❖ Monday Night Mosquitos ❖

The COLUMBIA RIVER STERNWHEELER--A TYPE

Written by Fritz Timmen
Blow for the Landing
Caxton Printers, Ltd. 1973.

WAUNA
The low, powerful lines of a sternwheel towboat
are evident on Wauna of 1906. She was built
for Lake River log towing. She later handled
oil barges on the Willamette until her layup in 1937.
Original photo by James Turner from the archives of 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

"To the eye of many beholders, there was beauty in the Columbia River type sternwheeler. Her hull lines were graceful, clean, and shallow, and about five times longer than the beam. The slight dead-rise made for a flat deck. The lower deck was housed forward from the wheel, with the forward doors and those on the guards wide enough for freight or engine and boiler parts. Above was the cabin deck, with a wide, railed promenade all around, a central passenger lounge and dining room, and windowed saloons fore and aft. The upper, or hurricane deck, carried a texas, with crew cabins or passenger accommodations. Atop the texas and well forward was the pilothouse. This was the Holy of Holies, grandly occupied by the captain and pilot, with lesser mortals granted admission only by special dispensation. Three sides of the pilothouse bore gracefully carved name boards. Often fancy fretwork topped it all.

      Aft of the pilothouse rose the single stack. The kingpost soared amidships, flanked by at least four hog posts to which were secured the hog chains that keep the supple hull aligned. After 1870, the stern-wheel often was enclosed in a box on which appeared the craft's name and port of registry and which also served to keep spray off the passengers.

      The main deck forward was open for winches and capstans and cargo.

      Wood construction was favored, even after steel became available. The initial cost and upkeep of wooden hulls were cheaper. Damage repair was easy -- a soft patch spiked over a broken plank kept the boat afloat until it could reach the beach.

      For propulsion, early engineers preferred a high-pressure, non-condensing engine. Cylinder bores varied between ten and twenty-two inches and the piston stroke was six or seven feet, rarely more. Locomotive-type boilers had a working pressure of about one hundred pounds per square inch. Not until well after WW I did cross-compound engines appear. These engines transmitted relatively low but effective power to the wheel and so were often provided with a bypass valve to permit fast injection of live steam into the low-pressure boiler in case the pilot called for extra power in a hurry. A few tandem-compound power plants were built. Among these was the Henderson at the time of her 1929 rebuild.

Sternwheeler HENDERSON 
O.N. 93168
Here she is working in a film in 1952 as
the RIVER QUEEN.
Built by Shaver Transportation Co. in 1901
158.7' x 31.' x 7.5' 
The skipper this day was
Capt. Sidney J. "Happy" Harris.
She was burned for scrap in 1964.
More about her racing on the river
 can be seen HERE

      A sleek, trim sternwheeler, moving grandly through a covey of noisy, bustling steam tugs, had a never-to-be-forgotten air about her whether she was a fast passenger packet or a towboat. Sure enough, they don't make 'em like that anymore."

❖ TRICKS OF THE TRADE by Glen Carter (1923-2002) ❖

Seattle Terminal
The top postcard was postmarked in 1927.
Click the image to enlarge.

"When it comes to preferences of newsmen's beats, I stand pat with good-enough cards.
      I have pounded a few sidewalks and regard police stations, city halls, and politicians, as look-alikes.
      But there is only one Port of Seattle.
      Besides, I can get away from my desk. Most of the action is in Seattle Harbor. But it also ranges from San Diego to the Aleutians and from Elliott Bay to the Far East.
      When somebody growls that I have missed a story, I remind him it is a big ocean out there and I cannot cover every square foot of it thoroughly. So far, so good.
      Of course, I don't cover the maritime beat alone. Hundreds of persons are involved, and there are valuable mechanical aids. My most prized is the telephone. Not to mention reference books, nautical charts, ship registers, the Marine Exchange, Coast Guard, and Navy public information, teletypes, periodicals, trade papers, and hundreds of phone numbers of who's what in the Pacific Northwest maritime business.
      

      Ask me the water depth of any place in Puget Sound. I will tell you after consulting my nautical charts near at hand. Tide books are in my desk drawer. A Port of Seattle map of piers is on the wall.
      Among my handy-dandy aids is a volume listing all American-flag merchant ships, their owners, home ports, and radio call letters. Also the length, tonnage, and horsepower of each. I know what phone number to dial to learn about ships of foreign nations.
      Ships' tonnage? There are six kinds. Please don't ask me why, but I can read them to you.
      lf you are beginning to surmise that I am not a walking encyclopedia, you are right. I don't burden my memory files with data that can be stowed and plucked from drawers and cabinets.

The bottom postcard was postmarked from 
Seattle in 1952 by a Capt. Jim ______.
Click image to enlarge.

      Bend this way a little closer, gentle reader, and I will whisper some trade secrets. Call it the confessions of a professional waterfront chronicler.
      One challenge I've grown to accept is Seattle's legion of ship-watchers. They spot odd-looking vessels out their windows and phone inquiries to me. The way to identify a passing steamship through binoculars is by the insignia on its stack. I find its listed company if the caller describes the insignia. The chart near my desk shows symbols of nearly all foreign and domestic steamship lines operating on the West Coast. Once the ship's owner is known, my books tell me what agency in Seattle represents that line. I phone the agent and ask what ship is incoming or due.
      Without helpful agents, maritime news would be dreadfully tepid. Ask a savvy agent the ship's length, tonnage, number of crewmen, nationality, captain's name, engine horsepower, and what cargo is aboard. He knows--after consulting documents.
      Ask me how much wheat is going to be shipped from Seattle this week, and I will tell you--thanks to the right phone number at the Pier 86 grain terminal.
      No brag, just fact.
      People on learning I am a maritime editor suggest that I probably meet a lot of interesting people. I usually concur but add that I hear an awful lot more phone voices.
      Keeping track of merchant-ship traffic in Puget Sound is easy. Estimated times of arrival are available a month in advance.
      If a strange-looking ship is being towed in Puget Sound, I ask the phone caller for the colors of the tug. If its stack is red, I phone the radio dispatcher at Puget Sound Tug & Barge. If the tug is green and white, I dial Foss Launch & Tug.
      Depending on the tug's colors, I phone Puget Sound Freight, American Tug Boat Co., Northland Marine, Pacific Inland Navigation, Washington Tug, Fremont Tugboat. That failing, I fall back and punt.
       My trusty phone and filing cabinets are like a security blanket. I take on all comers. But I'm susceptible to shut-in cabin fever and do get outside for some salt air.

The top photo card with the Sightseer at Pier 54
was postmarked from Seattle in 1949.

       Once I rode a tug to Alaska and back. Also, an Alaska ferry to Skagway, and a train-ship from British Columbia to beautiful downtown Whittier, AK. I usually average one night a year aboard a commercial gillnetter in Puget Sound. On Monday, my day off, I usually am tending my own boat moored in the Lake Washington Ship Canal.
      Despite attempted vigilance, I've missed the last three major ship mishaps within view of my residential neighborhood. When the Sirius caught fire and capsized, I had the day off. A tanker exploded within view of my living room while I was on vacation.
      On the last day of the same vacation, the big Sugar Islander ran aground only blocks away. I sauntered over and gazed down at it from Magnolia Bluff.
      Embarrassing for a pro.
      I vowed never again to miss another major fire, explosion, capsizing, or grounding. My chance to atone happened at 2 o'clock one Monday morning--again my day off. But the dock foreman who rousted me out of bed said it looked pretty serious. Two men hospitalized. Flames shooting.
      Again, it was visible through my living-room window. I jumped into my car and sped toward the scene--only to be stopped by police for traffic violations. I got to the scene after the fire was out but interviewed some soot-smeared crewmen. The fire could have been disastrous but wasn't.
      Spectaculars come and go, but long-ago ships in men's minds go on forever. Mention some famous old Seattle freighter in a line of type, and my telephone rings. I get mail.
      One thing leads to another, and I am knee-deep in Puget Sound maritime history. I have in my home library perhaps 20 volumes on maritime events of yesteryear. The most valuable, to me, is the massive and fact-jammed H.W. McCurdy's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Another hundred or so are on various nautical subjects.
      But telephone voices are my best friends. I give information and receive it. If anybody cares enough to write to me about something, I take time willingly, to type or pen an answer.
      Sundays and Mondays are my days off. Weather permitting, I'm usually making the rounds of waterfront haunts where men earn their wages but have time to chat briefly. Either that or I'm working aboard my old gaff-rigged sloop or cruising in it.
      All of which is a roundabout way of saying that a man should enjoy his work but not take it home with him, which I don't. It's 50-50 and two-way on the best news job in town."

      Mr. Carter began work at the Seattle Times in 1967 and became marine editor in 1970. He retired in the 1980s to Carousel, his 38-ft Ingrid sailboat with the motto-- 

"If you live on the water, you'll live forever."

      This essay is an extract from his book My Waterfront published by Seagull Books Co., 1977. 

❖ Champion of Gallant Tradition ❖ with Ralph Andrews

Schooner VIGILANT
Skippered by the famous Capt. Matt Peasley
and later by Capt. Charles H. Mellberg.
From the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Her five masts standing as staunch monuments to sea trade of a past era, the sturdy schooner VIGILANT was last of the sailing ships regularly engaged in commerce between Hawaii and the Pacific coast.
      "Owned by the City Mill Company of Honolulu, the vessel is employed every summer to transport millions of feet of lumber from the Pacific Northwest to Hawaii. When she rounds Diamond Head with her sails filled and her big sticks straining, she's a proud sight that makes Hawaii forget for the moment that this is an age of clipper planes and trim motor freighters.

Capt. Charles H. Mellberg
Photo dated 1932.
Click image to enlarge.
Photo from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      Freshly painted after a year of idleness in Bellingham, Washington, she arrived in Honolulu recently 25 days out of Puget Sound. Her master, Capt. Charles Mellberg, reported an uneventful crossing distinguished by unusually favorable winds, which carried her along steadily for most of the distance and promised for a time to assist her in beating her best previous record of 17 days. But as she neared the islands the breezes withdrew their aid and teased her into port with occasional puffs. For one crossing last year from Bellingham to Honolulu she took 55 days.
      

Capt. Matt Peasley
Dated 1929.
Original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      Honolulu waterfront men remember the days when Capt. Matt Peasley, original of Peter B. Kyne's 'Cappy Ricks' stories, used to bring the schooner into port. Old-timers remember, too, the friendly rivalry between the Vigilant and the Commodore, now shorn of her masts and used as an Alaskan oil barge.
      Still fresh in the memories of many local waterfront observers is the race from Honolulu to Seattle in which these two gallant vessels engaged in November 1931. The COMMODORE departed from Hawaii for the Sound November 20 of that year. She made fair progress; was comfortably on her way when the VIGILANT sailed for the same destination six days later.
      Favorable winds carried the COMMODORE straight up to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where they dropped her like a punctured balloon and left her to icy winter squalls and tricky currents. She was taken in tow by tugs dispatched to her assistance. But before she could be brought into peaceful sound waters a storm caught her, broke the two lines, and drove her out to sea. The VIGILANT which had trailed her by more than 1400 miles up to that time, skirted the storm and scudded triumphantly into the Sound to be declared the official winner."
Ralph Andrews. This was Seafaring. Seattle. Superior Publishing. 1955
      

❖ DEADMAN BAY ❖ SAN JUAN ISLAND

Deadman Bay, San Juan Island,
San Juan Archipelago, Washington.
Photo by Ellis. Undated.
Click photo to enlarge.
Original photo postcard from the collection of
the Saltwater People Log©

"This small bay, under Mt. Dallas, was earlier called Deadman's Bay, Dead Man's Bay, and Dead-Man's Bay. In accordance with general practice, the possessive form was gradually dropped by cartographers, probably for simplicity, and to save space by shortening names on the charts. Edmond S. Meany states: 'It is claimed that the first white man known to have died on the island was buried there. He was a working man killed by a cook.' Meany does not identify his source. Walter Arend, retired postmaster at Friday Harbor, considers that this local name probably was used to identify the place where a man's body had drifted ashore. However, Etta Egeland states that an unnamed white man criticized a Chinese cook at the Lime Kiln, who killed him with a knife. The Chinese was aided to escape from San Juan Island by a farmer named Bailer, who hid him in a wagon until he found a vessel that was leaving from Friday Harbor. This occurred about 1890, and indicates the state of law enforcement on that island at the time."

Bryce Wood. San Juan Island Coastal Place Names and Cartographic Nomenclature. Published in Ann Arbor, Michigan for Washington State Historical Society by University Microfilms International. 1980.

❖ 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.

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