❖ 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.

❖ THE PACIFIC COAST CODFISH COMPANY FLEET ❖

Schooner JOHN A 

Undated original from the archives 
of the Saltwater People Historical Society.©

"The three-masted codfish schooner JOHN A was launched in the Eureka, California yard of Peter Mathews, in 1893. She was 131.7 feet L with a 32-foot beam and a 9.8-foot depth of hold. The gross was 282.4-tons; a very fine sailing vessel for her small size.

      The JOHN A was the first schooner of the Pacific Coast Codfish Company fleet to come to Poulsbo. In 1911 my father, Captain J. E. Shields, and others formed a new fish processing company named Pacific Coast Codfish Company (PCCC.) A processing and storage plant was constructed on the shores of Liberty Bay. They purchased the three-masted schooner JOHN A in southern California with Captain John Grottle as the ship's master. The vessel was brought north with a good supply of salt for the preservation of the first year's cargo. The JOHN A sailed to the banks near Sand Point, Alaska, and also near Sanak Island. All fishing was done from one-man dories launched each day from the schooner and returned to her in the evening with the day's catch.

      A good catch resulted, and the fish plant in Poulsbo began winter operations. The salted fish were removed from the vessel, scrubbed, and stored in wooden tanks holding 20-tons each. A work crew was hired to further process the fish. Some saltfish was dried in the sun while other fish had skin and bones removed to be packed in one-pound packages for shipment to the various stores. Thus, a new industry came into operation and a winter payroll resulted.

In 1913 the three-masted schooner CHARLES R. WILSON was purchased. She was constructed in Fairhaven (Eureka,) California in 1891 for the lumber trade, but was then laid up. She was 150-feet L with 35-feet beam x 11-foot depth of hold. She was rated at 345-tons gross; she could land nearly 500-tons of cured cod.

      The company purchased other sailing vessels, all without engines, including the three-master C A THAYER, in 1925. The THAYER was built by Danish-American Hans Bendixen in Eureka at the same yard as the CHARLES R. WILSON, also for the lumber trade. She was listed at 452-tons gross. She could land nearly 600-tons of salt cod which may explain why she was the last commercial sailing vessel on the US west coast and the last to operate out of Poulsbo. She landed her last cargo in 1950 with Captain Ed Shields in command.

       Another sailing vessel of the PCCC fleet, probably the most famous, was the SOPHIE CHRISTENSON, a four-masted schooner built in Port Blakely in 1901. She was built for the lumber trade and for hauling general cargo. She was 180.6-feet long with a 38.9-foot beam and a 13.4-foot depth of hold. She first came to Poulsbo with Captain John Grottle, and last in 1941 with Captain J.E. Shields, her famous skipper. She carried a crew of 22 dory-fishermen, a dressing crew, and cooks to make a total of 44 men.                

      When the war broke out in 1941, the US Government took possession of the JOHN A, the C.A. THAYER, and the SOPHIE CHRISTENSON. Only the C.A. THAYER returned to the fishing trade after the war. The CHARLES R. WILSON operated during the war years delivering cargos of salt cod every year except in 1944. During this time she was under the command of Captain Knute Pearson of Poulsbo.

      During the late 1930s to 1941, the codfish plant provided employment for up to 40 persons, some men, and some women. For the men, it was work on the fishing grounds at sea during the summer season of five months, and work in the fish plant in the winter.

      After the war, conditions returned to near normal as far as the worldwide need for food was concerned. Commercial mechanical refrigeration came into more prominent use and the need for salt preservation passed as frozen fish became available in all of the grocery stores. Thus came the end to this fishery in 1950."

  From: ABOUT THE BOATS

By Captain Ed Shields (1916-2002)

Poulsbo, WA.

Captain James Edward Shields established his reputation from the age of 17, when he went to sea to help his father crew the SOPHIE CHRISTENSON into the Bering Sea and the history books. During the five-month fishing trip, the 45-man vessel set the all-time American record for codfish, hauling home an astounding 455,000 cod. He earned a Masters Degree in Engineering from Harvard but never once turned his back to the sea. Some believe his "crowning touch" was his six-year effort to write the incredible Salt of the Sea: The Pacific Coast Cod Fishery and the Last Days of Sail. The artist Shields remarked that he knew he was the only one left to write the story. Soon after the completion of the manuscript, in the words he chose for his salty father, he "crossed the bar," at the age of 86-years.