CAPTAIN JAMES GRIFFITHS AND "SIR TOM"

 

 
Captain James Griffiths,
(1862-1943)

Griffiths grew up in a historic maritime
seaport of Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales.
He headed to Puget Sound in 1885 and 
 played a major role in the development of
Puget Sound commerce.
 He needs a book but here is a little below
by boatbuilder, Norm Blanchard, late of Seattle.
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society.©

Essay by Norm Blanchard and Stephen Wilen (abridged)

Knee-Deep in Shavings, Memories of Early Yachting and Boatbuilding on the West Coast. Horsdal & Schbart Ltd, Victoria, B.C., Canada. 1999. 

"In 1912, a syndicate made up of ten wealthy Seattle businessmen, some of whom were Seattle Yacht Club (SYC) members, contributed $100 each and commissioned Ted Geary to design the Sir Tom to compete for the Sir Thomas Lipton Perpetual Challenge Trophy. She was built by my father and his partners, Dean and Lloyd Johnson, and Joseph McKay. The Sir Tom went on to become the most famous sailboat in the entire history of the SYC. Of all the various syndicate members who supported her over the years, even though he was not one of the founding members, it was Captain James Griffiths who really made sure that she remained in active competition as long as she did.

Captain James was one of the most prominent people around the Seattle waterfront in general, and the SYC in particular, since he served as commodore three times, in 1921, '22, and '28. He was the first person to be made an honorary life commodore in the club. He was a Welshman, born in 1861. He had the characteristic British small stature, with red hair. 

He emigrated to Victoria, B.C., around 1885, and set up a stevedoring and towboat company. He settled next in Tacoma, where he formed James Griffiths & Co Ship Brokers, and found the Tacoma Steam Navigation Co. He later moved to Seattle, where he began a towboat operation on Puget Sound, and formed Griffiths & Sprague Stevedoring Co. He had either a branch of that company, or perhaps a second stevedoring company which he continued to operate in Vancouver, B.C. He also owned, or was partner to, the Coastwise Steamship & Barge Co and the Seattle-Everett Dock & Warehouse Co and acquired his own shipyard, the old Hall Brothers yard, which he renamed Winslow Marine Railway & Shipbuilding Co at Eagle Harbor over on Bainbridge Island.[ see photo below.]

    Eagle Harbor, Bainbridge Island, WA.

Back-stamped with inscription 
"James Griffiths & Sons
Burke Building, Seattle, WA.
View from the west end of property, 
showing undeveloped portion of the plant.
Yacht at anchor is MAUD F,
Steamers at the dock are the 
FLORENCE K. & BAINBRIDGE."
click image to enlarge.
Undated, from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Later, Captain Griffiths became involved with James J. Hill, the "Empire Builder," in the business of importing silk from the Orient, and Griffiths is the man who is credited with bringing the Chinese silk through Seattle. He simply went to China and contacted the right people, who were with the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Line. He had to work through interpreters entirely, but he convinced them they could get the silk to market faster if they came to Seattle rather than San Francisco. This was a huge gamble on his part, but it paid off for the Captain: his company became agents for the NYK Line, Hill's "silk trains" met the ships at the pier and rushed the silk express on specially cleared tracks all the way from Seattle to New York City.

Despite his active involvement in heading up the syndicate that financed the building and campaigning of the Sir Tom, the Captain himself seemed to be only interested in power boats. By 1925, Captain Griffiths he commissioned Ted Geary to design his yacht, Sueja III and in 1926 the 117 foot yacht was launched at the captain's own yard, Winslow Marine Railway & Shipbuilding Co. Sueja III was, and is ––because she is still in the charter business on the east coast, now known as Mariner III. All of her woods were Oriental. She was largely built in China and shipped in knock-down fashion to Captain Griffith's yard, where she was assembled under the supervision of Geary.

There are many stories about the Sueja III, but one that I recall in particular occurred about 1927, which would have been the first full cruising season. One morning on a trip to California, when the yacht lay at anchor in Wilmington harbor, Art, a step-son, was standing up on the deck. He'd just finished breakfast when he saw a launch heading toward the Sueja III and he couldn't figure out who this would be, as their own launch was moored on a boom alongside. Well, this launch pulled up alongside the gangway and out jumped two fellows, and one of them came bounding up the gangway ladder. Art walked over to meet him, and the stranger asked, "Is the owner aboard? I want to meet the owner. I'm going to buy this boat."

Art replied, "Well, I'll tell the captain you want to speak with him," and went to find him. Naturally, Art hung around to hear what was said.

The Captain was really pretty short, and the stranger was pretty tall, and he said to Captain Griffiths, "I want to buy your boat," or something to that effect.

Captain Griffiths drew himself upon to his full height, and jabbing a forefinger at the stranger's chest, he sputtered, "Young man, this boat is not for sale, but if you'll keep a civil tongue in your head I'll introduce you to the man who designed her, and he can design one for you and you can build it."

Well, the stranger was none other than John Barrymore and so that's the story of how the 120-foot, Geary designed Infanta came to be built in 1920. She, of course, is now known to us as THEA FOSS.  She has been the Foss Maritime Company's corporate yacht for many years, and is still a beautiful yacht.

To get back to the Sir Tom. The R Class Rule had been developed by Nathanael Herreshoff in Rhode Island, and when Geary returned from M.I.T. and was commissioned by the syndicate to design the Sir Tom, he created a really fast hull shape. The Sir Tom was the first Seattle R Class sloop and easily won the right to challenge other candidates for the Lipton Cup, which she did, and she held it continually from 1914 until 1928.

     

SIR TOM 

Undated photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

My first memories of her competitive years date from right after WW II. We did all the practice racing on her in Lake Union right offshore from the Blanchard Boat Co at the foot of Wallingford Ave., where the Seattle Police Harbor Patrol dock is now. Captain Griffiths had two sons, Stanley, the eldest, and Bert. In those days, Stanley would be in the cockpit with Geary, and Bert was the mainsheet man. My dad was the foredeck man. I don't recall who was his partner up there with him initially, but Roy Corbet joined that group, in 1922, and that year was the first time the Sir Tom had her famous curved Marconi mast and new sails. Up until 1928 she never entered a race that she didn't finish first. She didn't always win because sometimes races consisted of a mixed fleet and there would be time allowances, but she was a very, very fast R Class sloop, as well as one of the smallest boats in the class, at 39 feet, 8 inches.

CREW OF SIR TOM,
dated verso, July 1930.

L-R: Andy Joy, Roy Corbet,
J. Swift Baker and Ted Geary.
The Seattle yacht was captained by Geary,
Commodore of the Seattle Yacht Club. 
The team regained the coveted 
Lipton Trophy at the PIYA regatta in 
Cadboro Bay, Victoria, B.C. 
Original photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Well, I think Bert and Stanley Griffiths were the first to leave the Sir Tom crew, and they were replaced by Ray Corbet, Swift Baker, Colin Radford, and later Jack Graham took over the helm when Geary was sailing on Don Lee's Invader in the Trans Pacific Race.

The syndicate stuck together and paid Sir Tom's bills pretty much for years. Captain Griffiths was recognized as the manager of the syndicate, and as various members of the original group died be would either find the money from somebody else or dig into his own pockets,  because he really felt that the Sir Tom and Ted Geary were head and shoulder about the gang at the Royal Vancouver and the Royal Victoria yacht clubs. He was always the perfect host aboard the Sueja II and the Sueja III

The Sir Tom eventually became, I guess by survival mainly, the property of Captain Griffiths. During WW II all international competition ceased, so she was stored at his shipyard at Eagle Harbor. Captain Griffiths died before the Armistice, on 29 June 1943, and for a while his son, Stanley, ran the companies, but he soon passed on. His son, James, became head of the Washington Tug and Barge Co and his brother Churchill was right in there as vice-president of operations. 

When my brother, Wheaton, got out of the navy about the end of WW II, he was at Officers Candidate School at the U of WA campus, and in 1946 he persuaded my dad to go 50-50 with him and buy the Sir Tom. That summer Wheaton actively campaigned the boat at the SYC races, but the R Class was dead by that time. After he got married, he couldn't afford to pay his half of the boat bills, so the Sir Tom came to sit on our dock at the boat company for quite a few years.

In 1956, a young fellow came into the boat company and told me he wanted to buy the Sir Tom. I asked him, "Do you think you can repair her and put her back in condition?" Well, yes, he thought he could. I questioned him, "What kind of experience have you had?" Well, he replied he hadn't really had any experience, so I said, "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write to Ted Geary and get the exact weight of the lead keel, and the day that you're ready to write a check, I'll sell the boat to you for just what the lead is worth on that day. We can check the newspaper for the quotation on the price of lead. I'll give you five more years of free storage on the mast. If you haven't been to get it after five years, why, if it's still up there and you want it, we'll have to negotiate a new deal on the mast."

He eventually went through with the deal, and as he was leaving I said to him, "Now don't sell that lead for a honeymoon!"

About five years later, I know it was at least five years, because he never came back for the mast and I sold it. I was lying in the large lock in my "33" sloop, Aura, and a Senior Knockabout came alongside and rafted up. The owner or skipper was at the tiller and another fellow with him, and the other fellow said to me, "You don't remember me, Mr. Blanchard? Well, I'm the guy who took the lead keel off the Sir Tom and sold it for a honeymoon __ and that was a bad mistake, too." It seems his marriage had failed. After he bought Sir Tom he had her hauled out someplace and trucked to his parents' backyard, and after he sold the lead, I suppose the boat was simply broken up for kindling.

So that's the story of Captain James  Griffiths and the Sir Tom syndicate. Wells Ostrander, the son of one of the early members, gave his father's certificate or membership paper in the Sir Tom syndicate to the Seattle Yacht Club a few years back, and we still have that at the clubhouse. It's sad the way we lost the Sir Tom, but as I've said about other former grand boats, sometimes when they fall into such neglected condition it's maybe best to just let them slip away. "

⛵️ 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.