many more excerpts from the newspaper articles by June Burn entitled One Hundred Days in the San Juans. She had a contract with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1946. In the 1980s editors with the Longhouse Printcrafters in Friday Harbor, published them in a book format, under the same title. Now a collector's item.
      

❖ HARD ASHORE AT BUCK BAY, ORCAS ISLAND, WA. ❖

Waiting out the tide before
sailing away,
but enjoying a nice view of Buck Bay,
Eastsound, San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Courtesy of L.A. Douglas, Blakely Island.
This day of 8 June 2019.
Click image to enlarge.

❖ EARLY SMUGGLING DAYS with SKIPPER❖

Overboard with the contraband.
Illustration from Calkins' HIGH TIDE.

"From the day he stepped off a Northern Pacific train at King Street Station in 1909, Mr. R. H. 'Skipper' Calkins kept the public posted on some of the drama and tragedy happening on the waterfront, as a police reporter, a city hall reporter, and a courthouse reporter and later covering the maritime news.  In his words --
      "The white-winged sailing ships of the Northwestern Fisheries Co were loading for the Alaska canneries. The HUMBOLDT was at Pier 7, that famous wharf where the gold ship PORTLAND startled the world by dumping a ton of Klondyke gold. 

Gold Ship SS PORTLAND,
arriving Seattle, WA., from the North, 1907.

      As I headed for the waterfront, I set a course down Second Avenue. At the New York Block, I entered the offices of the Humboldt Steamship Co. Behind the counter were Max Kalish and Floyd Bush, who, with their lone wooden vessel, which later became famous as the Klondyke gold ship, were meeting the competition of rich and powerful companies. I introduced myself and received my first story as a marine editor––the passenger list of the HUMBOLDT. I had begun a career which served me through the shifting scenes of port development, the organization of new shipping companies and the expansion of Seattle into a world port with ship lines operating to the seven seas. 
      When a baby swallowed a button, it was first-page news. Quite often during the racing season, the entire marine report was thrown out and the space used for the Longacres results. On Sundays, the marine department was buried behind ten pages of classified advertising. The editors evidently believed the harbor was only useful as a place to hold salmon derbies. 
      When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, a shroud of censorship was placed over marine news by the Army and the Navy, and it looked as if marine editors were to be as extinct as the dodo. However, as America moved into the war with every ounce of her energy, the shipping industry became of vast importance. 
      On 25 Sept 1945, a typical wartime day, there were 84 vessels on Puget Sound, according to the daily vessel-movement report of the 13th Naval District.
      These are only a few of the storms I weathered as I kept uppermost in my mind the belief that the waterfront, with ships plying to nearly every part of the world, brings new money to Seattle, provides employment to large numbers of men and gives the city an international prestige that only the sea can bestow. Thus I, a former Ohio newspaperman, have given my best efforts to make Seattle sea-minded and to make her realize the importance of world commerce to the prosperity of her citizens."

      And here is a little more about the enhanced prosperity of a citizen who settled early to raise his family on the small island of Shaw in the San Juan Archipelago, not far from Seattle. A judge at the federal court was waiting––
      
"Bizarre attempts to smuggle opium, Chinese, and wool, into the US and how Puget Sound virtually was made narcotic proof by two government officers many years ago make up one of the most colorful stories in Pacific Northwest shipping. 
       It was on 13 May 1905 that the government carried into execution long-studied plans to break up the smuggling of wool from Canada to Puget Sound, which was assuming major proportions.
      Wool was 22 cents a pound higher in the US than in Canada and successful smugglers reaped a big profit.

Map of the San Juan Islands
from the Souvenir Year Book
published by San Juan County
Commercial Club,
Friday Harbor, WA., 1930.
Click image to view
South Pender Island, BC.
 

      Customs Inspectors Ballanger and F. C. Dean left Port Townsend in an open boat and cruised along the San Juan Islands in the guise of seal hunters. Dean had been a seal hunter before joining the customs service and knew the captains of the boats in this industry of other days. Ballanger also was valuable to the government as he was reared on a farm, knew wool, and could shear a sheep.
      The two inspectors drifted in their boat off Port Townsend until after dark and then headed for Canada.
      The boat had two pair of oars and carried a sail, and although the progress was slow, she was able to reach Sydney, Vancouver Island, BC.
      Visting all of the islands, in the vicinity of Sydney and several sheep ranches, the inspectors told the farmers they were on a vacation, seeing the country and doing a little sealing. In a short time, they had visited all of the ranches suspected of being operated by wool smugglers.
      Their pockets were full of wooden pins used in securing meat to form and while the ranchers, who were shearing sheep, were not looking, the inspectors placed them in the fleece.

Alfred Burke
Early Danish American homesteader
photographed on Shaw Island, WA.
The widowed man raised his children,
proved up for a federal patent deed, and
was appointed by the state superintendent
to the first board of directors
for the Shaw Island School, District No. 10,
established in 1887 (still operating.)
A good neighbor, Hans Christensen Lee, testified
in court that Mr. Burke was "law-abiding."
Scan of an original from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society© 


    

  Ballanger and Dean became acquainted with a man by the name of Alfred Burke. They found him loading wool at South Pender Island, BC,  and followed him.

Steamboat landing, store, post office, warehouse 
Orcas Island, WA.
Location of the sacks of smuggled wool from BC.
Click image to enlarge.
A scan of an original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

He crossed over to Orcas Island, WA., at night. There they found a large quantity of wool in a barn [reported to be 1,000 pounds.] It contained the skewers they had placed in the fleece. The inspectors called Rear Admiral W.H. Munter, USCG, and he went to Orcas Island in the little CG cutter ARCATA. (She was decommissioned in 1936.)

On right: US Revenue Cutter
ARCATA
Scan of an original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historial Society©

      The ARCATA loaded the huge sacks of wool, which measured about 7-ft in length and three feet in diameter. There was so much wool on the deck of the ARCATA that it reached almost to the smokestack. The wool was landed in Port  Townsend, where it was sold at a government auction.
      Burke was arrested and tried in Seattle on a charge of smuggling, but the judge ruled he was not really seen crossing the border with the wool and he was found not guilty because of insufficient evidence.
      There were the days of "Pig Iron" Kelly and Larry Kelly, notorious opium smugglers when it was lawful to import the drug if the duty of $12 a pound was paid.
      There was an opium plant in Victoria, known as the Ly Yuen factory and one in Vancouver, known as the Ty Yuen factory. Crude opium from India and China was cooked and made into round chunks as big as a bowling ball. The opium, the gum, and the sap of the poppy were put into a copper pan over a charcoal fire. As it cooked, it was stirred and skimmed by the Chinese.
      Big traffic in opium developed. Firemen on ships had pockets in the back of their vests in which they carried the opium. They wore large box-hanging coats to conceal the drug and carried between ten and twelve cans. The smugglers, obtaining the opium in BC, made about $5 a pound by avoiding the duty.
      Then came the embargo against opium and the drug reached the coast on ships from the Orient. The Coast Guard began trailing vessels arriving from China and India as they came up the Sound.
      Smugglers of Chinese did not stop at anything if they believed they were trapped. They threw the Chinese overboard when they saw a CG cutter approaching. Those who got through landed on a lonely beach and walked until the boat operator met a confederate.
      Smugglers usually received from $100 to $500 a head for the successful delivery of Chinese in the US.
      Retiring from the Coast Guard, Admiral Munter 'dropped anchor' here and made his home in Seattle. During his long tour of duty, Admiral Munter served 34 years in ships of the old Revenue Cutter Service and the Coast Guard. He was a lieutenant in the cutter GRANT on Puget Sound during the winter of 1902 and 1903, made cruises in the cutter MANNING to the Bering and Honolulu, and in 1925, visited Seattle as a member of a Coast Guard board. He served nearly 45 years of Coast Guard service.
      Ballanger retired in 1946, after 45 years in the US Customs Service."

Sources: R.H. "Skipper" Calkins, High Tide. Seattle: Marine Digest Publishing Co., Inc., 1952) 356./Out of print.
US Federal Court records. Alfred Burke. From the National Archives Record Administration, Seattle, WA.