❖ BERING CODFISH FLEET OF 1914

Robinson Fisheries Company & Porter Fish Co,
Fidalgo Island, Washington.
Click image to enlarge.
Low res scan of an original antique photo from the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Robinson Fisheries Company
Postcard from the archives of the Saltwater People Log©

Schooner ALICE
Preparing to head out from Anacortes, Washington.
Suspected to be earlier than the 1914 essay below.
Low res scan of an original photo from the
archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

BERING CODFISH FLEET OF 1914

"Schooners AZALEA, WAWONA, and ALICE reach Port in the order named—Robinson Fisheries Flagship Returns with Most Fish Ever Brought Home in an American Bottom.

AZALEA
Baldheaded codfish schooner
heading north to the Bering Sea fishing grounds.
Low res scan of an original donated by
sailor Miles Mccoy, Orcas Island, WA.
Click image to enlarge.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Log©

 Eberhardt Bruns (1902-1982),
then a resident of Shaw Island, WA.
Hanging highest in the rigging,
going north on the schooner AZALEA,
for Robinson Fisheries, circa 1924.
We have Eber's written memories of
signing ships' papers as Chief Engineer
on a full-rigged schooner with no power.
Those can be seen here

With the arrival of the Robinson Fisheries Company’s schooner ALICE, Capt. John McInnis, in port today with a full catch of Bering Sea codfish, three of the Anacortes fleet are home from the north after one of the best seasons on record in the Pacific. The Matheson Fisheries flagship AZALEA was the first to arrive Tuesday and was followed by the Robinson flagship WAWONA. This was the maiden trip for both the WAWONA and AZALEA and both made good, the WAWONA bringing back a record-breaking cargo.
      Distinguishing herself on her maiden voyage as a codfisher by bringing out of the Bering Sea the largest catch of codfish ever brought home in one trip by an American vessel, the Robinson Fisheries schooner WAWONA arrived at her homeport in Anacortes Tuesday night. Her hold was filled to capacity with a catch of 240,000 of the finest fish ever brought out of the Bering. The catch will easily weigh 550 tons.
      The ship, which is the largest vessel of the Puget Sound codfish fleet has a catch that exceeds the number of fish ever landed in an American bottom and caught and prepared on the vessel in one trip. This applies to the Atlantic as well as the Pacific coast. Thus Anacortes, the “Gloucester of the Pacific,” has beaten the records of the Atlantic.

Codfish schooner WAWONA
heading to the Bering Sea.
165' x 35' x11.5'
Launched in 1897 at Fairhaven, CA.
Date and photographer unknown.
Click image to enlarge
Only archived photo of the big W at sea, from the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      Almost all of WAWONA’s cargo was caught in deep water, ranging from 32 to 45 fathoms and almost all of the other vessels caught their fishing shoal water.

      The WAWONA made an unusually fast trip, both going and returning. The vessel cleared from Anacortes on 31 March and sighted Sanak Island at the entrance of Unimak Pass and the Bering on 8 April. The past season has been a particularly stormy one, but the fishing was exceptionally good. Owing to rough weather the WAWONA, in common with the other vessels of the fleet was late to start fishing, storm following storm for several weeks. In the gale of 24 May, the WAWONA lost an anchor and 50 fathoms of chain. Shortly after that she went through another storm and lost another anchor and 50 fathoms of chain, leaving the vessel with only one anchor to finish the trip. They depended on this and no further accident happened. The trip was free from any sickness or casualties, and after the weather settled the fishermen made up for lost time.

*Capt. Charles Foss and all of his crew are enthusiastic in praise of their staunch vessel. Capt. Foss declares that the ship would not have been better if she had been built especially for cod fishing. The WAWONA, built for a lumber carrier, was purchased by the Robinson Fisheries company last winter to take the place of the schooner JOSEPH RUSS which was wrecked two seasons previous in northern waters.

Codfish schooner JOSEPH RUSS
on the Bering Sea, Alaska.
Click image to enlarge.
Low res scan of an original photo from the
Saltwater People Historical Society©
Photograph by John Thwaites.

      Second mate Emil Isakson was high line with a catch of 17,036. First mate Sam Ostman was second high line with a catch of 16,203 and Chris Norvick was third man with a catch of 14,442. From these figures the individual catches ranged all the way down to 5,000, most of them being 9,000 to 12,000. 

      The WAWONA arrived in the Straits of Juan de Fuca after a remarkably fast run of ten days from the north. On reaching the straits she became becalmed and being unable to get a towboat, she sailed into Anacortes and arrived at her wharf without the aid of a towboat."
Anacortes American 10 September 1914

Schooner WAWONA. 1964.
berthed in Lake Union, Seattle, WA.
It was 50 years previous when WAWONA
made her maiden voyage to the codfish banks
in the Bering Sea as flagship for Robinsons Fisheries.
After several months the Save Our Ships
committee secured title to the schooner
from William Stoddert, Anaconda.
A campaign committee of 60 business and
civic leaders tried to save the big ship
who was born with 6"-8" thick,
120' long, clear old-growth, fir planks.
Volunteers worked and worked but the full
restoration never happened and in 2009
she went screaming to the knacker man.
Low res scan of an original photo from
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

* Captain Charles Foss, age 70, while in command of the WAWONA, died 16 August 1935 at Unimak Pass, Alaska. A Saltwater People post including photos of the tombstone for the well-known captain left behind on Akun Island can be seen here.

❖ CHIEF ENGINEER without an engine

Schooner AZALEA
ON 106787
Built 1890, Fairhaven, CA.
344 G.t. 327 N.t. 
150' x 35' x 11'
This photo hung in the office of Rich Exton for many years.
Photo kindly donated by Miles McCoy of Orcas Island.

"About 1914, the AZALEA went into the Bering Sea long line cod fishing. I heard she carried 24 dories for Robinson Fisheries of Anacortes. About 1920, Robinson remodeled her, put a full deck house on and installed a one-line, one-pound, tall-can salmon fish cannery. They didn't make any money.

SCHOONER AZALEA, Seattle
Leaving for the Bering.
Click to enlarge.
A little later than Eber Bruns employment.
Undated, original photo by James A. Turner of Seattle.
 From the archives of S.P.H.S.©

In 1924 I went up on her. That year we all signed on before a shipping commissioner. When he asked the skipper my duties he said 'chief engineer.' So I was chief engineer of a full rigged schooner with no power.

Eber Bruns, the highest in the rigging.
Image shared by his daughter, Ellen.

      My job with the cannery was to try and keep all engines workable, cannery boat, beach seine winches, outboards and any other thing that needed doing. That included running the cannery for about 10 days when the foreman got sick. I went back again in 1925. Long hours when the fish were running good, but fun in lots of ways.
      I was furnished a boat the first year, a 32-ft troller with a 16-HP. The second year, a 44-ft seiner with 40-HP. We used to run her up and down the coastline so I could check the winches the fishermen used on the beach for pulling seine.
      The schooner was anchored out from shore about 1/2-mile in the middle of the long bay. We had to bring water from shore in a scow, out to the cannery. We had a chute fixed up at a creek to fill the scow, then pumped it aboard.
      The AZALEA was towed from Seattle to off Cape Flattery. They sailed across the Gulf. We were met by one of our power boats and towed into Zacher Bay, Kodiak Island, AK."
Above text by Eber Bruns  (1902-1982). Shared with web admin by his daughter Ellen Madan.

1939: SOPHIE CHRISTENSON, AZALEA, and WAWONA made up the Bering Sea codfishing fleet this year, making a combined catch of 863,263 fish.

1946: Robinson Fisheries received WAWONA back from the government, succeeded in refitting her, but the AZALEA was hard-used by the Army as a barge and was not returned to service by Robinsons. AZALEA ended up in Sausalito Harbor where she sunk, stern to the old schooner BEULAH of 1882.

❖ Eber was born on Lopez Island, raised on Blind Bay, Shaw Island and then later moved with his wife, to raise their children on Orcas Island. 
      Bruns worked on the mailboat SAN JUAN II, under ownership of San Juan Transportation Company out of Bellingham, the work boat CALCITE of Roche Harbor, towing scows of lime rock to paper mills down sound, as an engineer on SALMONERO for Henry Cayou of Deer Harbor, as engineer on the ARTHUR FOSS, and on the M.V. FEARLESS, buying fish for Capt. Jones for the Deer Harbor Cannery. 
      After his time as a well-known commercial boatman on Puget Sound, the Orcas Power and Light Company hired Eber as chief engineer and operations superintendent, where he kept things running for almost thirty years.

Cod fishing schooner AZALEA 
Winter moorage tucked in behind
her big friend WAWONA.
Undated photograph by James A. Turner, Seattle. 
Original from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

❖ Schooner WAWONA "A Lucky Ship" ❖

"Ships of the sea, particularly those graceful sailing ships now finally slipping into the limbo of the past, have always been endowed with distinctive individual characteristics. No ship ever built has been exactly like any other. Once down the ways each ship has acquired not only a name but a soul of its own in an amazingly short time. And a reputation.
      One would soon be known as a dry ship, another as a wet one. This one would be called a "stiff" ship, that one "easy". One would be labeled "steady", her sister a "roller". She might be known as a "happy" ship or a "workhouse". Some ships cruise like a millionaires' yacht, while others get into all sorts of trouble.
      Sailors have only one definition of the character of a ship. The wet, uncomfortable, cantankerous workhouse they would call an "unlucky" ship. The other kind would simply be known as "lucky".
      A "lucky" ship has been the WAWONA, a three-masted fore-and-aft rigged schooner owned and operated by the Robinson Fisheries Co. of Anacortes, WA. If ever there has been a ship worthy of the appellation, the WAWONA is it. For she has been serving faithfully and well for nearly fifty years, in many parts of the world, and is still making money for her owners. From the days of Capt. Matt Peasley, one of her first masters, to the present, she has been every inch a lady, well behaved, and the pride of the men who have sailed her.

Robinson Fisheries, Anacortes, WA.
Original vintage postcard from
the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.

      In the offices of the Robinson Fisheries they actually speak in reverent tones of the WAWONA. Jack Trafton, the company's president, and E. N. Trafton, his son, could scarcely find words to tell of the old schooner's long service in the N. Pacific codfish trade, of the masters, mates, and men to whom she has been home and career, of the part she played in both world wars. But the company watchman, who has known the WAWONA a good part of his life, expressed it in a few words:

"She has always been a lucky ship, and 
has always landed a good trip of fish."
Postcard reproduction was purchased 
from the Anacortes Museum.

      The WAWONA was built in Fairhaven, CA., in 1897, by the famous [Hans Bendixsen] yard. Her registered dimensions are 468 G. tons, 413 N. tons, 156-ft. length, 36-ft. beam, and a depth of 12-ft., 3-in. One of her first masters was Capt. Matt Peasley of "Cappy Ricks" fame. In that era, Peter B. Kyne's stories in the Saturday Evening Post were widely read, and Matt--the fellow who, in fiction, wiped up the deck with the "Big Swede" and who finally married the attractive daughter of Cappy Ricks--was identified with the life-sized skipper. Capt. Peasley, now 80-years of age, retired from the sea a few years ago, and now lives in Aberdeen, WA.
      The Robinson Co. purchased the schooner in 1914, and she has made a least one trip to the Bering Sea every year since except when she was in government service. She is the largest fore-and-aft rigged sailing ship on the Pacific Coast, and she is one of the few sailing ships that have served through both world wars and is still in active service. In 1917, during WW I, she made a voyage from Vancouver, B.C., to Suva in the Fiji Islands with a full load of lumber, and served with the U.S. Army from 1941 through 1945. Between wars, she has landed a tremendous tonnage of codfish for her owners.
      Captain Charles Foss was her master from 1914 through 1935, which was one year when misfortune overtook the hard-working ship. While clearing Unimak Pass on her way home from the 1935 codfishing season in the Bering Sea, Capt. Foss suddenly passed away. The ship was put about, and Capt. Foss was buried by his sorrowing crew in Lost Harbor, AK. The first mate, now Capt. Tom Haugen, took command and has been her master ever since, except when she was in Army service. On her first trip north in 1936, she carried with her a monument to mark Capt. Foss' grave, and each year on her way north the WAWONA stops at remote Lost Harbor, Akun Island, so that her crew may pay their respects to Foss and care for his resting place.

The 1940 burial of Capt. Richard A. Trafton, 
M.V. DOROTHY,
at Lost Harbor, Akun Island, AK., next to the grave of
Capt. Charles Foss, who died on board WAWONA, 1935.
Courtesy of Bruce Trafton for S.P.H.S.

      The WAWONA has always been a proud ship, but she has never been prudish. At sea, she has always been as graceful as a bird, yet during the late war, stripped of her masts and gear, she served without shame as a lowly scow. Since then her former beauty and accouterments have been restored in shipyards at Friday Harbor and Bellingham. Once again the grime of war service is gone. She is scrubbed and shined and polished. Three 114-foot "sticks" were brought down from the woods and stepped in. With Tom and his crew of 36 men, she sailed this spring for another season in the Bering.
      The WAWONA has always been a "lucky" ship. Her reputation is still good. And when that can be said of such a ship, it is like saying of a fair lady, "here is a useful and honorable life."
Above words by Leon M. Swank
Pacific Motor Boat
October 1946
Archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society
Typed verbatim.
1941: An unlucky day on 27 May when the 2nd mate, Nick Field, age 58 of Tacoma was lost from a WAWONA dory. The master was Capt. Tom Haugen.

Seattle Times 4 Sept. 1941.
1963: An organization known as "Save Our Ships" was organized with the intent to purchase the WAWONA, one of two remaining sailing ships in Puget Sound. The other, FALLS OF CLYDE, was purchased by a fast, fund-raising campaign in Honolulu, where the vessel was taken in 1963 to serve as a floating museum. All of the other sailing ships either have been broken up for scrap or sold to other ports for maritime museums.
1968: Not quoted in this log but a fine tribute to WAWONA is featured in West Coast Windjammers by Jim Gibbs. Superior.
1970: WAWONA was declared a National Historic Site, the first vessel to receive that designation in the country.
1981: The president of the National Maritime Historical Society, Peter Sanford, sent out an SOS to save the WAWONA, owned at that time by Northwest Seaport who moored her in Lake Union, Seattle, WA. Sanford described the WAWONA as an international maritime treasure that deserved better treatment than decrepitude.
2009: After 46 years of volunteer effort, the WAWONA was towed to a Seattle scrapping yard.
2011: Archived on this Log are some of those scraps in Schooner WAWONA's Bones, written by Roy Pearmain.

❖ SCHOONER WAWONA'S BONES ❖

Schooner WAWONA
Photo by Capt. H. H. Morrison
Submitted by author.

"February 26 2011, was a special morning for Roy and Annie because we were out of bed by 4:00 AM to meet Les Bolton, Executive Director of the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport Authority, and a crew of other volunteers in Montesano, WA. By 6:00 AM we were off to rescue WAWONA's bones off Sandpoint Way in Seattle.

       The weather was not especially cooperative, with a temperature of 14.8℉, and a recent snowfall lingering in the shadows, but the roads seemed clear so we were off on our adventure. The Black Hills section of Hwy 8 was coated with compact snow and ice near McLeary, but we slowed down with a 2-axle equipment trailer behind, and carried on without a slip. 

       WAWONA's bones were the salvaged portions of the stately old lumber schooner, WAWONA, that was built in Eureka, CA, in 1897. She had served well as a lumber schooner, moving redwood and fir lumber to ports up and down the west coast until 1914, when she was converted to a cod fisher. One of her captains was Ralph E. Peasley who became famous as the model for Capt. Matt Peasley, the 'fictional' hero in Peter B. Kyne's adventure novel Cappy Ricks, or the Subjugation of Matt Peasley, published in 1916.

      In 1914 WAWONA was purchased by the Robinson Fisheries Company in Anacortes, WA, loaded with tons of salt for preserving cod, and with provisions to last 38 fishermen for six months, sailed to the Bering Sea. At the fishing grounds 24 dories would fan out in all directions, each with a fisherman and his hand lines. They fished all day long to fill each dory with cod fish before returning to the mother ship at nightfall. When the fog closed in, the fisherman and his dory were isolated and alone except for the periodic sound of the WAWONA's horn which provided the location of home.

       Those days are long past and today WAWONA would be making one last trip. After riding at anchor in Lake Union for many years, she had finally been scrapped and her knees, rigging screws, blocks, bowsprit, capstan, keel, and other bones were waiting for us in the corner of a parking lot near the NOAA facility on Sandpoint Way. The day was mostly clear but a biting wind blew in off the lake as we went about our business. With the help of a cranky old fork-lift the trailers and pickups were loaded with pallets and boxes and lashed down for their ignominious last voyage through Seattle rush hour traffic to the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport in Aberdeen, WA."

Written by Roy Pearmain
For Saltwater People Historical Society
June 2011.

Schooner WAWONA 
 winter moorage, Clam Harbor, 
West Sound, Orcas Island, 1951.
Courtesy of Mary Schoen, on shore at this location.

According to Eric Lacitis, Seattle Times staff reporter, the WAWONA, in 1970, was the first vessel to be placed on the National Historical Register of Historic Places.

      All of Seattle's other sailing ships either have been broken up for scrap or sold to other ports for maritime museums.

      In 1963 funds were raised in Honolulu to purchase the 4-masted bark FALLS OF CLYDE for a maritime attraction.

      The Schooner C. A. THAYER was rescued from her "pirate" role on the beach at Lilliwaup, Hood Canal, WA, to  undergo major reconstruction before Capt. Adrian F. Raynaud and her salty crew sailed down the coast to San Francisco Maritime. This passage is well documented in The Schooner That Came Home by Harlan Trott, Cornell Maritime Press, 1958.

      According to Joe Follansbee, the Anacortes History Museum, the Northwest Center for Wooden Boatbuilding, and the San Francisco Maritime Museum, all received pieces from the deconstructed WAWONA."

Anchor winch from the Schooner WAWONA,
c. 10,000 pounds.

 Schooner WAWONA 
keel section, February 2011

Salvaged bowsprit of the Schooner WAWONA
Southbound Seattle to Aberdeen, February 2011.

Salvaged Blocks from the WAWONA.

WAWONA's  rigging gets loaded, too.
All salvage photos courtesy of Roy Pearmain, 2011.