❖ Fish Boat SINBAD ❖ 1943 ❖

SINBAD
Built at Hix Bay, Shaw Island, WA, 1943.
Owner/builder Art "Unc" Hoffman.
Original 8" x 10" photo by Rod Peterson, 1971
from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

During the winters of the depressed 1930s, Shaw Islander Art Hoffman (1900-1981) was off work from his engineering job on the NEREID and other local cannery tenders. He and his younger brother Delbert (1903-1992) would leap at a chance to hop in Del's launch to motor out to neighboring island beaches, combing for logs. They saved them up for a tow to the Spencer brothers' sawmill on Blakely Island.

      "Unc", as he was commonly called, carved out a scale half model, the lumber was rafted home from Spencer's and the keel for SINBAD was laid near the shore of Hix Bay. The oak framed boat was 36' lod and 32' registered length. She was launched in 1943 on the site where Art's nephew, Henry, would later build his sawmill. The fishing vessel was built with the idea of trolling and was rigged for dragging for scallops for a few years. According to Henry, "Unc used to drag up a lot of different stuff. One day he was particularly thirsty and it's said, he pulled up the drag to find a nice cold bottle of beer.

Arthur "Unc" Hoffman 
Shaw Island, WA. 
Undated photo courtesy of the Hoffman family.

      Later when he bottom fished for cod and halibut he would take a load to Bellingham once a week. Later still, the boat was used for gillnetting."

      The first engine in the SINBAD was a Stuts Bearcat, a heavy 4-cylinder massive engine, a Pontiac Straight 8, converted. Later it was changed to a Gray '371' Jimmy Diesel.

       It was a pretty picture to see the skookum little SINBAD nestled in Hix Bay, right where she was born.

SNOOSE (ex-SINBAD)
She was sold out of the family
and is now located in the Seattle area.
Photo courtesy of Ron Lloyd.

❖ RACE TO ALASKA 2015 ❖

History in the making ☻ ☻ ☻

Here are some photos taken by Saltwater People on 3 June 2015, the afternoon before the 5:30 am start today from Port Townsend, WA.
      The crews are doing last minute adjustments to their rigging while talking to the on lookers milling around them. It was a friendly atmosphere.
      This writer did not awake at start time today; these photos are posted as the leaders are finishing the Port Townsend to Victoria leg. Some entrants will stop here, while others will be heading out for Alaska, trying to earn the $10,000 prize.
       For up to date tracking and information on the racers see R2AK.

Point Hudson, Port Townsend, WA.
all photos from here on 3 June 2015.

❖ REGARDLESS OF THE WEATHER ❖

Captain A. Ole Rindal, skipper of the CHIPPEWA, had the distinction of being one Norwegian sailor who didn't come from the old country in a square-rigged windjammer. He came as a passenger on the CHRISTIANIA FJORD, a 16,000-ton liner. He tried farming for a while, but if there is any sodium chloride in a man's blood (and what Norwegian's isn't a saturated solution?) the waters of Puget Sound will bring it out. No, in July 1918 he went to work for the Black Ball line and was with the company--a skipper since 1931––21 years service except for a 42-month interlude at Port Townsend Marine Hospital.
      Ole walked with a limp. Well, during his early days of quartermastering he had a habit of checking the pull of the wheel with his knee. This habit, coupled with a later accident, put him in drydock for three and a half years.
      Ole is affectionately remembered by Port Townsendites and all of these who have traveled back and forth between Edmonds-Seattle and the historic town that lies in the lee of Point Wilson. For a number of years, he skippered the INDIANAPOLIS, which vessel he lovingly referred to as his "pride and joy".
      I remember riding with Ole one stormy day. Admiralty Inlet was a smother of spume and spindrift. Wondering if the storm might get worse, I asked to see the glass. "Glass?" he echoed, puzzled, and then grinning, he added, "Oh, you mean the barometer, of course. Well, we haven't one because it wouldn't do us any good. You see, we've got to go regardless of the weather.
Seattle Star, 6 Jan. 1940.

❖ S.S. BUCKEYE Woodburning through the San Juans ❖

S.S. BUCKEYE,
ON 2474
Built in Seattle, 1890.
43.06 G.t./ 24.78 N.t. 
60.4' x 14.7' x 6.9'
Click to enlarge.
Inscribed verso: Capt. Charles Wallace, 1890.
Original 5" x 8" photo from the archives of S.P.H.S.©

This photo was taken before the BUCKEYE was restored at Newhall yard on Orcas, after the damage from the 1894 wreck (as described below.) The Cummins survival story, from an old scrapbook on loan from the late Robin Paterson did not arrive with this photo, but it seems a fine pairing.
      
      "The steamer BUCKEYE, on which I served many years ago, was a wood burner like all the boats on the Sound.
      On the morning of 4 September 1894, we left Friday Harbor with passengers and freight for Bellingham. Capt. Oscar Hahn was master, Capt. C.E. Bowden was mate, and I was fireman. We arrived at Anacortes where a stop for mail and passengers was made. As that was my home town, I went up on the dock and met some of my friends who gave me a handful of agates that later in the day were as good as money.
      We left Anacortes and about midway between Eliza Island and Wild Cat Cove an extra heavy sea hit us on the aft quarter. The boat went over on her port side and the cargo shifted to port, which caused her to fill with water. I was in the engine room with Mr. Snyder, the chief, and the only way to escape was to go hand over hand up the main steam pipe that came by a little open hatch on the upper deck with no covering on it. Up I went, water on my heels all the way up.
      When the chief and I got up on deck, the ship had a heavy list and the lower deck was under water. Some passengers were standing on the boat deck and the captain, mate and two of the passengers were trying to get the lifeboat free. At last it was in the water, and it was a case of jump at the right time. We got away from the wreck but water began to come into the boat –– keep reading below–––

❖ SWINOMISH TRIBE IN WW II (updated)

"It was a proud Andrew Joe, 
unofficial chief of the Swinomish tribe
of LaConner, Skagit County, WA.,
where he saw his 12-year old daughter, Vivian 
smash a bottle of champagne across the bow 
of a 204-ft Army barge built at the 
Sagstad Shipyard, and watched the barge 
slide with a splash into the Swinomish Slough."

      '

        Champagne, flowers––everything,' he says, 'great doings.'
The Indian of old, with his war whoops and war paint, is gone, but the Swinomish know their way around in wartime. The site of the little Sagstad Yard is on their reservation and was leased from them. Thirty of the 85-yard employees are Natives
        Thirty of the tribe's young men were in the armed forces, most of them in the Army. One gave his life for his country in Italy. The shipyard workers all buy bonds, under a payroll-deduction plan.
        The Swinomish attracted attention several years ago when their aged totem carver, Charles George, carved a totem pole for the reservation. In a place of honor near the top of the pole was the Great White Chief's President Roosevelt. George said the honor was by way of recognition of the Great White Chief's generosity in providing $16,000 in W. P. A. funds for recreational facilities.
        Andrew Joe, in addition to being a leader of the tribal community, is perhaps the only man in the world with a brother named Joe Joe. Joe Joe fishes and trucks fish...
        Andrew Joe, who is 52, said four tribes were contained and placed on the Swinomish reservation by the government.
        'It was supposed to be just a temporary reservation; that was back in the late 1870s, said Andrew. 

        The Swinomish leader is a great admirer of his father. 'He had a great spiritual gift. I remember when I was a boy and my father's brother-in-law was shot in the ankle with a shotgun while hunting. Two white doctors worked on him a long time, and they could get only one shot out of the wound.
        Then someone went for Doctor Joe. He put his mouth to the wound and sucked out every shot––15 of them––with one suck. This feat won 'Doctor' Joe the undying respect of the white physicians', Andrew Joe said.
The white workers in the shipyard speak well of their Native American co-workers.
'He's a darned good man,' one of them said of Garfield Day, Indian fastener in the yard.

Robert Charles, age 23 
Sagstad Shipyard planerman,
LaConner, WA. 1944
Original photo from the
archives of Saltwater People Hist. Soc.©

      

Many of the Natives have worked at Sagstad yard since it began operations late in 1941. One of those is Robert Charles, above."
Writer unknown. Published in The Seattle Times, September 1944.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.