✪ Builder Vic Frank ❖

Californian Gets Another Boat

The Seattle Times, 21 October 1968

L-R: Vic Franck, Ted Tate, George Carlson,
Bill Grandy, and Lynn Senour.
Dated 21 October 1968
Original from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©

Ted Tate, president of Marlineer Marine, Pomona, CA, likes Seattle-built boats. So much so that he wouldn't stop getting them even when the boatyard burned down. 

       He merely changed boatyards.

      Over the years Tate had around 25 or 30 boats built by the Grandy Boat Co. They ranged from 32-ft to 60-ft. Tate has sold them in many parts of the world.

      Then, in August 1967, the Grandy plant was destroyed in a spectacular fire. Earl and Bill Grandy, the brothers in the company, decided not to rebuild.

      But Tate still wanted boats, and he wanted them from Seattle.

      So today another 60-ft is nearing completion for him, this one at Vic Franck's Boat Co, another yard specializing in fine pleasure craft. A 52-ft also is under construction for Tate.

      Three members of the team that used to build boats for Tate at the Grandy yard are still working on them.

      Lynn Senour, who designed the Grandy-built boats for Tate, designed those under construction at Vic Franck's. George Carlson, who worked for the Grandys, now works for Franck and is superintendent in charge of the present boats.

      And Bill Grandy is Tate's supervisor on the job, working, as he explains it, about an hour a day.

      The new 60-footer has four staterooms, three heads, and three showers.

      It carries 1,400 gallons of fuel and 400 gallons of water.

      There is a refrigerator in the galley and another in the bar. Together they provide 40-cubic space of refrigeration.

      The boat is triple screw.

      "This will make her very fast––maybe 26 or 28 knots,"  Tate said.

      And what will a boat like this sell for?

      "We don't know yet what it's going to cost. It will be upwards of a couple of hundred thousand dollars."

❖ The Old Cannery Dock (Revisted) ❖

Original photo by Levy Smith, undated.
From the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

The below text taken from the handwritten, unsigned inscription on reverse of the fish photo by Levy Smith.
Friday 26 July 1940;
"Arrived at San Juan Salmon Cannery at 7 AM where we stopped several hours to load 10,000 cases of canned salmon. Workmen were Filipino; we were able to follow the complete operation from the unloading by chain belt from the fishing boats outside to the loading of cases on the boat for Seattle where the labels are put on. The fish are flushed with a hose out of the hold of the fishing boat on to chain belt which carries them up to large bins on either side of an elevated runway in the cannery. As they come in, a man separates the different types of salmon directing them on the another belt to the proper bins. From these bins they are again flushed into the chutes leading to the worktable where they are laid in correct position to pass through the beheading and gutting machines, after which the inside is again scraped and cleaned by workmen and conveyed to the cutting and canning machines after which they pass inspection, where doubtful ones are weighed and additional pieces added where necessary. The cans are then topped by machines, air withdrawn and sealed, placed in metal racks in pressure retorts for about 1 1/2 hours. The cans are then cooled and packed for shipping."

❖ Exploration Ship MAUD Leaves Seattle (Updated with 5th photo) ❖

"Five of the ten who will be on the Schooner MAUD
when Capt. Roald Amundsen attempts his seven 
year drift through Arctic seas over the North Pole.
L-R: S. Syvertsen, marine engineer
Dr. H.U. Sverdrup, scientist
Capt. Oskar Wisting, navigator
G. Olonkin, marine engineer/wireless operator
Edward Eriksen, seaman.
All are on equal footing on the MAUD."
Photo dated 13 May 1922.
Original from the S.P.H.S.©

MAUD 
Seattle to Arctic Expedition

at Seattle, WA. 1922.
Original photo by James A. Turner

Archives of the S.P.H.S.©

"One of the big stories of Seattle's waterfront in which I had a part was the sailing of the Roald Amundsen exploration ship MAUD for the Arctic ice-pack in a history-making attempt to drift across the top of the world. It was a balmy day in June 1922 when I headed for the waterfront accompanied by a photographer to cover the departure of the famed explorer and his sturdy three-masted motorship.

      The voyage of exploration had been highly publicized and a great throng was at the Union Oil Dock to say bon voyage to Amundsen, his officers and crew.

MAUD
at Union Oil Dock, Seattle, WA.
dated 7 June 1922
Original photo from the archives of S.P.H.S.

      It was estimated that 5,000 persons saw the MAUD shift into the harbor and head down the Sound escorted by a flotilla of Seattle yachts.

      The MAUD was a strange-looking craft with long bowsprit, one tall, and two short masts. The tall mainmast and the foremast carried crow's nests for use by ice pilots; the hull was described as having the shape of an egg cut in half endways.

      The MAUD had as her chief officer, Capt. Carl M. ("North Pole") Hansen, who began his seafaring career as a lad of 11 years. The stocky son of the Vikings now is skipper of the powder boat DUPONT which serves Puget Sound and Southeastern Alaska. He is an active member of the Propeller Club of the United States, Port of Seattle, and is much interested in maritime affairs.
      Captain Hansen is one of Seattle's most colorful mariners. He was the mate of the motorship PATTERSON of San Francisco, trading for furs as far to the eastward in the Arctic as Herschel Island. He was master of the Swenson Company's Siberian fur trader NANUK, later used in filming "The Eskimo", a moving picture of the Arctic. Also, he was skipper of the Seattle purse-seiner PACIFIC QUEEN, which carried a party of scientists on an off-shore fishing expedition for the Peruvian government. The PACIFIC QUEEN visited the storied Galapagos Islands, 700-miles west of Ecuador where Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner played the role of 'Empress' over natives and shipwrecked sailors.
      Captain Hansen spent three and one-half years in the MAUD. Here is the story he told me some years ago of his experiences in the polar regions:
      'On 25 July 1922, we watched the Alaska shoreline fade away in the mists as the MAUD headed for the Arctic ice-pack in which we were to drift across the top of the world. We were in the ice 42-months--three and one-half years--and then gave up the venture.
      I never shall forget the four Christmas days we spent in the Arctic aboard the MAUD. The ship was surrounded by many miles of solid ice, displaying a rugged magnificence, made weird by the Northern Lights that blazed across the sky at night.
      We spent the first Christmas 200-miles northwest of Wrangell Island. It was dark all day except for two hours of dim twilight at noon. The temperature was 42 degrees below zero. Christmas was celebrated with a real Yule tree, candlelight, and a dinner of canned chicken, canned vegetables, several kinds of cakes, cookies, and plum pudding. Seven boxes of Christmas fare had been placed in the hold for seven Yule holidays the officers of the vessel expected to spend in the Arctic ice.
      The MAUD was built in Norway for the Arctic trip, but as a ship for sailing to the ice floes was not much of a success. She was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company soon after our return from the Arctic and operated for several years as a fur-trading schooner between Vancouver, BC and the Far North.
      Crushed in the ice, the MAUD sank in Cambridge Bay off Copper Mine in the Canadian Arctic. She settled on the bottom of the bay and the water over her rails. The grinding floes finished her in a few months.'

Capt. Oscar Wisting,
Navigator, MAUD
Original photo by Price & Carter of Seattle, WA,
from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©
Backdated 3 June 1922

      Capt. Oscar Wisting, the MAUD's skipper, who was master of the Amundsen exploration ship FRAM, used on a cruise to the South Pole, died in his cabin aboard the vessel in Norway. The FRAM had been converted into a floating museum and Capt. Wisting was her caretaker.
      Although the attempt of the MAUD to drift over the top of the world was unsuccessful, Amundsen in 1926 flew over the North Pole in the dirigible NORGE, accompanied by Lincoln Ellsworth, and a crew of 18. The NORGE left Kings Bay, Spitzbergen, 11 May, passed over the North Pole at 2:30 am 12 May and arrived at Teller, AK at 11 pm 13 May.
      Amundsen has been given up for lost since 1928 when he and five companions disappeared while making an airplane search for the lost Italian polar dirigible. In November 1941, a Rome report said Amundsen had been found living among Eskimos in a bay of the North Baffin Sea."
Above text from High Tide. R.H. Calkins, Seattle. Marine Digest Pub., 1952

Another view of MAUD, with Amundsen

preparing to castoff from Seattle, WA.,

for the Northwest Passage Expedition, June 1922.

Photo from the James A. Turner Collection

From archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©.

Underwater photos of the wreck of the Norwegian MAUD at Cambridge Bay can be viewed here.

Scroll down to 30 August 2012 log entry.

      

❖ Wild Flowers of Yellow Island ❖ with Schooner MORNING STAR

Schooner MORNING STAR
  May Day 2012.
Happily snugged in to Yellow Island.
(Yes, she's a schooner. Her main was being replaced.)

NOAA Chart 6379, dated 1972.
 Yellow Island is located on the crease of the folded paper,
nestled near to the inhabited islands of Crane, Orcas, and Shaw.
Click to enlarge this image. Out of date for navigational use.

These photos by Debra Madan are from May Day 2012. The cool spring altered the blooming pattern slightly so many of the species were in color at the same time this year. Here you can see Indian Paintbrush, Chocolate Lillies, blue Camas, Avalanche Lillies, Shooting Stars, Buttercups.... it was a riot of color, unmolested by browsing deer. The entire island, owned by  the Nature Conservancy, has a friendly, informative, live-aboard caretaker who requires visitors to stay on the foot path. They close at 4 pm. 

✪ BOOK REVIEW: The Log from the Sea of Cortez ✪

The Log from the Sea of Cortez
John Steinbeck
(New York: Viking, 1951)

We have a book to write about the Gulf of California. We could do one of several things about its design. But we have decided to let it form itself: its boundaries a boat and a sea; its duration a six weeks’ charter time; its subject everything we could see and think and even imagine; its limits—our own without reservation.
We made a trip into the Gulf; sometimes we dignified it by calling it an expedition. Once it was called the Sea of Cortez, and that is a better-sounding and more exciting name....
      We said, “Let’s go wide open. Let’s see what we see, record what we find, and not fool ourselves with conventional scientific strictures.” (The Log from the Sea of Cortez, Introduction, pp. 1-2).
      And in this way and in this frame of mind did John Steinbeck and his good friend, marine biologist Ed Ricketts, set out on an off-season fishing boat for a 4,000-mile voyage from Monterey around the Baja peninsula to see what they could see and write about it in the spring of 1940.
It was an uneasy time in the United States for anyone aware of the gathering storm already underway in Europe and Asia. The violence and pointless destruction of war are ever-present in the back of Steinbeck’s mind even as he is escaping from the reach of newspapers and newsreels. “Hitler was invading Denmark and moving up towards Norway; there was no telling when the invasion of England might begin; our radio was full of static and the world was going to hell.” (Steinbeck, p. 7)
Steinbeck’s mind roamed the world and the history of humankind, even as his eyes and hands were occupied with the business of collecting samples. Plenty of marine biology took place on the trip. Thousands of specimens were dipped up in nets, pried off rocks, and harpooned after the boat turned left at the corner of the tip of Baja and made its way slowly north. The log offers full details of the common and Latin names of the specimens, their customary habitats, and their taxonomy (the contribution, no doubt, of  Ricketts, who was listed as co-author on the earlier, unabridged version of the story, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research. New York: Viking, 1941). But both as individuals and as members of functional ecosystems, the marine organisms inspired Steinbeck to poetic description, forays into word origins and mythology, analysis of their design and purpose, and philosophical reflection comparing their lives and communities to human ones.
      Aquariums, tanks, and trays filled the hold of the 76-foot WESTERN FLYER. Neither Steinbeck nor Ricketts had ever attempted this sort of prolonged scientific expedition before, and much of the trip was a series of experiments, missteps, and disappointments in trying variously to keep the specimens alive (for observation) or to kill and preserve them without destroying their distinctive forms and brilliant colors. There were problems with equipment—notably, the outboard motor for the small shore boat that refused to work except when removed for inspection and installed in a bucket—and both the still and film cameras produced poor images in the rare instances when there was anyone with dry hands free to use them.
      There were the usual sorts of squabbles you’d expect among a group of men (which included Steinbeck, Ricketts, the boat owner and captain, an engineer, and two Italian fishermen hired in Monterey), sharing a small, hot, and fishy space together for weeks. Tensions grew when the store of liquor ran out and when fresh food or delicacies found their way aboard; crew members were occasionally mutinous about doing dishes, frustrated by faulty equipment and the efforts to collect, or testy from lack of sleep. At one point, Steinbeck dryly admits that, “all collecting trips to unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.” (Steinbeck, p.10)

      The WESTERN FLYER encountered many Mexicans in its travels. At each port of call or small anchorage, once the locals figured out what the boat was up to, small boys and men alike tied up alongside to sell specimens they’d found or to offer their services as scouts and collectors. Steinbeck is generous in his description of these mostly poor, local inhabitants, noting their common humanity and describing their living arrangements without condescension.
In fact, the main subject of Steinbeck’s account is not the marine organisms they were collecting, but philosophical reflections on the meaning of life, human character, and the characteristics and course of civilizations—including the human tendency to make war and commit murder. He compares the study of tide pool animals to the study of homo sapiens, “We name them and describe them and, out of long watching, arrive at some conclusion about their habits so that we say, ‘This species typically does thus and so,’ but we do not objectively observe our own species as a species....When it seems that men may be kinder to men, that wars may not come again, we completely ignore the record of our species.” (Steinbeck, p. 15)
The voyage offered a respite from the reality of all that. “...the great world dropped away very quickly. We lost the fear and fierceness and contagion of war and economic uncertainty. The matters of great importance we had left were not important.” (Steinbeck, p. 173) At some point, after the boat had gone as far north in the Sea of Cortez as it could go, had filled all its tanks and trays and turned for home, they would have to rejoin that world again. But for now, there was a pause and a chance to concentrate on the matter at hand—the boat, the sea, the creatures swimming and crawling within it. “France had fallen, the Maginot Line was lost—we didn’t know it, but we knew the daily catch of every boat within four hundred miles. It was simply a directional thing; a man has only so much.” (Steinbeck, p. 7)
Near the end of the expedition, Steinbeck observes that, “It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again.” (Steinbeck, p. 179) In this way, a person comes to see that “all things are one thing and that one thing is all things...all bound together by the elastic string of time.” But lest the book end on a note too high-toned and philosophical, Steinbeck sums up what the expedition meant to him in the most basic terms. “Here was no service to science, no naming of unknown animals, but rather—we simply liked it. We liked it very much. The brown Indians and the gardens of the sea, and the beer and the work, they were all one thing and we were that one thing too.”

2015, Spring Update. The WESTERN FLYER has been salvaged from the mud of Swinomish Slough and lives on the hard in Pt. Townsend, WA. For an update of the future plans for her please see here.

This is the third in a series of book reviews kindly contributed by mariner, Allison Hart Lengyel of San Juan County, WA.

Her first review was posted 13 Nov. 2011: Leviathan or the Whale by Philip Hoare; Harper Collins, 2008.

The second from her pen, posted January 2012 please see N by E by Rockwell Kent; Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1930.