❖ Scratching the Beach with the MARTIN D

MARTIN D 
Working in Alaska.
Photo courtesy of Keith Sternberg.

"My philosophy is to forge ahead whatever the state of the tide. Perhaps this is derived from my log towing days. 

      Sometimes we scratched along the beach, as close as we dared, to avoid the current and might get into a back eddy. I was in log-towing tugs in Alaska and Puget Sound. Samson Tug & Barge in Sitka towed pulp logs to the mill at Sitka and saw logs to a mill in Wrangell. The sawlog tows were Sitka spruce and Alaska yellow cedar. These were made up as very large tows, 72 sections, with all five of the company tugs pulling. 

      Nearing Petersburg the tow was broken up into small units and towed through Wrangell Narrows. The tug in which I was mate, was the MARTIN D, originally a US Army ST built during WWII. She had a direct-reversible Busch-Sulzer diesel engine which turned 380 rpm at full-ahead. 

Mate Keith Sternberg
MARTIN D,
Alaska.
Photo courtesy of Keith Sternberg.

On the MARTIN D, I stood the midnight to 6 A.M. watch alone, usually
towing logs at about one knot. With the pilothouse stool under a
spoke of the wheel she would hold course fairly well while I went
below to oil the engine's rocker arms every two hours and have a look
around the engine room."

Submitted by Keith Sternberg, Lopez Island, WA.

Please see a reader's comment below.

❖ Crossing the Flats to Utsalady ❖

THE BLACK PRINCE

One June morning just at daylight, the Black Prince was crossing the flats from the South Fork of the Skagit River to Utsalady with a tow. It was a very foggy morning. You would call it a complete saturation. A cold Northeast breeze blew down off the snow-covered ridges of the Cascades. Bill was out on the forward deck taking soundings and calling them to the wheelhouse. It was a very shallow, and sounding pole Bill used was marked in feet. Bill shoved his pole to the bottom. He read the markings at the edge of the water and shouted the footings to the bridge. He did it again and again, shouting the depths as the bottom changed. Six-seven-eight!
      It's a cold, wet job-a'standing and a'hollering. Bille felt his a useless task. Why stay out in the cold and take soundings! The water depth was about the same, varying only by a few inches or, at most, a foot-all the way across the flats. So Bill decked inside by the boiler, relishing the warmth. Every few minutes he stuck his head outside and yelled, "Six feet, seven feet," and to himself, he muttered, "shucks, who'll know the difference!"
      How could he know that the boat hit a sand bar, that it was stuck fast a the very moment he was a'yelling out the window, "Six, seven, eight!"
      But he had a rude awakening. It came in the form of the skipper's foot––right in the posterior portion of his anatomy––with such force that it propelled Bill right over the side into a very cold and wet four feet of water.
      They dragged him aboard shivering! And Bill felt a much wiser boy and told himself he'd learned a lesson as the changed his clammy clothes. He came on deck to find a fast falling tide leaving the boat high and dry. But that wasn't the only thing high! The pitch of the captain's voice as he scolded Bill was something awful. The language he used would have made the sun hide its face in shame if it had been shining.
      Hours later the tide started back. And they told Bill to make a mark someplace outside so that the rise of the incoming tide could be measured. Bill did it carefully. And it wasn't more than an hour or so before the captain yelled to Bill to run and see how much the tide had raised since he had made the mark. Bill ran and came back, "It ain't raised none, sir," he said.
      A half-hour later the captain sent him to look again. Bill reported once more that the tide hadn't raised an inch.
      This time the captain took him by the arm. "Bill, show me this mark you've made."
      "Yes, sir," and Bill pointed very proudly to the white chalk mark drawn on the side of the hull about two inches above the waterline.

Captain M.F. Galligan
Gig Harbor, WA. 
Piling Busters Yearbook 1951 
Stories of Towboating by Towboat Men
Mitchell Publications, Seattle, WA.

❖ The ARTHUR FOSS ❖ with Dick Stokke 1984

ARTHUR FOSS (ex-WALLOWA)
111.6' x 23.9' x 11.61'
225 G.t. 127 N.t.
Built in 1889
Designer: David Stephenson
by Willamette Iron and Steel Works,
for Oregon Railway and Navigation Co.
Photographer and date unknown.

The Storied Past and Second Life of the Grandaddy of Puget Sound Tugboats

by Dick Stokke
for Puget Sound Enetai August 23-September 6 1984 p. 14

"The classic tug ARTHUR FOSS has once again set out to sea –– this time [1984] on a tough 2,000-mile odyssey to Alaska. At her age, any other craft would be beached and displayed as a flowerpot or rotting forgotten in the mud somewhere, but, after a few false near-starts, this tug sailed from Seattle on August 19, manned by a determined crew of volunteers from Northwest Seaport, the museum that has owned her since 1970. The ARTHUR FOSS will carry official greetings and gifts from Washington's Governor Spellman to Alaska's Governor Sheffield on the occasion of Alaska's first quarter century of statehood.
      This voyage will require 52 separate navigational charts, $3,000 in special insurance, several thousand gallons of fuel, thousands of dollars worth of purchased, begged, or donated labor and equipment, and the love, devotion, and prayers of hundreds of friends left behind and along the way. The rugged old sea-scrapper deserves all this attention –– and more. In the tradition of the legendary Foss Launch and Tugboat Co and its Tugboat Annie, the ARTHUR FOSS has spanned the ages of sail, steam, and diesel, two world wars, and unaccounted good times and bad. Her succeeding crews have passed along the flame of pride and devotion and it burns just as brightly today –– probably even brighter.

1889 Tug ARTHUR FOSS
Location: Historic Ships Wharf
Lake Union Park, King County, WA.
Photo by Joe Mabel
12 Sept. 2007.
With permission.

      Northwest Seaport also owns and tries to care for the 1904 lightship RELIEF, the lumber schooner WAWONA, and the old steam ferry SAN MATEO. But for the countless volunteers who have restored her and kept her chugging, the ARTHUR FOSS is the apple of maritime preservation –– and a brighter spot in the group's often frustrated efforts at it.
      The tug was built in 1889 as the WALLOWA by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Co with a steam engine made in San Francisco. She was listed by Lloyd's Register in 1904 as having twin cylinders, 122-horsepower, 24" bore, a 36" stroke, and a top boiler pressure of 125 pounds. For a decade she towed sailings over the treacherous Columbia bar. The [Yukon] gold rush saw her towing the steamer YOSEMITE from Puget Sound to the Klondike. She was driven ashore in a winter storm towing a barge south from Skagway, survived to carry mail between Juneau, Haines, and Skagway in 1900, and in 1903 began towing logs in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca from such points as Port Crescent and Port Angeles. In April 1918 she towed the crack stern wheeler BAILEY GATZERT into Puget Sound, where BAILEY entered the Seattle-Bremerton run as the first auto carrier in the area.
       The WALLOWA lost her deckhouse and machinery and machinery in a fire in 1927 and was rebuilt by Todd Shipyards. In January 1929 she joined the huge Foss Launch and Tug fleet and was later renamed the ARTHUR FOSS after the oldest of three sons of Thea and Andrew Foss, the company's founders.
      In 1933 the ARTHUR 'went Hollywood' for MGM. After a cosmetic job to make her uglier, she became the NARCISSUS in the movie Tugboat Annie with a script based on the Norman Reilly Raine series in the Saturday Evening Post. During filming the ARTHUR/NARCISSUS was accidentally rammed into a passing ferry, the footage of the crash was written into the movie while the tug spent two days in the repair yard at MGM's expense.

      After the ARTHUR's movie career, Foss replaced her 1904-vintage steam engine with a new 700-HP, six-cylinder, direct-reversing (no gearbox) diesel made by Seattle's Washington Iron Works. Over 250 of these stalwart motors are still in use, and Washington Iron still gets requests for parts and manuals. This same engine will carry the ARTHUR FOSS to Juneau and back this summer; chief engineer Allan Rees says, 'She still has a musical tone, cruises at 200 RPM, and at hull speed revolves slower than an auto engine at idle.'
      The ARTHUR FOSS survived another fire in 1937 while storm-bound in Pt. Townsend’s Discovery Bay with a tow of logs. The blaze was so stubborn she was finally pumped full of water, then towed to Lake Union Drydock for a $20,000 repair job. She next headed for the South Pacific on military contract duty in 1940. She was towing two barges 12 hours out of Wake Island for Oahu when the Japanese clobbered Pearl Harbor. Capt. Oscar Rolstad ignored military orders to cut loose his barges and run for safety, saying his speed without them would still be only about nine knots. Crewmen hung over the side to daub out the green and white Foss colors with a dingy gray, and the ARTHUR made it safely back to Hawaii. Rolstad was first chastised, then commended for his gumption.
      The Navy kept the ARTHUR until 1947 when she returned to towing logs out of Port Angeles until she was replaced in 1966 by a new Foss 'super tug.' Retirement finally came in 1966 and donation to Northwest Seaport in June 1970. Not until 1979 was the crew of volunteers formed to restore the old tug to operating condition, a herculean job finished in May 1981. ARTHUR raced that year in Olympia's Harbor Days annual tugboat race, unlimited ocean-going division, and did an astounding 11.6 knots over two miles from a dead stop. No one breathed a discouraging word when Crowley Maritime's working tug RETRIEVER, manned by a paid crew and 50 years younger, pulled ahead and won. The crowd went wild when the ARTHUR's old whistle gave by far the louder blast as she crossed the finish line.
      Among the countless repairs and refittings the ARTHUR needed was one especially nerve-wracking one: repitching her 1942 vintage propeller for high, more fuel-efficient gearing. Coolidge Propellor Co pulled off the repitching without destroying the aged, worn metal. Her stem bearing was replaced, her huge 10-inch shaft remachined, her rudder rebuilt, and her plank's butt ends recaulked.
      'She's tight and seaworthy,' avows one volunteer, Tom Parker of the Center for Wooden Boats. 'We're not doing this with our fingers crossed.' He admits to one remaining hurdle: 'We have money for fuel for the way up. Getting back is another problem. But things seem to solve themselves as they go.'
      Parker will not be aboard for the trip or Barney Bruce, the ARTHUR's usual skipper, he's relinquished the wheel to retired Foss master Guy Johnson. But Bruce will be close by, at the helm of the Sea Scouts' 42-yr old former Army T-boat, the PROPELLER. She will follow the ARTHUR up the coast with two dozen Portland and Olympia schoolkids aboard.
      Bruce notes an irony there. The PROPELLER could actually cruise day and night and make better time because she's classed as a working boat, while the FOSS is regarded by the insurance people as a yacht––if you can imagine that. She won't be covered unless she cruises by day only. I guess they're putting us on their books as a bunch of amateurs.'
      The yacht ROYAL PRINCESS, the cruise ship SUNDANCER, and all the other newer craft that have made sad headlines up in the same waters should have had such a crew of 'amateurs.' But then, none of them was the ARTHUR FOSS."
      The ARTHUR FOSS is suspected to be the oldest, operating wooden tug in the US.
Click here to see The ARTHUR at home in Seattle / YouTube

Some of her past crew:
Captains George A. Pease, R.E. Howes (first in service), E. Caine, Frank Harrington, Bowers, W.B. Sporman, Martin Guchee, Vince Miller, Lynn Davis, Arnold Tweter.
Engineers: A.F. Goodrich, John S. Kidd, John Melville.

❖ Captain Tarte Remembers ❖ 1930

Capt. Tarte's last paying work was on the DANIEL KERN  R to L:  DANIEL KERN,  RICHARD HOLYOKE,  PROSPER, PURITAN, PEERLESS,  and LEWIS II,  dated on verso 1914. DANIEL KERN (ex-MANZANITA) was built in 1879, in Norfolk, Virginia as a US Lighthouse tender. She came to the Pacific Coast in 1885. She was rebuilt for towing rock barges to the Columbia River jetty. In 1918 she was bought by WA. Tug & Barge. She had a compound (16,34 x 24) compound engine with steam @ 100 pounds pressure from a single-ended Scotch boiler, developing 300 HP. Bellingham Tug & Barge of B.L. Jones  purchased the steam tug in 1924.  She was burned for scrap at Richmond Beach, WA. in 1939. Photo from the archives of the  Saltwater People Historical Society "... he remembers Bellingham when it almost wasn’t. He watched our Sound cities grow from forests to forests of houses and skyscrapers. He has seen the baker’s dozen of folks who were here in the middle of the nineteenth century grow into hundreds of thousands of people.       He says to all the goers and comers on the Sound, Bellingham is known as the livliest town in the Northwest. Its incomparable Harbor is large enough for the whole fleet with a holding ground not to be excelled, and secure from winds except along its northern rim. Bellingham leads in business progressiveness, in resources. He says that just as fish and timber have boomed us hitherto, are still enriching us, so will minerals and oil boom and enrich us steadily down the decades.       The first money little Jim Tarte earned in America he got peeling bark off trees, selling it. The last money outside his little estate out on Lake Whatcom was earned as mate on the DANIEL KERN last summer towing logs from Clallam Bay. He pays a high compliment to the captain of the tug.       “Why that young fellow, Davis, who is captain of the KERN, is only 29 years old, but he knows more about his job than many an old pilot. He is one of the most proficient masters I ever saw. They tell me he is studying for his deepwater license. He’ll get it. He’s a live one.”       “But for that matter, the company for which he works is one of the livest concerns I ever knew. It started from scratch and in just a few years has built up the finest little fleet of big tugs on the Pacific. How they keep those boats so ship-shape I don’t know. The DANIEL KERN and all of them look as if they were just down from the dock all the time. It’s marvelous how it is done. Neat as a pin. A well managed company.”        My captain has shipped on some thirty-six boats during these sixty-five years, with seven dollars as his only bill of damage in the whole time. From deckhand, fireman, flunkey, he has risen to become mate, purser, pilot, master, captain, skipper of ships of unlimited tonnage. He has watched boats and me come and go until at last there are but a handful of the old salts whom he remembers from the old days.

Captain Charlie Basford,
fondly remembered by Capt. Tarte,
 aboard the
GOVERNOR ELISHA P. FERRY,
the first patrol vessel built for
the WA. State Dept of Fisheries.
(Later in her life she became a trap tender.)
"Capt. B," a highly regarded captain
in the PNW, who landed on
Shaw Island as an orphan
 in the 1800s to live with the old
whaling ship captain, C.C. Reed
and his wife on Blind Bay.
Photo courtesy of the Bruns/Stillman family. 

One of these is Capt Charlie Basford, who ran the BUCKEYE in the islands. Cap’n Basford began his sea life as a deckhand on the DESPATCH. He learned the island waters and their ways as few have known them, and never had an accident. My hero calls him one of the finest men, finest masters, who ever ran a boat.
      My captain says that he would like to get into a rowboat and traverse every mile of the routes he has taken in all of his boats. He would like to take that first fifty-mile row from Victoria to here (Bellingham) via Shaw Island. Would like to repeat that hazardous journey across the storm-swept Strait of Juan de Fuca and would like to follow every line of every route he has ever rowed, sailed, steamed, on these waters he loves tremendously.
      I think I have never spent more delightful sessions with anybody than these long evenings I have sat in Capt Tarte’s living room listening to him spin yarns. I am sorry they have ended. If there have been any mistakes in names or dates, blame my notes, and the speed with which I had to take them down. Capt Tarte’s memory is remarkable, his desire for accuracy is great."

Above text by June Burn. Puget Soundings. June Burn. May 1930. There are many other essays by June Burn on Saltwater People Log, reached by searching her name label or that of Puget Soundings.

Captain Jim Tarte and his tug BRICK can be seen on this Log HERE

❖ TUG TYEE TO CLALLAM ❖ With June Burn 1930

Clallam Bay 

What a mysteriously fascinating place is the waterfront at night! Lights twinkling on the wet blackness. Invisible men shouting, weird whistles going, shadowy figures moving about on the decks of boats, cigarettes blinking trains ringing bells up on the railroad tracks nearby.
      "All ready, Cap'n," a voice calls out. A signal is given. The little tug KETCHIKAN comes alongside, throws us a line, pulls our nose slowly around as if we were a stubborn old bull, heads us down-bay and we are off. It is 6 o'clock, Tuesday night, as we leave Citizen's Dock. 

      I am standing in the pilot house of the big tug TYEE, bound for Clallam Bay, which is away out yonder nearly to Cape Flattery, on the Olympic Peninsula. Two hours ago I hadn't the least notion that I'd be riding the swells of Fuca tonight, but Mr. Donovan said I might get to Clallam Bay by way of one of Mr. Barney Jones' tugboats, and Mr. Barney Jones* said that the TYEE was leaving tonight at 6 o'clock and Mr. Bert Butts, captain of the TYEE, said I might come along and so here I am.
      We'll stop down here and pick up a tow, the captain says, "see that red light over there? It is a storm warning. We'll likely have it rough in the Straits." But I don't mind, do you? I love to feel the waves or two come prancing across the bow. Nothing is finer than a well-behaved storm on a staunch small boat.
      Three men stand aft as we draw alongside six of the hundred-feet long, three-feet-thick boomsticks which are to be returned to the camps. One holds the looped end of a big wire cable in one hand and an ax in the other. Another wields a pikestaff. A third goes trotting off down to the far end of the floating logs as if they were an island and secure. The captain stands on deck to manipulate the searchlight for the three men who wrangle those stiff, clumsy logs about as if they had intelligence. The logs, I mean! In half an hour or less, we are off again, our "light tow" behind us, a dark reef awash with the surf of its own making.
      

Clallam Bay log boom yard
with unidentified tug and barge,
click to enlarge. 
Photo by Ellis from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

Save for the lights of boats and the glow of the dome of the sawdust burner, the edge of Bellingham is dark as we leave the town behind. But how bright the hills set out in twinkling rows of lights! What brave scallops those light-rimmed hills scoop out of a stormy sky! I am thinking of you there, reading by the lights, or working, or dancing, or maybe watching your sick beside a light turned low.
       Almost before I know we have got out of the bay, Cypress Island rises close on the starboard bow, if that is proper seaman's language. Anyhow, there she is and a single light far down on the tail of her growing lighter as we thump off the knots, our noiseless steam engine shoving us along at a good clip. I wanted to see an engine whose only sound was this soft thump-a-thump. I had forgotten steam was such quiet power.
      And so I go below in the tow of Robert Blake Jr., first assistant engineer of the TYEE. Here, two great crankshafts go over and over in a curiously haphazard fashion as if they come very near missing the rhythm each time, but they never do. Up and down, slick, square metal bars they go, the slick round piston rode plunging up and down into the cylinder, where the steam is compressed, waiting to give power to them. That power turns the crankshafts which turn the great leisurely shaft running out to the back of the boat to turn the great hurrying propeller.
      Deeper down at the very bottom of the boat, four or six or maybe ten inches of hoary old boards separating them from the water under the boat, lies the two boilers. Oil burns whitely under the boilers to heat the water that makes the steam that runs the boat that––well, who did build it?
      TYEE means big chief and twenty years ago she was the most powerful tug on the Pacific Coast. The TYEE was built in 1884 at Port Ludlow, WA. In the early days, she piloted sailing vessels in and out of Seattle's harbor, sometimes bringing in three or four old square-rigged, dingy-winged birds at once, strung along one behind the other.
      She is 141-ft long this sturdy, low-slung drawer of burdens, with a gross tonnage of 316. The Bellingham Tug and Barge Co bought her in 1925 and Capt Butts has run her for over two years, losing nary a crib of logs in all that time in the storms he must have weathered. Every once in a while, he says, that if he only had a million dollars he would ditch the old girl, though, or at least take a two weeks' layoff. But then you never can believe what a boatman tells you when he is looking unusually serious.
Above text––Puget Soundings by author June Burn. 11 Feb. 1930.

1944: "Barney" Jones, founder and president of Bellingham Tug and Barge Co died in 1944. At the time of his death, his firm operated a fleet of 10 steam, diesel, and gasoline tugs and a number of scows and barges.
      *He left a portion of his stock in the company to 14 veteran employees.
H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Newell, Gordon editor. Superior Pub.

❖ TUG GOLIAH ❖

The below undated original photos are from one collection just archived from descendants of mariner, Harry D. Wilkins, who worked on the GOLIAH. No story came with the images other than a few short inscriptions on the back, but included below are some GOLIAH words from the historian/author Gordon Newell.  

GOLIAH
ON 204800
414 G.t./221 N.t.
500 Ind. HP.
Owned at this time by Puget Sound Tug Boat Company.

Tug HERCULES
ON 204801
414 G.t./ 221 N.t.
500 Ind. HP.
Built 1907, Camden, N.J.
According to Pacific Tugboats,
 she is GOLIAH'S sister ship who
towed her around Cape Horn from the east coast to CA.

"In many ways, Puget Sound's second GOLIAH was typical of the Northwest's big deep-water steam tugs, both in appearance and in the work she did. Built in 1907 by John Dialogue of Camden, N.J., the GOLIAH and her sister tug, HERCULES, were massive, powerful steel steamers, 151' long, 27.1' beam and 15.2' depth, with a speed of better than 13 knots.
      The two boats came to the West Coast, via Cape Horn, the HERCULES towing the GOLIAH, which was loaded with extra fuel for the HERCULES' boilers. In San Francisco they went to work for the Shipowners' and Merchants Tugboat Co, but in 1909 the Puget Sound Tug Boat Co sent Capt. Buck Bailey and port engineer J.F. Primrose to the Bay to have a look at the GOLIAH. Their report was enthusiastic and the PSCo bought her. Capt. T.H. Cann piloted her north from San Fran.
      Shortly after WW I, the GOLIAH returned to the East Coast, having been sold as the sailing-ship trade of the PSTBC diminished. During the years she operated in the Northwest she had the comfortable reputation of a 'lucky ship.' This in spite of the many hazardous exploits in which she engaged.
      In 1916, skippered by Capt. T. Nielsen, the GOLIAH snatched the disabled Norwegian freighter NIELS NIELSEN from almost certain destruction on the lee shore of Vancouver Island, a feat which has been vividly described by R.H. "Skipper" Calkins, in his book High Tide (1952.)

Photo inscribed:
"Ship REUCE in tow of tug GOLIAH,
bound for Chignik, AK.
A slight list to starboard;
in smooth water after 3 days of pounding.
If there is such thing as a 'Hoo-doo Ship',
this is it."
ON 110498
1,924 G.t./ 1,601 N.t. 
Built 1881 in Kennebunk, ME.

      One of the GOLIAH's specialties was the towing of big Cape Horn windjammers up the coast when they had a deadline charter to meet on the Sound. In January of 1914, the GOLIAH set a new speed record for herself by towing the big American square-rigged ship ARYAN from the Golden Gate to Victoria in 89 hours and 30 minutes. The ARYAN, last wooden square-rigger built in America, was a heavy-hulled cargo carrier due to load nearly two million feet of timber for south Africa, and tugboat men agreed that her fast trip north was quite an accomplishment, even for the GOLIAH.

SEYMOUR NARROWS, B.C. 
Text on verso from this Wilkins collection:
"A more treacherous body
of water does not exist."
These photos were taken before Ripple Rock was
successfully drilled and blasted with dynamite in 1958.
Original photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

      In June of the same year the GOLIAH set a new Alaska towing record, beating the one she had set two years earlier. Towing the barge JAMES DRUMMOND northbound and the barge ST. JAMES southbound, she completed the round trip between Seattle and Gypsum, AK.––1,900 miles––in 10 days and 12 hours. 

GYPSUM, Chichagof Island, near Iyoukeen Cove, AK.
A destination for part of GOLIAH'S work, as mentioned
in this piece by author Gordon Newell.
From the GOLIAH photo collection from the family of
mariner Harry D. Wilkins.
Original, undated photos from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

Both barges were loaded to capacity, but in their younger days they had been noted clipper ships, their fine-lined hulls helping the powerful GOLIAH to set another towing record.      
      In October 1910, GOLIAH ran into bad luck while engaged in towing a big barge, with tragic results. At the time the tug was hauling rock from Waldron Island, in the San Juans, to Grays Harbor, where it was used in the construction of the jetties at Westport. A fleet of nine seagoing barges was used to transport the rock, all of them tripped-down sailing ships like the PALMYRA, BIG BONANZA, CORONDOLET, JAMES DRUMMOND, and ST. JAMES, all of the staunch and seaworthy, and all of well over a thousand tons register. The smallest of the fleet was the ex-schooner WALLACUT, built at Portland, OR, in 1898, and rated at 798 gross tons. This was the barge that GOLIAH was towing to Grays Harbor. The story of what happened is contained in a shipping bulletin datelined Port Townsend, 5 Oct. 1910:

      "The loss at sea of Andrew Henderson, aged 24, and Hans Christensen, aged 25, from the rock barge WALLACUT is the latest of the long list of casualties due to the gale in the North Pacific Sunday. The men were swept from the barge while it was in tow of the tug GOLIAH at six o'clock in the morning off Destruction Island, while the craft, deep-laden with stone for Grays Harbor jetty work, was contending against a sea so furious it seemed almost certain to cost the lives of the five men constituting the barge's crew.
      A report of the tragedy was brought here by Capt. John Jarman, master of the barge, whose command was forced to return to Neah Bay after vainly trying for 30 hours to cross the bar into Grays Harbor.
      A point near Grays Harbor Bar was eventually reached, the barge leaking badly, and under weather conditions that prevented making an effort to pass into Aberdeen. With this plan frustrated, the tug turned for a return course to the Sound. While Henderson was about to relieve Christensen at the wheel, a wave more furious than any of the others that had threatened to send the barge to the bottom, broke in a big curling comber over the weather rail, sending both men clear of the ship and into the sea. The accident was witnessed by Capt. Jarman and his two other sailors, but no aid could be given. 
      Capt. Jarman is a veteran on the North Pacific and describes the storm through which he passed as the most severe experienced in these waters."

      Capt. Buck Bailey, who was skipper of the GOLIAH that trip, was noted for laughing in the teeth of the North Pacific when it was in its worst moods, frequently taking whatever big PSTBC craft he was piloting into danger which kept all other deep-sea towboats safe at anchor. If he mis-calculated that time, at the cost of two lives, he made it up many times over in daring rescue operations which made him famous the whole length of the Pacific Coast. 
      At the termination of the Waldron Island rock-towing contract, the GOLIAH steamed down the coast to take her station off the Columbia River mouth. 

CURZON
From the GOLIAH collection.
Possibly preparing for a pilot from the GOLIAH,
when the big tug was stationed off the Columbia Bar.
Undated original from the S.P.H.S.©

The Puget Sound Co. had decided to set up a pilotage and towing service there in opposition to the established bar tugs. The GOLIAH, with ample accommodations and oil tanks capable of stowing a month's supply of fuel, was well designed for such service, and she spent most of her time cruising off the lightship day and night, with her bar pilots aboard." Pacific Tugboats. Newell, Gordon. Superior Publishing. Pg 116-119.

Aboard the tug GOLIAH.
Unidentified mariner.
If you can identify this man, please let us know his name
for our history files.
Original photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

❖ MATE'S TRICK on Tug PHILLIP FOSS ❖

Port Townsend, WA.

"In that nebulous period referred to by tow boat men as 'Now when I was in the ––,' there was a small tow boat leaving Pt. Townsend for Pt. Angeles with an oil barge. She had laid in, waiting for the ebb and the westerly to go down and, as it happens, favorable tides occur at midnight, just as the mate goes on watch.
      In short order she was underway, the towline was out and things were made shipshape.
      The skipper took her clear of Point Wilson, dusting the compass at intervals to clear the dust and fog from its surface. After 4 hours in Pt. Townsend things get a little hazy sometimes. The skipper turned to the mate with a smile. 'Do you know your way? When were you here last?'
      The mate said, 'Oh I s'pose so but it's been about 5 years ago.'
      'Well then I'll give you all the dope. Do you see that flashing light off the Port? That must be a new light on Middle Pt. buoy. Things look sort of fuzzy out so I don't think we can see Dungeness Light. The course is West 1/2 North or West by North or something,––I ain't sure. Oh Hell, that beer makes me sleepy. See you in the morning.'
      The mate settled down to work. He decided the flashing light was Dungeness after all so with a new course laid out he spent the next 6 hours steering, oiling valves, fixing the bilge pump, drinking coffee and thinking what a stinker the Old Man was. He could have brought back at least one beer.
      The watch passed smoothly and just off Ediz Hook, he took in most of the tow line so they would have time to pump enough air to juggle with in the harbor. A few minutes later as the mate was going down to get the Old Man out of the sack, dark thoughts crossed his mind. In fact they grew darker with each step.
      He shook the skipper awake and said, 'Hey Cap, this place don't look quite right.'
      The Old Man muttered, 'S'matter?'
      'Well, when you come into the harbor, is there a stone breakwater on the starboard side?' The Old Man, still in a big fog, just grunted so the mate added, 'It looks like a Blackball dock on the port side, and the C.P.R. dock on the starboard. Up ahead there's a big bulkhead with a big gray building that looks like a hotel and besides there's streetcars running in front of it. Do they have streetcars in Pt. Angeles? I haven't been here for 15 years but it don't look quite right somehow.'
      The skipper, becoming more awake as he listened to the mate's story, began to get a wild look in his eyes and growled, 'what did you say? Tell me that again.'
      The mate willingly complied but before he could finish the Old Man staggered to his feet and yelled 'C.P.R! Hotel! Breakwater! Streetcars! Oh my God! We're in Victoria and we didn't clear customs. What course did I give you?' With a leap he made for the wheel house.
      When the mate got topside the skipper was leaning on the wheel staring from side to side and rubbing his eyes. Then it dawned on him that he was safe in Pt. Angeles and not Victoria. He rested his head on the control stand, heaved a great sigh and moaned, 'Don't ever do that to me again––I couldn't stand it.
      And now, children, this nasty old skipper became a nice skipper and was always good to his mates ever after. Except that he had a deckhand named Boliver, but that's another story."
Source of text: Victoria Episode by Capt. H.M. Pixley. Piling Busters, Stories of Towboating by Towboat Men. Mitchell Publication, Inc. Seattle. 1951. 
In a later post for the lighter side of the marine world, we will share the background of the Piling Busters Association as written by historian Gordon Newell.

❖ TENDER-TUG BERMUDA ❖

BERMUDA (center)
Showing off her lovely sheer,
location and date of photo unknown.
This image was kindly shared by 
Captain Lawrence Lowell "Larry" Crawford (1917-2011)
 a cousin to the Fowler clan,
 who grew up playing on the shores of Shaw Island.

The wooden cannery tender/tug BERMUDA was built at Hoffman Cove, Shaw Island, in 1908-1909, by boatbuilder Delbert E. Hoffman, who came to the San Juan Islands in the 1880s. The vessel was built for three island brothers, E.B. "Bert", Jr., F.E. "Gene," and William Fowler. 
      Local historians have not heard of BERMUDA ever leaving her home waters of the northwest.
      From the Master Carpenter's Certificate (MCC) filed with the federal government when the vessel owner chooses to register the new craft as a documented vessel, we learn when, where, and for whom BERMUDA was built. In an interview with one of Gene's sons, Captain Earl Fowler, late into his long life, it appeared easy for him to recollect the BERMUDA and the days his family was associated with her operation. For three commercial fishing seasons they hauled salmon for Apex Fish Cannery, owned and operated by cousin Lee Wakefield, in Anacortes, WA.
      

Tug BERMUDA and ship DOUAUMONT
Undated photo purchased from the PSMHS.
Click to enlarge.

BERMUDA was later sold to a bridge and dredging company that built bridges and engineered deep water dredging around the Sound. Several years later she was re-engined, giving up her 50-HP Troyer-Fox. She went out of registry sometime between the years 1938 and 1941. Earl Fowler, who was a lad of six when she was launched, remembers seeing her laying in Pt. Townsend when he was working on another Hoffman built tug, the EDNA.
      

BERMUDA
ON 206177
scan from an original photo
from the George Stillman family.

      Ninety years after launching, the above vintage photo of BERMUDA underway in local waters, showed up in the photo album of Earl's school buddy, George Stillman. Stillman was another Shaw Island native who "took to the boats," as a young man educated at the one room grade school.
      Thank you to Ivaloe Stillman Meyers and sister Mary Ellen Stillman Carpenter, descendants of pioneer families of Shaw Island, for sharing their knowledge of island history.
      These three images are the only known photos of the island-built BERMUDA. There are no known photos of the Hoffman yard on the south side of Shaw Island. Do you know of one? Could be a prize awarded.

1895: 
We know Hoffman was building as early as 1895 when he had just completed six new 22-ft  x 7.5-ft boats for Island Packing Co of Friday Harbor. They were described in the Islander  newspaper as "heavy strip-built with oak gunnels and washboards with a small mainsail only. They row very easily for a boat that size & run like a deer, under canvas, in a light breeze."

1901:
Hoffman built a tug, ARTHUR G. for Joseph S. Groll by commuting across the channel to Fisherman's Bay, Lopez Island during 1900, with launching the following February. Does anyone have a photo of this vessel??

BERMUDA
ON 206177
US Documentation:
47.15' x 11.8' x 4.7'
G.t. 14.70
N.t. 10
Launched with 50-HP Troyer-Fox gas engine.
Built during 1908 and 1909 by D.E. Hoffman (1870-1915,) Master Carpenter, [at Hoffman Cove,] Shaw WA.
Source of dimensions: MCC purchased from the National Archives, PNW, Seattle, WA. 

❖ STERNWHEELING ON THE SKAGIT ❖

BLACK PRINCE
ON 3866
1901-1956
On Dead Man's Slough above Sedro-Woolley 
with a tow for Bradsbury Logging Co. Top deck areCapt./Mrs. Charles W. Wright, son Vernon, Mrs. Bird, cook.
Main deck: L-R, F.M. Elwell, Frank Anderson, deck hands 
and Wesley Harbert, fireman.
Original photo from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

Though so many years had passed, nostalgic twinges gripped the writer, at times, as he seemed to hear the melodious whistle, faint and far away, of the old sternwheeler Black Prince as she boils up the Skagit with cool-headed Capt. Forrest Elwell at the wheel. 
      He can still hear people say, upon the sound of the whistle, "here comes the old Black Prince."
      Highlights of this historic steamer are contained in a letter received recently [1964] from Captain Elwell:

      "In the late summer of 1900, Capt. Charles Wright sold the City of Bothell and then the Snohomish and Skagit River Navigation Co was formed by Capt. Charles Wright, Capt. Charles Elwell, and Capt. Vic Pinkerton. It was then decided to build a boat for towing on the Snohomish and Skagit rivers.
      Capt. Elwell made the hull model and Bob Houston was given the job of building the Black Prince."
      Work was started in the winter of 1900, at the Ferry Baker Mill on the Snohomish River where the Canyon Mill stands today.
      Dimensions of the Black Prince were: Hull, 93-ft, LOA, 112-ft, 19-ft B, depth of hold, 4.6-ft, 150 G.T. according to the captain. When the hull and superstructure were completed, she was towed to Seattle by the tug Nellie Pearson, where a pair of 10 x 48 steam engines and a 100-HP brickyard boiler, 150 pounds working pressure were installed.
      "After completion, the Prince came back to Everett under her own power and then went to the Skagit to tow logs and piling," Elwell wrote.

BLACK PRINCE
photo postcard mailed 1912.
Photograph by Bayley
Click to enlarge.
from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

      The first crew on the Prince in 1901, was Capt. Elwell; Capt. (Engr.) Wright; engineer Mike Hertzberg; Capt. Pinkerton, Forrest Elwell, deckhand, and Wes Harbert, fireman.
      "In the late summer of 1901, she made a trip between Novelty and Tolt. In 1902, the Prince took a tow from Haskell Slough (near Monroe) to the mouth of the Snohomish River. 
      On 7 July 1903, loaded 50 tons of machinery at Mount Vernon  ✪ ✪ ✪ (click on "read more")

❖ TUGBOAT STUBBY born on Orcas Island in 1950 ❖

"Mississippi" Toler
With STUBBY working in the San Juan Islands,
Date between 1950 & 1982.
Courtesy of Deer Harbor's Cliff Thompson and 
Mark Freeman, Seattle.

STUBBY was built by boatbuilder, Chet North, in Deer Harbor, Orcas Island, for Bill "Mississippi" Toler. She was put in the lumber trade in the San Juan Islands as a boom boat in 1950. STUBBY had 1 1/8" fir planking covered with 3/4" Ironbark.
      In 1982 STUBBY was purchased by the Fremont Tugboat Company of Seattle. According to Wooden Boat magazine, she was renamed SPANNER and added to the company's growing fleet. SPANNER was recaulked, refastened and repowered with a 60-HP Gray Lugger, that turned a 22 x 21" propeller through a 3:1 reduction gear. A new house was installed. Designer for the rebuilding was Lewis B. Nasmyth, mechanical work was done by Bill Francis, and the shipwright was Steve Humphries.
      The tug was in dry storage in Anacortes, prior to her recent purchase and a survey revealed that no planking or frames had to be removed because of dry rot, although the rest of the vessel had deteriorated beyond repair. The 24-ft workboat joined five other tugs in the fleet of Fremont Tugboat Company.
Source of text data: Wooden Boat magazine, date of publishing unknown.

❖ A TRUE COURSE ❖

Tug NEMAH
ON 225166
Photo image from King County Snapshots,
University of WA Libraries. Photographer and date not listed.

"A few years ago I was the skipper on the tug NEMAH. My cousin came out here from Montana that summer and asked me for a job. We were in need of a deckhand so I gave him the job. I figured he couldn't be any worse than some of my previous so-called deck hands.
      We had just installed a new engine and were doing most of our towing from Olympia to Everett at the time. The first trip with our new deckhand I made him steer a lot of the time and when I gave him a course I gave it to him in degrees so he would understand what I was talking about.
      On our second trip out it was a nice evening but blacker than Satan. We were rounding Johnson Point when I gave him a course for Devil's Head. I was working down in the engine room and every so often I would come up and see how things were going. Everything okay, so back to the engine room.
      Either I was awfully busy or we were moving as fast as a short beer down a tall Swede (and that's fast) because the next time I looked out we were around Devil's Head and heading for Balch Pass.
      Now if you come around Devil's Head pretty wide you steer 32 degrees for the pass. I looked at the compass and this new deckhand was right on course. I asked him how he knew what course to steer. He replied that was easy, he got it off the chart. I looked at him in mouth-opened amazement. Finally I asked him to show me how he arrived at the course. I thought maybe my cousin had more on the ball than  had given him credit for.
      He taked down the chart table and takes the rules and lays it for Balch Pass. (At one time he had seen me use the rules but hadn't asked any questions so I hadn't told him anything.) It went right through the middle of a 32 fathom mark. There he says, is your course.
Words by Captain Walter (Yobby) Torgesen.
At the time of this writing for Piling Buster Yearbook 1951, Stories of Towboating by Towboat Men Torgersen was master of tug CROSMOR for Olympia Towing Co. Source: Library of the Saltwater People Historical Society.
NEMAH was a 120 HP Diesel built for Nemah Towboat Co of Raymond, WA. 
27 G.t. / 18 N.t.
49.9' x 15.2' x 5.4'
Home Port: Seattle in 1935.
US List of Merchant Vessels, published by the US Gov't lists building year as 1925 at Hoquiam, WA.
McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, Newell, G. editor, lists her date of building as 1929.

❖ VETERAN TUG MARTHA FOSS HEADED NORTH TO ALASKA ❖

Submitted by William B. Evans, 

the 8-year old seen in these photos.

Click to enlarge.

Letter (2003) from William B. Evans to webmaster.
Bill is related to the late Chief Engineer David Stitt, of Shaw Island, WA.
Bill was eight years old when he took this trip. His second trip the next year, was also on the well-known veteran, MARTHA FOSS, Capt. Stark, towing a log boom. Thanks for your contribution, Bill.