❖ SCHOONER COMMODORE ❖ Racing Against Leakage

SCHOONER COMMODORE (ex-Blaatind)
Photo taken on the Washington Coast when a tug was
attempting to get a line aboard during heavy weather.
AP Wire Photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

"A modern day counterpart of Mutiny on the Bounty was disclosed by a seaman who returned here after a tortuous 143-day voyage in a leaky four-masted schooner with a captain who was partially 'out of his head' with a brain tumor.
      The scene of the marine drama was aboard the once proud schooner COMMODORE, famed for her cross-Pacific races. Her latest race was against leakage, malnutrition and death. The course was the length of the Pacific and breadth of the Atlantic. 
      James Gallagher of Seattle related in a Post-Intelligencer interview how the crew ate chicken feed for mush, a steady diet of salt meats and a 'can of peas or corn between 14 men every day, but that was about all.'
      In two regards, the saga of the trip from Puget Sound to Durban, South Africa, paralleled the famous story of Mutiny on the Bounty. Pitcairn Island figured in both dramas. The COMMODORE put in there and picked up a few chickens to vary the fare.
      The crew took over from the captain before reaching Cape Horn, Gallagher said, after the mate called for a vote of the crew members because of the skipper's strange actions. He said a military court later cleared the crew of mutiny charges made by the captain.
      'We kept him in his cabin for a month,' the seaman related. 'The captain was a good seaman, but he went out of his head.'
      The schooner 'began leaking a couple of weeks before we rounded Cape Horn,' Gallagher said, 'and after that we stood up to the hips in water in her hold and pumped by hand, day and night. The captain got sick at about the same time. We didn't know what was the matter then but later, when he died in Durban, the doctor said he had a brain tumor.'
      Gallagher said he left Africa in February while the crew members' suit for most of their pay was still pending. The COMMODORE had been sold at auction for $65,000."
 Text from The Spokane Daily Chronicle, 20 April 1943.

❖ TRANSPAC HAS THE FIRST START TODAY ❖ MONDAY 13 JULY

Schooner Martha
Photo by Louellen McCoy, Orcas Island, WA.

Have a safe trip everyone. 
GO MARTHA, Port Townsend, WA!
Team photo can be seen on their own site
Here is the official YellowBrick tracker site for 2015 (6 hours behind real time).

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TRANSPAC RACE
Swimming in the ocean for thirty hours;

JULY 1951

Yacht L'APACHE crew member Ted Sierks, 
being hauled by a line to the rescue ship, 
USS DOUGLAS A. MUNRO
Press photo from the archives of the S.P.H.S.

The alert sailors who first spotted Ted Sierks
in the rough sea and made his rescue possible;
 Sierks waves greeting as the destroyer escort 
MUNRO docks at Honolulu Harbor. 
L-R: Rene Cortex of Texas, 
Transpac sailor, Ted Sierks, and 
Ronnie Peoples of Jonesboro, AK.
Press photo from the archives of S.P.H.S.

Ted Sierks, age 40 greeted by his
mother Alma Overholt after stepping off
a plane in Burbank, CA.
Trans-Pac survivor 1951.

TransPac

July 1949

Part of the fleet of 25 boats crossing the starting line
at the outer entrance to the Los Angeles Harbor
for the 3,000 miles race to Honolulu. 
WESTWARD HO, from Orcas Island, WA was 
a participant in this race.
Largest boat in the race is the
96-ft schooner MORNING STAR, lower left. 
Acme telephoto from the archives of the S.P.H.S.

❖ 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.

❖ 4th of JULY ❖ 1895

Postcard inscribed by the highly regarded
Capt. Sam Barlow, born into one of the earliest families 

on Lopez Island.
Sent to Mary Hudson, of a homestead family 

farming along Harney Channel, Shaw Island.

Mary fell in love with Capt. Robert Griswold westward 
along the coast in Blind Bay. Mailed 1910.

Recalling the 4th of July 1895

"I tell the story as it was related to me, by my sister Mrs. E. W. Harrison, who was one of those present. The Mt. Constitution 'switchback road' was made entirely by donated labor, and was a tremendous undertaking, considering the difficulties involved.
      About 35 people attended the picnic, few of them now living on the Island [Orcas.] It was a very rainy day, but in spite of that fact, the start was made about 9 am. There were two teams, one belonging to Eb Harrison, and another consisting of a bull and a horse tied up together, belonging to Dr. Hilton.
      The women and children were in the wagons, together with an organ for there was to be a dance; numerous baskets of lunch and a big freezer of ice cream. The bull and the horse went bravely for a time, but finally became stuck in the mud, and the other team came to the rescue and pulled them out. It must be remembered that this road had just been completed; it was therefore soft and the rain descending steadily did not help matters at all. The summit was finally reached, a fire made, and a few dispirited attempts made at dancing in the 'pavilion,' that was a big-framed structure, then in existence. The lunch was served under the friendly roof, the picnickers visiting the bonfire to thaw out between bites of ice cream. A tent had been erected for the babies and it was pretty well filled. Everybody shivered––the babies cried––and Mollie Harrison was said to be the only cheerful one present. She was four years-old and gave a recitation as follows:
            'Mamma had a chicken,
             Its feathers were white as snow
             Along came a Methodist preacher
             And the chicken had to go!'

Above the clouds that dim the blue,
Early Mt. Constitution, Orcas Island, WA.
click to enlarge.

      After the chronicle of this sad event, the horses becoming cold and restless, it was decided that the celebration was over and the return trip was made in much shorter time than the previous one.
      But the road was made, and the picnic celebrating its completion was a fact, and succeeding generations trailing over it probably have little idea of what it meant in those times to project and carry out such an undertaking."
Agnes B. Harrison; Friday Harbor Journal, 5 May 1932.
      To read more about Dr. Agnes Harrison of Eastsound, WA, here is a Link
      

❖ CANOES AT COUPEVILLE (Updated)

Canoe Races in Fifth Annual Water Festival
Coupeville, Wa. August 1934.
Eleven paddlers from Saanich, BC
were winners this year.
Original photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People HIstorical Society©

Long wooden canoes
with seventy-seven natives
Summer 1939
Original photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

"Bronzed backs bending to their work, over seventy-five paddlers set out in seven war canoes on a gruelling three and one half mile race up and down Penn Cove, during Coupeville's Indian Water Festival and International War Canoe Races, fighting for top rung in the ladder of sport their Indian forefathers practiced by the hour when not hunting or fishing.
      Despite the handicap of a ferry strike that reduced water transportation almost to nothing, the Island city was host to thousands of visitors who drove over the Deception Pass Bridge at the northern end of the island to see the program that included parades, Indian games, dances and canoe races with people from twenty tribes, band concerts, street dances and carnival attractions that transformed the main street into a gay midway."
The Seattle Times 20 August 1939