ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SAILING !!

 Which means a birthday party 

on the dock!

Schooner ZODIAC 
click to enlarge

19   May   2024

11:00 -- 4:00

BELLINGHAM CRUISE TERMINAL 

Ship tours available

Slide Show/ interviews

Time for audience questions.

Photos courtesy of 

Schooner Zodiac website here

❖ BUSY AT BLOEDEL DONOVAN ❖

BLOEDEL DONOVAN LUMBER MILLS,
Bellingham, Washington.
Dated April 1932, with
4-masted COMMODORE
5-masted VIGILANT
Steamer WILLBORO, for New York.
Click image to enlarge.
Low res scan of an original photo from S.P.H.S.©

In 1898 Julius Bloedel founded Whatcom Logging Co with frontier businessman John J. Donovan and Peter Larson, which later became known as Bloedel-Donovan Mills.
      In the 1950s, now under the direction of his son, Prentice, Bloedel's company merged with H.R. MacMillan Co to form one of the largest forest products companies in the world, MacMillan-Bloedel Limited. Often called Mac-Blo, it was eventually taken over by Weyerhaeuser in 1999. Bloedel Hall at the UW, Seattle, was named for Julius Bloedel. The Bloedel Conservatory of Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver was named for his son Prentice Bloedel for donating nearly $1.4 million for its construction in 1967. The Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, WA., was created by Prentice Bloedel and his wife Virginia.

      The two schooners in the photo above can be seen under sail below. Unfortunately, the WILLBORO was sunk by a torpedo from U-159 on 10 Sept. 1942 two hundred miles SW of Capetown. Six people lost their lives.

The COMMODORE (ex-BLAATIND)
as she is trying to catch a tow off Cape Flattery,
 headed to Bellingham for more lumber.
After all the other sailers were gone, the
COMMODORE and the VIGILANT sailed side by side.
Original photo from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

CAPTAIN CHARLES MELLBERG
8 January 1932
On board the VIGILANT after the
much publicized 'race' with the COMMODORE.
VIGILANT was towed into the Strait of Juan
de Fuca after the 38-day crossing ahead
of the COMMODORE. The passage was
2,289-miles across the Pacific.
Low res scan of an original photo from the
Saltwater People Log©

Schooner VIGILANT
Heading to sea with a full cargo of lumber.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photo from the Saltwater People Log©

❖ POINT ROBERTS COUNTRY ❖ with June Burn 1930

METSKER'S MAP OF PUGET SOUND COUNTRY©
Copyright of Thos. C. Metsker
"Metsker the Map Man."
This map is for convenience not for navigation.
Click image to enlarge for viewing Pt. Roberts.

"The village of Point Roberts is called West Point Roberts. It stands down in the lower lefthand corner of the peninsula. Here are two or three stores, gas stations, a big fish cannery. Behind one of the new stores, there stands a thirty or forty-year-old building with "Bureau Salon" in big letters across its false front. There are several houses, of course, one little hotel called the Green Lantern, another restaurant, a schoolhouse and nameless relics of houses whose uses I do not know.
 

      Jutting out into Georgia Strait from the beach is the long dock. The daily boat, TULIP, from Bellingham, stands off here to discharge mail and freight. Beyond the beach a mile or so, fishtraps look like centipedes floating on the water. The high derrick affair up northward is one of the boundary monuments set there to let fishermen know when they are on their side of the fence.
      It stands over a mile from shore, I believe; 5,500-ft to be exact. I suppose there is a light atop as there is on the one ashore. The international boundary makes a sharp bend two or three miles out from Pt. Roberts and turns southeasterly down Georgia to Haro Strait when it bends again through Haro to Juan de Fuca and so on out to sea. It really is too bad that it doesn't turn southwesterly from Boundary Bay and so avoid this bit of peninsula altogether. It must be a great bother keeping up customs and boundary patrol for six square miles or less of country. Though it does add interest to our map to see Pt. Roberts away up there at our northwesternmost corner separated from us by both land and sea. It is more than an island, surrounded as it is on three sides by water, and on the fourth by an alien country.
 

      Summer people, week-ending visitors, are already trickling down to all the long, sandy beaches of the Point. They look very carefree, walking like Pippa on her one holiday of the year. Very jaunty and satisfied they look, as if they had achieved some private victory of their own.
      At the village, I found Mr. Culp just ready to go home. He brought me back to the cottage in the woods, and this evening after supper all of us crowded into the coupe.
      Down to Boundary Bay, we went past Baker's new charming log cabin, past the Russell place, along the narrow graveled road with shrubs pressing in from both sides, past the Ellis Johnson place. Honeysuckle in bloom in the woods. Mrs. Culp told of the effort that their local Grange made to stop the vandalism of wildflowers and shrubs in the summertime. They wrote Olympia about it, learned that tree stealing could be prosecuted, but apparently not other forms of the ruthless gathering of wildflowers.

      Leghorn Heights on our left, and the Solomon ranch. Crystal Waters beach. Is it not a lovely name? Thorstenson Ranch and the Goodman place deep in the woods. Down to White Lily Point, which is a high bluff overlooking the bay. Here, in March, the little white six-petaled Easter lily droops her sweet head under every salal shrub, every frond of Oregon
grape. In bloom now are vetch, wild roses, Indian Paintbrush, honeysuckle, fritillaria or rice-root, and many little things whose names I do not know.
 

Eight photographs from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      Across Boundary Bay the lights of Blaine, below the bluff fifteen fishtraps with long curved leads. Far down across the Strait, Lummi Island, and Orcas. The big P.A.F. fish cannery at the foot of the high bluff has not run for years. Mr. Arni Myrdal is in charge of fishing operations down there. Wise in Icelandic lore he is, they say. But I did not meet him on this trip. See you tomorrow. June."
Above text by June Burn. Puget Soundings. May 1930.

❖ SAN JUAN BOATS OF YESTERYEAR ❖

ALVERENE
Capt. Bill Kasch,
Anacortes, WA.
Photo courtesy of maritime historian J. Robin Paterson.

Perhaps the most idyllic physical features in Washington are concentrated in the San Juan Islands. Here is a natural topography encompassing more than 150 islands, considered by many persons to be unsurpassed for natural beauty and interest.

      Early-day commercial transportation among the islands, with its colorful sidelights, is recalled by Mary Kasch Nollan. Mary's father, Capt. William Kasch, or Captain Bill, as he was called, pioneered commercial-shipping, passenger and mail service in the San Juan Islands, around the turn of the century.
      "Because my father was a man of the sea, I always was conscious of wind, rain, and fog, as a child growing up in Anacortes," said Mrs. Nollan, who retains many vivid memories of the era of transportation by small vessels.
      The Kasch family came west from Iowa Falls, in 1889, and one year later settled in Anacortes. Mary's grandfather, Ernest Kasch, opened the Kasch Merchantile Co, one of the first stores in the community. Elected city treasurer of Anacortes in 1902, he served until his death in 1907.
      William Kasch, was 16 years old when his parents made the move west. The young man delved into various pursuits before finding his field of greatest interest. In 1900 he bought a 40-ft gasoline-engine launch, which named the Molly Kasch after his mother. This boat, one of the first gasoline craft operating on the Sound, was used to carry freight and passengers among the islands in a jobbing venture.

      From this humble beginning, Kasch expanded rapidly. With a partner, F.H. King, he formed the Kasch Navigation Co., In 1911, with his brother, Capt. Frank Kasch (later living in Edmonds), and A.L. Marsh of Cottonwood Island, he organized the Inter-Island Navigation Co., of which he was president and manager.
      "As a historical note, my father had the distinction of operating the first passenger boat with regularly scheduled service among the San Juan Islands, running from Bellingham and Anacortes," said Mary. "A new boat, the Anglo-Saxon, was purchased to begin the run in 1905. Although I was too young to remember the event without an assist from the family album and my parent's description, christening this boat was one of the highlights of my childhood.
      "According to newspaper clippings from the Bellingham paper of that day, the Anglo-Saxon was a gasoline launch capable of traveling ten miles an hour and carrying 50 passengers, and not a prettier model then floated on the waters of Puget Sound.

      "A short time after the run was in operation, meeting train and boat schedules to Seattle, my father received the first franchise to carry the daily mail to the San Juan Islands."

      

KINGSTON
Original photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

       Names of later boats owned by Kasch and his companies were the Yale, the Yankee Doodle, the Yankee II, the Concordia, the Georgia, the City of Anacortes, the Bainbridge, the steamer Kingston, and the Alverene.

      Scheduled stops of the steamboat Yankee II, according to a timetable of 1915, now in the Nollan scrapbook, were at Urban, Doe Bay, Olga, Eastsound, Shaw Island, Orcas, West Sound, Deer Harbor, Friday Harbor, Lopez, Port Stanley, Anacortes, and Bellingham. 

      The early years of Captain Bill's nautical career are described by his daughter as happy-go-lucky days. Some of the farmer's made an annual ride to the city and paid their fare with a bucket of vegetables, or a bucket of clams.

      "If a passenger was short of cash, he always could work his passage by helping to carry freight on and off the boat. I remember one bill that was paid with half a beef! since homes in those days were without refrigeration, most of the meat went to our neighbors."

      To ask a favor of the captain was not at all unusual. There were errand requests, such as picking up dentures and taking them to Bellingham to have a broken tooth replaced. There were shopping lists to fill for Islanders unable to leave their homes––maybe five yards of gingham, assorted groceries, a new frying pan or kettle, Sometimes the skipper would take a note to a Bellingham doctor saying that a baby's formula was causing distress, and shouldn't it be changed."

      There were sick calls when the captain would go miles out of his way to some little island, where there wasn't even a landing. A red flag fastened to a rock or tied to a tree meant as an emergency.

      In those cases, the captain would row ashore in the Doodle, as the dinghy was called, and find out the trouble. Many times he picked up a sick man, gave him as smooth a ride as was possible in the wave-tossed dinghy, transferred him to the big boat, and took him to a doctor or hospital.

      "Capt Bill's clients were first and foremost his friends, and he was devoted to those beyond the call of duty. Long hours were accepted as all in a day's work. For years he was up before daybreak and left Anacortes with his boat at 6 a.m. In stormy weather, 8 or 9 o'clock at night was not an unusual hour for his return."

      As the years went by, there was, of course, competition for the pioneer captain. At one time he found himself engaged in what he called a "merry jitney war," when he carried passengers for 10 cents a trip to save his business.

      While keeping abreast of the times, Kasch progressively replaced his little boats with bigger and faster craft. Meanwhile, trails and wagon roads on the larger islands became highways suitable for auto travel. With the advent of the modern auto ferry, a new pattern of island travel was ushered in. But this was near the end of Capt Bill's day.

      Except for a period in WW I, Kasch served the San Juan Islands for the first quarter of the century. In 1917 he enlisted in the merchant marine and shipped out on the Westley, bound for Norfolk, VA. There he was assigned to the Omsk, a Russian ship with a motley international crew, which was commissioned by the Shipping board as part of General John J. Pershing's 'Bridge of Ships.' * During the war, he was shipwrecked, which contributed to later ill health and his death in 1927.

      Adelaide Davis Kasch, who became the captain's bride in 1898, carried on her husband's business for several years after his death, with the help of her sons, Bill, Jr, and Joe. Eventually, the company was sold to the Puget Sound Navigation Co.

      Of the four children, son Joseph became a captain for the Washington State Ferries, and Norine Kasch Fulmar became the wife to Capt. Alan Fulmer, fleet captain and superintendent of the Marine Reserve Fleet at Astoria, OR.

Text by Charlotte Widrig. Published by the Seattle Times.

*After crossing the U-Boat-infested Atlantic, Kasch returned to Seattle to catch the ill-fated Blackford which had just been completed.
      The Blackford went down in a hurricane off the coast to Mexico, leaving its battered crew stranded with little but fish and turtles to eat for nearly two weeks when they were finally picked up.
Source: Anacortes American. March 1981. Courtesy of the Anacortes Historical Museum 

❖ VIEWING LUMMI ISLAND ❖ by June Burn

Viewing Lummi Island from Chuckanut Drive,
Bellingham, WA.
Photo by Clyde Banks, undated.
From the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

June Burn published this piece in February 1930, from mail she received from one of her readers on Lummi Island. 

One of the lovely views of which the Lummi Islander writes.
Photo by E.I. Jacobson 
from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

"I would love to tell folks about Lummi Island. On the west one can see the San Juan Islands and Juan de Fuca beyond them. Over this wide strait, our beautiful sunsets that no artist can paint. On the east we can see Mt. Baker robed in white with the waters of Hales Pass and the foothills in between.
      To the north of us lies the Gulf of Georgia, and on clear days, across miles of water, we can see Point Roberts with the Coast Range in the background. The south end of Lummi is mountainous and there people love to spend the day hiking, following trails and climbing through nature's forests. Often they see wild game, that adds to the thrill.
      At night we can see our nearest city of Bellingham all aglow and Chuckanut Drive with the headlights rounding the curves. It is a beautiful sight.

Carlisle Cannery, Lummi Island, WA.
With broadside view of fish tenders moored to
offload salmon catch. Dated 1911.
The bottom photo mailed by Lummi Island's 
Fannie Winslow Granger (1860-1921)
states this view as the boarding house where the
Carlisle Cannery bosses live. (photo undated.)
Click image to enlarge.
Original photos from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

      We have three salmon canneries and six families who are engaged in chicken raising as a business, a blue fox farm, a few large and several small ranches. We have an $18,000 school house and a township hall adjoining it. This hall is used for business meetings, basketball, and dancing. We also have a Congregational Church, the basement being used for a Grange hall.
      Our roads are good graveled roads and are being widened. In summer the traffic is as bad as on the highways. You will wonder at this, but our summer hotels explain it.
      The Hotel Grange was known years ago as Mother Grange's home, and a wonderful place it was to spend happy days. Since her death, the hotel has been run by her son and daughter, the Austins.
      Then comes the Lodge run by Mr. and Mrs. Granger. This hotel can take care of two or three hundred people. Mrs. Granger does the cooking, and talk about fried chicken and all the goodies that go with it! A four-piece orchestra entertains here twice a week. There are dancing, cards, pool, tennis and horseshoe games with a lovely sandy beach close by where marshmallows are toasted at bonfires.
       

"The Willows"
Lummi Island, WA. 
Lower photo of three cabins by Clyde Banks.
Original photos from the archives of the S.P.H.S.© 

From the cozy living room of "The Willows,"
Lummi Island, WA.,
this notation was written on the bottom photocard:
"It was too hot to do anything but lie in the hammock.
Weather is gorgeous."
Both photos by Clyde Banks from the archives of the S.P.H.S.© 

"The Willows", kept by [founders,] Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Taft, is the garden of flowers. Here are a dozen cabins where guests spend the nights, each with flowers of its own, and here every kind of amusement, including a weekly picnic for those who love to spend the day in the beautiful places on Lummi.

Ferry Landing at Beach, Lummi Island,
for the Gooseberry Point route.
The Post Office was officially named Beach
honoring the first Postmaster, Wade H. Beach,
and not changed until 1946.
Two original photos from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

      You can motor to Gooseberry Point and ferry across in about five minutes. The ferry makes nine trips a day, so don't forget the route!"
      Thank you, T.K., for the story. I'll be over on that ferry some of these days just to see one of your sunsets out across de Fuca way! See you tomorrow." June.
Puget Soundings. Feb. 1930
For some history notes about Lummi Island, WA., please click here

🇨🇦 GEORGIA STRAIT––PIRATES SAILING IN

MONTE CRISTO (1968-1971)
"Captain Blood," Cal Mann, of Bellingham, WA, 
spots the British Columbia barque in Georgia Strait,
 June 1969.
Wire photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

The first time in US waters, the barque Monte Cristo, of Vancouver, BC, a replica model of an 18th C. vessel, is spotted by a Bellingham Buccaneer in Georgia Strait . The Bellingham group hopes to get some gold off the ship by charging admission during the weekend visit to help finance activities.

Monte Cristo
Below data from Wikipedia

1968:
3 masted auxiliary barque built in Vancouver, B.C. this year.

She is iisted in H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the PNW Vol. 1966-1975 as being built by Capt. Alexander Brigola for charter service.
She was built along the lines of the brigantine Albatros as published in Uffa Fox's Second Book of Boats.
She was constructed of mahogany planking on heavy fir frames with spars of Sitka spruce. Her three-sectioned mainmast rose 84-ft from deck to truck.
The deck measured 94-ft with bowsprit and jib boom extended to almost 140-ft overall.
Monte Cristo was rigged as a three masted barque with square sails on the mainmast and foremast, a gaff rigged fore and aft spanker on the mizzenmast, four jibs, and a variety of staysails for a maximum of 17 sails, totaling 9,000 sq ft. the sails were controlled by around 5 miles of running and standing rigging, all of natural manila rope and galvanized wire. There were no mechanical winches; all hauling being by block and tackle and human power.
The auxiliary engine was a GMC Jimmy 6-71 Diesel. The only electronic aid to navigation was a marine VHF radio.
Ownership:
Originally owned and built by a consortium of business men keen to recreate the great days of sail, she quickly became the sole property of Ron Craig, a Canadian businessman.
Voyages:
Initially, as Monte Cristo, she worked her way down the western seaboard of the US, giving costumed on-board tours to paying visitors at each port of call.

1969, 22 July:
She had to be towed into Port Townsend, WA in thick fog after suffering engine trouble.
She had a number of movie roles and on 9 November she was briefly involved in the occupation of Alcatraz.

1970:

She was renamed Endeavour II before she sailed across the Pacific to Sydney to take part in the bicentenary re-enactment on 29 April 1970, of Captain James Cook's landing at Botany Bay. Sydney. She subsequently cruised up the east of Australia to Brisbane, giving on-board tours to paying visitors at each port of call, and then sailed for Auckland, NZ, under American skipper, Jeff Berry.

This proved to be her final voyage and she encountered a number of delays. Soon after sailing she was becalmed and carried southwards by a freak, seventy-mile a day current. In the Tasman Sea, the crew sighted distress flares and searched for over 12 hours without success. The consequent depletion of fuel reserves was to prove critical. On rounding North Cape, she encountered a full gale and failed to make the intended Houboara Harbor.

Loss:
34° 31' 23.69" S 173° 0' 35.81 E

1971:

After rounding North Cape, NZ, Endeavour II found it impossible to keep position in 40-ft easterly winds when fuel ran out, and she tried to anchor. When her anchors dragged she  was driven onto the bar of Parengarenga Harbour, a few miles south of North Cape, in the early hours of 22 February. By 1 PM she had settled on her side and began to break up. The crew of thirteen men and one woman reached the shore safely, tied together with 9-ft of line between each person.

She was the first square-rigged sailing vessel wrecked on the NZ coast for more than 50 years.

❖ Crab Trap Salt ❖ June Burn 1930

 Washington State fishermen 
with cooked Dungeness crab. 
Photos from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

"Haven't you read stories in which sturdy old salts go out in stormy, blizzardy weather to lift the lobster and crab traps? Don't they always thrill you, make you feel somehow as if your soft life lacked something? When Amundsen, Byrd, Stefanson, and the Lofoten fishermen go off on their wild ways, aren't you drowned with envy and yearning to go off with them, to endure hard things, to feel blasts of icy winds on cheeks already nearly frozen? The hard things. Only they are worth doing, really.

       Not that the little storm we are heading into now is dangerous, or that sitting in the back of Mr. Thompson's skiff while he lifts his crab traps is very hard. But it feels as if one were getting close to reality, anyhow. I am shivering half with delight, half with a blowing rain that is not far from being sleet, as one by one the big traps come out of the water, are emptied into the boat.

      ...Word came last night that I might go at 8 AM this morning with Mr. Thompson, a Dane, to lift the crab traps. It rained all night, so Thompson goes ahead on the trail with a stick, knocking off as much water as possible.

      The boat lay the the top of the beach. Thompson bailed it out, tipped it to let all the water run out, and we dragged it down over the gravel into the water, where it began to leak again. With an old putty knife that he keeps handy for the purpose, the master of the skiff stuffed old rope into the cracks and we put to sea, the wind having died down somewhat under the lash of the rain.

      In Thompson's early days crab fishing flourished. There was a crab cannery at Blaine. He ran 

❖ FAIRHAVEN CANNERY DAYS 1904 ❖ ❖ by Lynn McKee

Early Fairhaven, WA.
Photographer P. L. Hegg
From the archives of the S. P. H. S. ©

"My family brought me to Spokane in 1892 when I was very small; in 1904 we moved to Fairhaven, now South Bellingham. I was 12-yrs old, and for vacations we school kids used to go to the canneries asking for jobs, as there was no child labor law at that time. I'd be hoping the ‘China-boss’ would come out and ask, "you want work?"
  The canneries in those days were the Washington Packing Co at Fairhaven, R. A. Welsh, Pacific Packing & Navigation Co (later Pacific American Fisheries), Sehome Packing Co, Astoria & Puget Sound Packing Co, at Chuckanut Bay, and one saltery belonging to Thompson Fish Co.

P. A. F. Cannery 

The canning firms paid 7 to 10 cents an hour to boys piling cooled cans of salmon that had been cooked the previous day. They were wheeled out of retorts on cars that held 6 trays of tall cans, or maybe 11 to 13 trays of half-pound cans. They were cooked 90-minutes at 242-degrees, then Chinamen pulled the cans out on tracks to a warehouse, where the cans would cool overnight. The cars and trays were wanted back as soon as possible, so doors were left open to catch a breeze and cool the cans. School kids were hired to pile them as high as they could reach. The warehouse looked like a sea of cans; all night one could hear them snapping as the vacuum sealed them.
The only adult labor, around the cannery itself, was the old Chinese; they were hard-working and willing. I remember how one of them would come out from the 'China House' every morning wearing a shoulder yoke from the ends of which hung two huge cans of tea. He'd leave one of them in the warehouse for the workers. They didn't want kids standing around the pot, but we thought we should have a break also. The Chinese had a job keeping us steadily at work.
After the end of the canning season, the stacked cans were all cooled when the Chinese lacquered them with crude brown varnish thinned with naptha. This was done in the lacquering machine. The kids' job was to pick cans off the pile and lay them lengthwise on a track that slid them toward the machine. They were immersed in lacquer six or eight at a time then dumped out on conveyor chains and carried over a fan in the machine where a blast of air-dried them. The Chinese removed the cans and we kids re-stacked them to await shipping orders. Labels were applied by hand; the cans were then packed in wooden boxes that had been made at the cannery before the season opened.

Things were just beginning to be modernized and the lacquering machine was the first real improvement. Cans were still all made by hand when I got my first job in 1904. I was sent to help at the soldering bench. The Chinamen prepared their own solder in long sticks. I carried trays of side soldered can bodies to where the bottoms were soldered on. I also learned how to make complete cans from sheets of tin plate.
Around the plant were still the old vats for washing cans in lye water to remove oil after the final 90-minute cook. They were put out to dry and then the Chinese sat around and painted them red. It was explained to me that England was a great outlet for our canned salmon. When the cans were shipped through the tropics and around the Horn in sailing ships on the way to Great Britain, they would sweat and rust. If a can wasn't painted red when it got to England, it wasn't salmon. So before lacquer came in as a rust preventive, the cans were painted.
After I had worked a while at the WFA Co, the China boss took me to a pile of salmon in the fish room and told me to supply fish to the hand butchers. He gave me a picaroon and said, “you put fish on table. If table not kept full, you got no job--savvy?”
This is where I was working when Edmund Smith came from Seattle with an experimental butchering machine he wanted to try out.

"The Iron Chink," circa 1906.
It was considered the most important
of many machines used in fish canning.
 The machine butchered 65 salmon per minute.
According to Galen Biery and Dorothy Koert
in Looking Back, the machine was still being 
 manufactured in 1980, by Smith-Berger Co, Seattle.
Photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.© 

Smith was the inventor of the "Iron Chink" and I sometimes ran errands for him. Because of the work, I did for him, when he perfected the machine some years later, I became contact man for the company, traveling the AK coast.
In my early years around canneries, Puget Sound fishermen used seine skiffs. They were big dories, square on one end, and could carry a crew of four to six. The men would put a tent on a beach and row out with the dory, carrying the net on the stern. To make a set they cast it off and rowed in a circle. Then they pulled in on the lead line to purse the net and brailed the fish into the boat.
About 1912, I was an engineer on the BEAVER, owned by R. A. Welsh of the Bellingham Can Co. I hadn't intended to work on a cannery tender, but the company had trouble with engineers getting drunk and asked if I wanted a job like that. I went to the Y.M.C.A. and took a gas engine course before I said yes.

The BEAVER
She tended the first steam pile driver in
San Juan county in 1894.
The pile driver was owned by Kinleyside,
Richardson, Lopez.
Original postcard from the collection of the S. P. H. S. ©

   The BEAVER had been built in Anacortes about 1894 and was 65-ft long. She had a 50-HP Troyer Fox gas engine when gas engines weren't common. I was told there were only two on the northern part of Puget Sound. We made up our batteries for ignition with sulphuric acid and carbon-zinc plates in glass jars. Welsh used the boat to pick up fish for the cannery and to take the pile-driver crew out to his traps. We would go to the San Juans and pick up fish from the little camps on the beaches. There were lots more fish in those days and they were caught most anywhere.
William Bell was captain and deckhand on the BEAVER and I was an engineer and cook. We lived on the boat. My bunk was alongside the engine and under the deck. When rain fell the deck leaked and my blankets would get wet.
Our season started about March with driving piles at West Beach and Strawberry Bay. A crew was ashore on Cypress Is at Strawberry Bay making up the web, then we towed it on a scow to where needed. In the fall we took the scow down again and picked up what was worth saving of the web. The pile puller pulled the piles and the good ones were taken to Strawberry Bay, where there used to be a dock and buildings of the main camp.
The company had two or three traps on the west coast of Whidbey Island, one at Strawberry Bay, and three in Hood Canal, at Lofall, Whiskey Spit, and Bridalbeck. I can remember going to these traps to pick up a scow load of humpback salmon then on the way back we ran into a storm and had to pull into Bowman's Bay until it was over. With only 50-HP the skipper had to work with the tides.
Mostly our runs were with a hold full of fish. We also transported men back and forth to the traps and camps.
There were no fish tickets at that time; payment to fishermen had to be in cash. The skipper went to the Fairhaven bank and got a canvas bag of bills and change, which he stowed under his pillow. He slept with a Winchester in the bunk alongside his right leg. One night when anchored in a fog I heard the skipper yelling his head off and when I got on deck he was standing at the bow shaking his fist at the fog. He had been hijacked and robbed before he could get his rifle out.
Another exciting time was when we went ashore in fog on Bird Rocks. We thought the BEAVER was going to turn over because she was at such a steep angle, so we got out and sat on the rocks, wondering what we'd do after the tide came in. However, as the water rose the boat righted, and we got back on board.
We had a peculiar experience on another occasion when we were heading out and halfway across Bellingham Bay. Suddenly I got three bells and a jingle, the signal for full speed reverse. The sudden reverse killed the old engine and when I looked out there was a periscope coming up across our bow. A sight like that gives you a queer feeling.
The explanation was simple enough. The Electric Boat Co was building two submarines for the Chilean government and picked Bellingham Bay for the trial runs. We were nearly hit by either the EQUIQUE or the ANTAFOGASTA. One of those submarines came up under a log boom in Hale's Pass; the skipper looked back and saw the logs standing on end.
Back when I began in the cannery business there was no electricity. The cannery was lit by lanterns, fish were unloaded on a platform at the dock, and pitched from there up to the cannery floor. The first fish elevator in the old plant was put in the year I went to work; its power came from the streetcar line. One of my first jobs was to sort through the fish and throw the chums overboard. It was thought their meat was too coarse and only suitable for salting. The old WPC didn't do any salting. England bought only sockeye salmon. Down on the Columbia River, the canneries saved big chinooks and packed them in oval cans. I remember the biggest king we picked up weighed 60 pounds. Anybody could have carried it home; it wasn't wanted for canning and it went to the China House.
Such were early days in the salmon canning industry on the Sound. The old BEAVER served us well. I last saw her moored among other fishing boats at Ketchikan."
Above text by Lynne McKee, as told to Lucile McDonald.
From The Sea Chest, the March 1975 quarterly journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Seattle, WA.

❖ The Christmas Ship to the Islands ♥ ♥

Let's celebrate the hardworking volunteers who start long before December to collect food,  toys, and candy, to stuff all available lockers. The ship's crew disembarking are dressed in beautiful, handmade costumes to bring Santa, carols, and good cheer, to the young of heart in the San Juan Islands and the Gulf Island group. 
      The good folks started out with a fish tender but most of the crew now enjoy a warm cabin on a chartered passenger vessel often chased by chilling wind and lumpy seas. These volunteers with hearts of gold have set aside personal time in the busy holiday season since 1947. 
      Hundreds of islanders have warm memories of hearing the gentle music coming down the channel towards their chosen island dock. The Bellingham Jaycees, the Sea Scouts, the Bellingham Central Lions, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, just a few of Santa's support crew. A salty Merry Christmas to these generous people and our readers all.

Bellingham Lions Club promotion
18 Dec. 1947.
L-R: Rank Bostrom, John O'Rourke
of the Bellingham Hotel,
Don Satterlee, Art Howard.
This is the earliest known photo to
document the beginning
of the program to transport Santa Claus to the children 
of the San Juan Islands, and later
to the Gulf Island group.
Photo (#1. 004579) by Jack Carver
Purchased from the Whatcom Museum of History and Art©
For educational purposes only, for a copy
contact WMHA, thank you.

With soldering iron, a needle,
and hairspray as insulation,
the Jaycees clowns,
Don Ryan & Riggs Nelson,
in the cabin of the Christmas ship,
yacht WYRILL.
They attempt to rewire the sound system before
arriving at Ganges.
Photo (#1.036027) by Jack Carver.
Purchased from the Whatcom Museum of History and Art.©
For educational use only.
For reproduction please contact WMHA.

Apologies...a few photos have fallen off and I am working on calling them home very soon.

"The Christmas Ship--It was a wonderful sight, and sound too, as the decorated Christmas Ship came into sight as it passed Shaw Island. The music was gently flowing over the waters, so soft and gentle. Think it was early evening, perhaps just after dinner time when it arrived at our Orcas dock. People gathered on the dock mostly from nearby and Eastsound--don't remember if the ship went into Deer Harbor, too? I think it went into Victoria in those days and Waldron, too.
      Great excitement; after the ship was tied up, jolly, happy, Santa climbed onto the dock, and the children clustered around him. He gave out candy and heard the children tell what they wanted for Christmas. The parents and friends too enjoyed this time together. Then, it was time for him to go, and with a whistle for 'all aboard' Santa waved goodbye, and the Christmas carols, and the ship headed for the next stop. The music and beautiful lighted ship gently faded away as parents and 'lil' ones headed for their cars and home. Oh, what a beautiful sight to see the ship.
      It was a wonderful experience for our children to enjoy, and for parents too. In those days there were few stores or gift shops on the island, and few bright lights.
      As years went by, the time of arrival of the Christmas ship varied, it came earlier and traveled further, and made more stops. What a wonderful thing for the Bellingham people to do, they brought such happiness.
      For some years, as the experience developed, through the guidance of Bus and Esther Sheehan at the store and Clyde and Dorothy Brown and the 'Stitch and Gossip Club', cookies and cocoa were served. A 'party' on the dock!!
      Those years were magical, and this reminiscing has brought our early day Christmas back to me."
Mary Schoen, 2009, Deer Harbor, San Juan Archipelago.
Mary and her husband Robert Schoen sailed CHANTEY to the San Juan Islands on their honeymoon in 1946, one year ahead of the Christmas Ship from Bellingham.