❖ HARNEY CHANNEL ❖

Happy Easter 2019
Coming from Harney Channel
Photograph courtesy of Lance Douglas,
Blakely Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.

❖ FIRST HOME IN 1950 ❖ ALOTOLA

ALOTOLA 
Skipper: Charles Frisbie.
Photographed in 1947 
Kenneth G. Ollar
The Brotchie Head start was 12:30 PM.
Original photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People Hist. Society©

The hungry Thirties had been hard on Northwest boat builders, but by 1935 things were definitely on the move again. Blanchard's yard had managed to keep their crew together by mass producing their popular 23-ft Knockabout. It became increasingly obvious that there was a market for a really capable sailing craft; one that not only had a fair turn of speed but one that could accommodate four or five persons for family cruising.
      Young Ben Seaborn was working as an apprentice in the yard at the time and spent all his spare moments and evenings sketching boats. From his father, he had inherited a natural gift for the development of sweet lined hulls for sail craft of many types. One day, during the lunch hour when the crew was gathered, Norman Blanchard Sr asked a straightforward question––"Why can't we build a good looking family cruiser that will really sail?"
      Ben took up that challenger and went immediately to his drafting board. In a matter of days, he came back with the plans for a sleek racer-cruiser. The boat that was to become Tolo had been born. Without delay, the lines were laid down and within a month she began to take shape. Now enter Charlie Frisbie, insurance salesman supreme. Frisbie took one long look at the boat on her cradle in the big shed––and bought her on the spot. 
      She was christened TOLA, destined under Frisbie's skilled drive to lead the Pacific Northwest into a new era. For the next five years, Charlie Frisbie and TOLA were inseparable. If anyone on the PIYA circuit had ideas of winning, he knew that he had to beat TOLA first. During WW II, TOLA was sold, as her skipper enlisted in the US Navy. 
      By wars end, Charlie Frisbie was a full-fledged captain. When he mustered out, he bought a 57-foot Alden Schooner, sailing her up to Seattle from California. He promptly christened his new love ALOTOLA. ALOTOLA first appeared at Swiftsure in 1948*. The sweet Alden sheer of her gleaming black hull, offset by a truly romantic schooner rig, made her an immediate favourite of the photographers and fans.
      By 1950, Frisbie had grown tired of just being picturesque. He wanted to win some races. With this in mind, he converted ALOTOLA to a 7/8 rig sloop. With the rig came new life. 

OFF TO THE START for the 1950
SWIFTSURE RACE,
VICTORIA, BC.
ALOTOLA was first home.
Original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

ALOTOLA was first boat home in Swiftsure 1950. Garry Horder was one of the crew. He recalls this incredible event: "ALOTOLA's crew, with the exception of myself, was made up of Charlie's cronies who had served with him in the Navy. There were commanders, captains, and at least one rear admiral, and every one of them tried to run the ship! It was a circus, but one of the happiest trips I ever made."
      Charles Frisbie was very much a part of the yachting scene wherever yachts gathered in Puget Sound. With his infectious accent, irresistible laugh, and great voice, he endeared himself to all he met. Buoyant, fun-loving, a master raconteur, gentleman, and above all, a sailor man's sailor, he was unique. To sit with friends in the spacious cabin of ALOTOLA and watch the magic fingers of the skipper as he fashioned an intricately knotted garter for the leg of the prettiest girl aboard was one of life's rare moments. His salty wit, shining eyes, and flying fingers always left some happy girl with the souvenir of a lifetime, plus memories of ALOTOLA to last forever!
       In 1959 Charlie Frisbie and his wife Betsy set out for San Francisco with the ultimate goal of sailing ALOTOLA through Panama, across the Atlantic, for a year cruising the Mediterranean. At the end of this voyage, ALOTOLA was sold in Greece. She has been reported many times since by visiting yachtsmen and still in wonderful shape, busy chartering.
      When the Frisbies returned to Seattle, they attended several more Swiftsures as spectators in their Newport motor sailer. Through his two loves, TOLA and ALOTOLA, Charlie Frisbie gave much to yachting. His name will ever be deeply engraved in the legend that is forever––Swiftsure."
Humphrey Golby and Shirley Hewett. SWIFTSURE, the First Fifty Years. Victoria, B.C. Lightship Press Limited. 1980.

1947 Swiftsure
1.  OWENS CUTTER, Chas Ross, 1st overall.
2.  DORADE, Franklin Eddy, SYC
3.  MARUFFA, John Graham, SYC.
4.  SEAWEED, Gus Gratzer, SYC
5.  ALOTOLA, Charles Frisbie, SYC.
6.  CIRCE, Ray Cooke, SYC.
7.  ANGELICA, John Locke, SYC.

*The above finishers as listed in SWIFTSURE, the First Fifty Years. Humphrey Golby and Shirley Hewett. 1980.

Hello ALOTOLA og crew in Danmark.
      
   

❖ FISHING OFF THE GUT SCOW ❖

Friday Harbor Packing Co.
Original photo from the archives
of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

"In 1894, three men from Astoria, Oregon, Johnny Devlin, Fred Keen, and Phillip Cook, came to San Juan Island looking for a good place to start a fish cannery. They built the Friday Harbor Packing Co where the Cannery Condominiums are now, near the ferry landing. I started to work in the Friday Harbor fish cannery in the summer of 1942 when I was fifteen years old. By then its name had been changed to the Friday Harbor Canning Co.
      In those days you had to have a permit to work if you were under sixteen, and I got my permit from Howard Carter. My brother, Albert, started working at the cannery that same summer. He was only twelve at the time. Leith Wade, the superintendent of the cannery, told us that we were doing a man's work so he was going to pay us a man's wage. My mom also worked in the cannery that summer, in fact, my mom worked in canneries for 48 years.
      

A bounty of salmon
Friday Harbor Packing Company,
San Juan Island, WA.
original photo from the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

In the years when there were big fish runs, many people worked 15-18 hour days. Some even longer. Sometimes in the 1940s, there would be 100,000 fish on the floor when we came to work. The canneries, fish buyers, and purse seine boats in the northwest would all be swamped. We worked such long hours that some of the guys would not even bother to go home. They would just sleep for a couple of hours in the boiler room or on the salt sacks. When it was busy like that, people would come down to the cannery to work and help us out after their businesses closed for the day. I remember Blair King and Alfie Middleton doing that.
      In the 1930s, 40s, and the early 50s, the fishermen worked 6 days a week. They would come into the docks on Friday afternoon and would be gone by Saturday afternoon. There would be a fishermen dances at the Moose Hall every Friday night. The old Moose Hall is now the Front Street Cafe and Boardwalk Bookstore.
      In the late 1930s and early 40s, a lot of us kids would go fishing off of the gut scow. 

Young boys fishing off
the Gut Scow.
Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, WA.
original photo from
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

The gut scow was where the heads and insides of the cannery fish went. We caught a lot of herring, as there were hundreds feeding off the little pieces of fish and blood that ran off of the scow into the water. When the scow was full, the tug CHALLENGER towed it to Anacortes where the remains were ground up.
      In the 1950s we used to have freezer ships come to our cannery with frozen fish from Alaska. They would unload just so many fish into the cannery from the freezer ship so they could thaw overnight. The cannery had a water sprinkler system to thaw the fish, and then they would be canned along with what fresh fish were caught the day before in our local waters. We had to skin and bone the fish by hand, and then hand pack and can them in 1/2-pound glass jars and the jars sold for fifty cents. In 1953 Bud Murray and I started working on the Iron Chink, which is a machine that cuts the head off the fish, then cuts off the tails and fins, then slits the belly and brushes out the insides. At high speed, the Iron Chink would do 72 fish a minute."

Written by Tony Surina, Friday Harbor, San Juan Island. Courtesy of Terry Jackson, John Wade, and Wally Botsford, The Fishermen and the Fisheries of the San Juan Islands. Unknown date of publishing.

❖ THE MAIL BOAT WATER BABY (Updated.)

WATER BABY
ON 239444
46 documented feet OA
Built by Albert Jensen & Sons Shipyard, 
Friday Harbor, WA.
For Captain Clyde Welcome,
Launched March 1940.
Photo courtesy of Nourdine Jensen.

"Just turned 31 years of age, Clyde Welcome had done a remarkable job of making boyhood boating dreams turn into realities born March 18 1913, in Anacortes, WA, his favorite toys were boats whittled out of pickets pulled from a neighboring fence. Then his parents moved to Port Orchard, across the bay from the Puget Sound Navy Yard, and it was here that Clyde attended school and grew up under the frowning guns of the battleships, ever dreaming of a life on the rolling sea.
      Neptune's call was insistent and at the ripe old age of 17, Clyde stowed his textbooks, bid farewell to all his schoolmates, and joined the Navy. The following four years with Uncle Sam laid a substantial foundation for his future nautical career. In January 1934, he was paid off with an honorable discharge, and for the next year or so worked in logging camps around Bellingham. It was here that the love bug nipped him; he checked in one day with a round-turn around his neck (the colloquial term in lumber camps for getting hitched), married to Miss Dorothy Peterman.
      In 1936 the irresistible urge to be on the water again came to the lad and he purchased the LISTER, powered with a 16-horse gas engine, with which he engaged in a bit of fishing, towing, and now and then pinch-hitting for one of the mail-route boats.
      The boy was an intrepid navigator. With the responsibility of a mail contract of his own, he braved many a storm with his tiny craft just to get the mail through, while much larger boats were tied up at Shaw Island and Upright Head. The memorable storm of Dec. 12, 1939, ended the LISTER's career. She was laying at anchor near Tide Point on Cypress Island with no one aboard, and during the night slipped her mooring and was dashed to pieces at Point Lawrence.
      The loss of the LISTER was quite a blow to our happy-go-lucky mail carrier, but he was endowed with a lot of what it takes to stage a come-back and immediately made preparations for building the boat of his dreams, the WATER BABY. She was built in the Jensen yard at Friday Harbor and, says Clyde, "no trimmer or better-built craft ever slid down the ways of any yard." She is 48 feet overall and 12 feet beam, with honest construction throughout every inch of her.

The Master Carpenter's Certificate 
Signed by Albert Jensen.
Click image to enlarge.
Copy from the National Archives, PNW.

      The WATER BABY took to water in March 1940 and was towed to Seattle where a used 44-hp diesel engine was installed. With a great deal of well-earned pride, Capt. Welcome put his dream boat through all of the hoops on her shake-down trip; then with a brand-new boat and a brand-new 4-year mail contract with Uncle Sam, the lad headed back to the San Juan Islands to do his stuff.
      There was no busier or happier boy in that neck of the woods. He and his new boat kept the mail on the go in all kinds of weather. You will never see Clyde looking around for some flat water to run on, for he had his new 60-hp Atlas diesel installed in the WATER BABY and she ran like a scared wolf, cutting through the lumpy seas like a crash-boat on a mission. Clyde said the happiest moments of his life (outside of being home with his wife and kiddies) were when he was in the wheelhouse of his dream boat with the wild waves breaking over the top and the seabirds wheeling and screaming overhead.
      Scutt gives a salute to Captain Clyde Welcome and his WATER BABY. They were both aces –– the biggest pair in the deck."
Scuttle Butt Pete. PACIFIC MOTOR BOAT, April 1944.

According to the Friday Harbor Journal, Clyde Welcome and the WATER BABY held the mail contract until 1948.

1960: Sadly in February of this year four fishermen were lost from the fishing boat FEARLESS, loaded with king crab, and sunk in a 65-mile-per-hour gale. 
They were recovered by the Coast Guard. One of the men lost was Clyde Welcome. 

❖ STEAM TUG BUDS (updated) ❖

Six very important members of the club.
R-L: DANIEL KERN
RICHARD HOLYOKE
PROSPER
PURITAN
PEERLESS
LEWIS II
Click image to enlarge.
Undated original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"The steam tug RICHARD HOLYOKE, a product of a small shipyard situated near a steam sawmill at Seabeck on the east shore of Hood Canal, had the distinction of being one of the most versatile tugboats ever built in Kitsap County. 
      Built in the year 1877 under the supervision of Hiram Doncaster, a native of Nova Scotia, and ably assisted by William McCurdy at Port Townsend (whose descendants' firm would build the destroyer TURNER JOY) and a number of skilled shipwrights, the HOLYOKE, as she was oftentimes called in the news media, remained in continuous service for nearly seven decades. Originally owned by the principals of the Washington Mill Co of Seabeck, Washington Territory, RICHARD HOLYOKE was named in honor of Richard Holyoke, the resident manager of the mill, who later became the first president of the National Bank of Commerce in Seattle.
      

RICHARD HOLYOKE
ON 110335
Built 1877
Owned by Puget Sound Tug Boat Co
between 1891-1918.
Click image to enlarge.
Original photo from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society©

Of wooden construction, this 116-foot vessel, following installation of a 600 HP steam engine served as a multi-purpose tug operating out of San Francisco for six years. Her owners then brought her back to Puget Sound to utilize her specifically for towing sailing vessels to the Seabeck mill, situated near the present-day Seabeck store, from the open sea off Cape Flattery. HOLYOKE would return them to their ocean element once mill workers and the ships' crews loaded them with sawn lumber. Her first major change in ownership took place in 1891 when the RICHARD HOLYOKE became a unit of the Puget Sound Tug Boat Company, a combine of the steam tugs of four different large lumber companies, two of which were located in Kitsap County.      
      During this period of HOLYOKE's history, she gained the reputation of being probably the most versatile vessel in the PSTB Co fleet, which eventually grew to 12 vessels. As such, she towed a variety of sailing ships, [Yukon] Gold Rush steamers, barges, and log rafts as far north as St. Michael, Alaska and as far south as San Francisco over a period of 27 years. She served in this capacity until 1918, when PSTB Co sold her to the Port Blakely Mill Co during World War I. By the early 1920s, although she was nearing her half-century mark in operation, her owners, the Bellingham Tug and Barge Co kept her operating mainly on Puget Sound waters. These operations lasted until the later days of the Great Depression in the 1930s when HOLYOKE was deemed obsolete and was laid up in Bellingham as unprofitable to operate.
      In 1940 new owners salvaged her steam power plant and converted her into a towing barge. Then, with the eruption of World War II and the increasing need of freight tonnage, another new owner, recognizing that HOLYOKE was still structurally sound, deemed her suitable to use as an all-purpose freight boat and repowered her with a 300-hp diesel engine, eventually sending her as far north as Alaska. This service lasted until 1947."
The Kitsap Historian. Michael Jay Mjelde. Fall of 2012. p.4.

1904: The HOLYOKE took 36 survivors from the Clallam wreck after an all-night search for her in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Mate Edward D. Hickman dove into the water and rescued 15 Clallam passengers. He long suffered ill health after this exploit in the icy waters and died in 1928 at age 52.
1940: The historic steam tug RICHARD HOLYOKE, out of service for almost a decade was sold by Bellingham Tug and Barge to Metal Conservation Corp of Seattle. It was planned to rebuild the old vessel as a motor salvage ship powered by a 500 HP diesel and with the house moved aft to provide cargo space for 350 tons of salvage material to be recovered from vessels wrecked in Alaskan waters. The project was never completed and the sturdy, old hull, built by Doncaster and W.A. McCurdy at Seabeck in 1877 was abandoned in Lake Union. H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the PNW. Gordon Newell, editor. Seattle. Superior Publishing. 1966
Past officers/crew:
Chief engineer J. Ray Ludlow (18?-1897)
Capt. Michael BourkeCapt. Robert Hall with the attempt to tow the stricken CLALLAM to port.
Capt. C. E. Staggs
Chief Engineer Frank H. Newhall
Mate Edward D. Hickman