FAIRHAVEN CANNERY DAYS ❖ ❖ 1904 ❖ ❖ by Lynn McKee

Early Fairhaven, WA.
Photographer P. L. Hegg
From the archives of the S. P. H. S. ©

My family brought me to Spokane in 1892 when I was very small; in 1904 we moved to Fairhaven, now South Bellingham. I was 12-yrs old, and for vacations we school kids used to go to the canneries asking for jobs, as there was no child labor law at that time. I'd be hoping the ‘China-boss’ would come out and ask, "you want work?"
  The canneries in those days were the Washington Packing Co at Fairhaven, R. A. Welsh, Pacific Packing & Navigation Co (later Pacific American Fisheries), Sehome Packing Co, Astoria & Puget Sound Packing Co, at Chuckanut Bay, and one saltery belonging to Thompson Fish Co.

P.A. F. cannery 

The canning firms paid 7 to 10 cents an hour to boys piling cooled cans of salmon that had been cooked the previous day. They were wheeled out of retorts on cars that held 6 trays of tall cans, or maybe 11 to 13 trays of half pound cans. They were cooked 90-minutes at 242-degrees, then Chinamen pulled the cans out on tracks to a warehouse, where the cans would cool over night. The cars and trays were wanted back as soon as possible, so doors were left open to catch a breeze and cool the cans. School kids were hired to pile them as high as they could reach. The warehouse looked like a sea of cans; all night one could hear them snapping as the vacuum sealed them.
The only adult labor, around the cannery itself, were the old Chinese; they were hard working and willing. I remember how one of them would come out from the 'China House' every morning wearing a shoulder yoke from the ends of which hung two huge cans of tea. He'd leave one of them in the warehouse for the workers. They didn't want kids standing around the pot, but we thought we should have a break also. The Chinese had a job keeping us steadily at work.
After the end of the canning season, the stacked cans were all cooled when the Chinese lacquered them with crude brown varnish thinned with naptha. This was done in the lacquering machine. The kids' job was to pick cans off the pile and lay them lengthwise on a track that slid them toward the machine. They were immersed in lacquer six or eight at a time then dumped out on conveyor chains and carried over a fan in the machine where a blast of air dried them. The Chinese removed the cans and we kids re-stacked them to await shipping orders. Labels were applied by hand; the cans were then packed in wooden boxes that had been made at the cannery before the season opened.

Things were just beginning to be modernized and the lacquering machine was the first real improvement. Cans were still all made by hand when I got my first job in 1904. I was sent to help at the soldering bench. The Chinamen prepared their own solder in long sticks. I carried trays of side soldered can bodies to where the bottoms were soldered on. I also learned how to make complete cans from sheets of tinplate.
Around the plant were still the old vats for washing cans in lye water to remove oil after the final 90-minute cook. They were put out to dry and then the Chinese sat around and painted them red. It was explained to me that England was a great outlet for our canned salmon. When the cans were shipped through the tropics and around the Horn in sailing ships on the way to Great Britain, they would sweat and rust. If a can wasn't painted red when it got to England, it wasn't salmon. So before lacquer came in as a rust preventive, the cans were painted.
After I had worked a while at the WFA Co, the China boss took me to a pile of salmon in the fish room and told me to supply fish to the hand butchers. He gave me a picaroon and said, “you put fish on table. If table not kept full, you got no job--savvy?”
This is where I was working when Edmund Smith came from Seattle with a experimental butchering machine he wanted to try out.

The Iron Chink, circa 1906.
It was considered the most important of many machines 
used in salmon canning. The machine butchered 65 salmon per minute.
According to Galen Biery and Dorothy Koert in Looking Back, 
the machine was still manufactured in 1980, by Smith-Berger Co, Seattle.
Photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.© 

Smith was the inventor of the Iron Chink and I sometimes ran errands for him. Because of the work I did for him, when he perfected the machine some years later, I became contact man for the company, traveling the AK coast.
In my early years around canneries Puget Sound fishermen used seine skiffs. They were big dories, square on one end, and could carry a crew of four to six. The men would put a tent on a beach and row out with the dory, carrying the net on the stern. To make a set they cast it off and rowed in a circle. Then they pulled in on the lead line to purse the net and brailed the fish into the boat.
About 1912 I was engineer on the BEAVER, owned by R. A. Welsh of the Bellingham Can Co. I hadn't intended to work on a cannery tender, but the company had trouble with engineers getting drunk and asked if I wanted a job like that. I went to the Y.M.C.A. and took a gas engine course before I said yes.

The BEAVER
She tended the first steam pile driver in S.J.C.  in 1894.
Pile driver was owned by Kinleyside, of  Richardson, Lopez.
Original postcard from the collection of the S. P. H. S. ©

   

      The BEAVER had been built in Anacortes about 1894, and was 65-ft long. She had a 50-HP Troyer Fox gas engine when gas engines weren't common. I was told there were only two on the northern part of Puget Sound. We made up our batteries for ignition with sulphuric acid and carbon zinc plates in glass jars. Welsh used the boat to pick up fish for the cannery and to take the pile-driver crew out to his traps. We would go to the San Juans and pick up fish from the little camps on the beaches. There were lots more fish in those days and they were caught most anywhere.
William Bell was captain and deckhand on the BEAVER and I was engineer and cook. We lived on the boat. My bunk was alongside the engine and under the deck. When rain fell the deck leaked and my blankets would get wet.
Our season started about March with driving piles at West Beach and Strawberry Bay. A crew was ashore on Cypress Is at Strawberry Bay making up the web, then we towed it on a scow to where needed. In the fall we took the scow down again and picked up what was worth saving of the web. The pile puller pulled the piles and the good ones were taken to Strawberry Bay, where there used to be a dock and buildings of the main camp.
The company had two or three traps on the west coast of Whidbey Island, one at Strawberry Bay, and three in Hood Canal, at Lofall, Whiskey Spit, and Bridalbeck. I can remember going to these traps to pick up a scowload of humpback salmon then on the way back we ran into a storm and had to pull into Bowman's Bay until it was over. With only 50-HP the skipper had to work with the tides.
Mostly our runs were with a hold full of fish. We also transported men back and forth to the traps and camps.
There were no fish tickets at that time; payment to fishermen had to be in cash. The skipper went to the Fairhaven bank and got a canvas bag of bills and change, which he stowed under his pillow. He slept with a Winchester in the bunk alongside his right leg. One night when anchored in a fog I heard the skipper yelling his head off and when I got on deck he was standing at the bow shaking his fist at the fog. He had been hijacked and robbed before he could get his rifle out.
Another exciting time was when we went ashore in a fog on Bird Rocks. We thought the BEAVER was going to turn over because she was at such a steep angle, so we got out and sat on the rocks, wondering what we'd do after the tide came in. However, as the water rose the boat righted, and we got back on board.
We had a peculiar experience on another occasion when we were heading out and were half way across Bellingham Bay. Suddenly I got three bells and a jingle, the signal for full speed reverse. The sudden reverse killed the old engine and when I looked out here was a periscope coming up across our bow. A sight like that gives you a queer feeling.
The explanation was simple enough. The Electric Boat Co was building two submarines for the Chilean government and picked Bellingham Bay for the trial runs. We were nearly hit by either the EQUIQUE or the ANTAFOGASTA. One of those submarines came up under a log boom in Hale's Pass; the skipper looked back and saw the logs standing on end.
Back when I began in the cannery business there was no electricity. The cannery was lit by lanterns, fish were unloaded on a platform at the dock, and pitched from there up to the cannery floor. The first fish elevator in the old plant was put in the year I went to work; its power coming from the streetcar line. One of my first jobs was to sort through the fish and throw the chums overboard. It was thought their meat was too coarse and only suitable for salting. The old WPCo didn't do any salting. England bought only sockeye salmon. Down on the Columbia River the canneries saved big chinooks and packed them in oval cans. I remember the biggest king we picked up weighed 60 pounds. Anybody could have carried it home; it wasn't wanted for canning and it went to the China House.
Such were early days in the salmon canning industry on the Sound. The old BEAVER served us well. I last saw her moored among other fishing boats at Ketchikan.
Above text by Lynne McKee, as told to Lucile McDonald.
From The Sea Chest, the March 1975 quarterly journal of the Puget Snd Maritime Hist. Scty., Seattle, WA.

NORTH'S NORTH STAR

NORTH STAR, Deer Harbor, Orcas Island.
Built 1930, by boatbuilder Chet North,
who sailed her into this port and never left.
Only known photo, saved by his Deer Harbor neighbors. 

"In 1911 Thomas Fleming Day, editor of Rudder magazine, sailed the 25-ft yawl SEA BIRD from the US to Italy,  single-handed. A near copy of the boat plans appearing in the magazine, caught the eye of a multitude of people, one of them being Chet North, then living in Portland, OR. 
      In 1930 he completed a 22-ft copy of the vessel, with the addition of a 1928 Chevrolet engine, for more dependable arrivals.
      The boat was trucked to Olympia, WA  for an October launching, along with one large police dog, the two senior Norths, and a new wife. Chet had just married Averil; on Halloween night they all set off for Canada, heading into a freshening northeaster. First night was spent on McNeil Island.
     In December while returning from BC, they stopped for an overnight in Deer Harbor, and never left.
     Only one picture was ever taken of the boat and that was also the only time that all sails were up; the engine having proved too handy. This photograph was found among the Pearmain family's collection of 'unknowns'. The remains of the boat were, and perhaps are still, in the blackberry bushes on the Coffelt property, Lopez Island, WA."
Text by mariner/historian L. W. 'Corkey' North, son of boatbuilder Chet North, 2006.

The Sails of a Stately Lady ✪ ✪ ✪ The NIPPON MARU 1957

NIPPON MARU
Visiting the Northwest, 1957.
Photo by Joseph Scaylea.
Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S. ©

The magnificent, four-masted, steel, Japanese merchant marine training barque, the 318-ft  NIPPON MARU carrying 32 sails with 25,727 sq ft, en route to a Seattle pier. 
      She was built in Kobe in 1930; rated at 2,285 g. tons with a maximum mast height of slightly more than 176-ft. The ship carries 183 men, 20 officers, 112 cadets, and 51 crewmen who would perform sail drills for the huge crowds and open the ship for viewing. 
     Her good-will visitations to Seattle were 1941, 1957, 1962 for the World's Fair, 1965 with Capt. Isao Ikeda at Pier 56, and 1973 with Capt. Shosaku Kadama at Pier 91. Traffic stopping conditions existed along Alaskan Way when she was in port, with a fire-boat send-off display when she was departing. 
      Thank you to Capt. Jack Russell of Sternwheeler Charters, Seattle, for the donation of maritime newspaper clippings depicting some of the visits of this beauty. 

WESTERN PIONEER ✪ ✪ ✪ North with North ✪ ✪ ✪

WESTERN PIONEER
Loading up at Salmon Bay, Seattle, to head North.
photo copy from L.W. North for this essay.

"In 1943, I was hanging out of the apartment window in Anacortes, WA,  listening to old KVOS radio in Bellingham describe the launching of a new fleet tug for the USN, not giving a thought that in 37-years I would serve as chief engineer in Alaska, on board for over four years. Bellingham was quite proud of the ship they had built, and rightly so.
      She stretched out to 184' and drew 18' of water. Built with wood hull and steel super structure and powered with four 720-HP Copper Bessemer diesel generators that provided the power to two propulsion motors, giving her a 12-knot speed in the beginning.
      By the time she had finished her military obligation, she had slowed a bit. As a civilian she started a career freighting from Seattle to Dutch Harbor for Western Pioneer, Inc, on a round robin routine, in spite of weather, for 13-years, until an engine room fire tied her up in Lake Union. The Coast Guard ruled her unfit.
      The Magnuson Act provided new rules so she had another chance to serve as a private freighter with a licensed skipper, first mate, and chief engineer. Her most important asset was the converted refrigerated hold for hauling crab and fish.
      When I first went aboard, the engine room was so black from smoke and soot, that a 100-w light bulb looked like a candle on a dark night. But the fire damage was minimal and cleaning was the main concern on our way north. We ran on two generators and worked on the other two, since there had been a serious lack of maintenance.
      The first newspaper we got in Ketchikan, AK informed us of Mt. St. Helens' gas problem on 18 May.
      The skipper delayed at Cape Spencer for a long while, waiting for better weather on the gulf; then we ventured out after dark. In an hour we were rolling 40 degrees to starboard and 25 degrees to port, and the wind was doing 90-mph, with snow. 
      The deck load of iron pipe and steel reinforcing rod shifted, catching the 20' shore boat in cables, cutting it from deck to keel as it hung over the cabin side. In the engine room, parts that hadn't been seen for years came bursting out of their hiding places, to skid across the deck plate, bent on doing damage. Two men acted as cowboys and jumped on flying parts with rope and wire, to secure them before the next surprise threatened. Our tool count increased--as the lost were suddenly found--rolling about the deck.
      We made Yakutat much later and anchored in perfect calm and licked our wounds. When I heard the stories from the pilot house, I was glad to be an engineer.
      In the four years that I served we had been in the Yukon delta, Adak, Bristol Bay, Dutch Harbor, a tour of SE, and a lot of those other places that make Alaska different than any other and often more exciting." 
Above text written by Orcas Island mariner/historian L. W. "Corkey" North who has supported this historical endeavor from the outset, while being very patient with the webmaster. 
Essays by Corkey are included in the labels at the very bottom of this Log. He has shared memories or helpful notes on the boats IMPERIAL, KATY, NORTH STAR, NO WAKE, VASHON, WESTERN PIONEER, WINDENTIDE, and even one large, returning, visitor whale--SATCHELMOUTH. In other words, we'd be sunk without him. Thanks Corkey, keep writing Chief. 

WESTERN PIONEER, Alaska
Scan from copy from L. W. North

WESTERN PIONEER
Back from Adak, AK
Scan from copy from L. W. North.

WESTERN PIONEER
Dutch Harbor, AK.
Scan from a photo copy from L. W. North

The Sinking of the SOPHIA ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ 1918

Captain Leonard P. Locke
Lost: all hands
Vanderbilt Reef, Lynn Canal, AK.

PRINCESS SOPHIA
On Vanderbilt Reef, day before sinking on the 25 October 1918, 
with loss of all hands.
Two original photos from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

"When the Canadian Pacific passenger steamship PRINCESS SOPHIA went down on 25 October 1918 in Lynn Canal, near Juneau, with 343 persons on board, the only articles salvaged from her were two empty lifeboats and a safe. The only survivor of this marine disaster, one of the greatest on record on the Pacific Coast, was a dog. 
  The wreck set in motion 15-years of litigation, ending when the US Supreme Court refused to review the ruling of the Circuit Court of Appeals limiting liability of the owner to $643.50 for 227 victims' estates. Claims of their survivors had aggregated $2,095,000.
  During the course of litigation as many as 40 pounds of legal papers were brought into court, at one time, by the attorneys for the defense.
  Benjamin Grosscup, Seattle attorney who argued the case for the claimants before the Court of Appeals in San Francisco, recently gave the Seattle Hist. Society his copy of the 13-volume apostles on appeal, the papers sent to the higher court in behalf of his clients after the case had been heard in the District Court. The thick books contain radio messages, logs, depositions, and interviews never reported in detail by the contemporary press. Wrapped in legal terminology, they describe step by step a drama of despair.
  The PRINCESS SOPHIA was a single-screw, 245-ft vessel built in Scotland six years earlier for the BC-Alaska service. She plied between Victoria, Vancouver, and Skagway.
  Normally she carried 250 passengers, but a rush of miners from the interior, waiting to go "outside" at the end of the season, had taxed Skagway's meager tourist accommodations nearly a week. As a consequence, the vessel was temporarily certified to carry an additional 100 passengers. She turned away many. With all berths full, she had 256 in 1st class, and 38 in 2nd class, when she sailed down Skagway at 10 o'clock the night of 23 October.
  Five hours later, during a snowstorm, the steamship ran aground on Vanderbilt Reef, not far from where she previously had stranded in April 1913, and incurred $25,000 damage.
The Princess boats had a reputation for speed and witnesses who saw the SOPHIA pass in the storm testified that she did not slow down for bad weather, but was maintaining her customary 13 knots. It was admitted that no lookout was posted in the bow.
 

Site of the loss of PRINCESS SOPHIA, 1918.
Courtesy of Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society
The Sea Chest, June 1977.
Click to enlarge.

The reef was out of the water at this stage of the tide, and the ship, riding high, was carried ahead with great force and wedged on the top of the submerged mountain, remaining there the next 40 hours. She was 1.75-miles off her course, and 3-miles from shore.
Examination in daylight revealed that the reef had torn plates from her bottom and a hole two feet wide was gouged out of the starboard side, extending from the bow 60-ft aft.
In an exchange of wireless messages Capt. Leonard P. Locke was advised by the company's managing agent to back the steamship off at high water. When daylight showed, this was impossible, 
      Locke was informed that the PRINCESS ALICE of the same line was about to depart from Victoria and would rescue the passengers.

Snow ceased falling at 7 o'clock in the morning, the sea was quieter, but still choppy and small craft were on the way from Juneau to aid the ship, dispatched after the company agent there, learned by radio, of the wreck. Two gas-powered fishing boats reached the reef at 10 o'clock and were followed by the large Seattle halibut schooner KING & WINGE and two cannery tenders. They were ready to go to work with their dories, removing passengers, but the PRINCESS SOPHIA was resting on even keel and Capt. Locke declined assistance.
By evening the rescue fleet was joined by the 65-ft ESTEBETH, the Army transport H. B. PETERSON, and the lighthouse tender CEDAR. Capt. Locke informed Capt. J. W. Leadbetter of the CEDAR that he had orders to keep his passengers on board, adding that he considered them perfectly safe, safer than they would be if he attempted to place them on the rescue vessels. Locke also told the captain of the tanker ATLAS bound for Juneau, not to stop, that he needed no help.
The barometer was rising and he expected the weather to improve, but this was not the case. A northwest wind picked up, the PRINCESS SOPHIA pounded on the rocks, and a little after 8 PM in the evening the electric lights, which had been burning brilliantly, went out for good.
The rescue fleet lay as close as was safe, but Capt. Locke still wanted no help. By then it would have been difficult to render assistance. That evening the captain reported to the agent's office, "disposition of the passengers normal."
As the morning of the 25th dawned, the KING & WINGE, the CEDAR, and the halibut schooner SITKA, still hovered as close to the reef as they dared. There was no sign from the PRINCESS SOPHIA and watches observed no one on deck.
The gale blew all day and when daylight waned, the CEDAR and the KING & WINGE anchored in the shelter of the south end of Benjamin Island, and the captain discussed what to do if the steamship’s situation became critical. Capt. Locke, by radio, still professed to be awaiting the PRINCESS ALICE, not knowing her departure from Victoria had been delayed.
By 4:40 the ship’s pounding became more threatening and Locke wired Leadbetter to come to his assistance. What happened aboard the SOPHIA in the next half hour is unknown. Two tanks, bound together and covered with planks were found later with children tied on them, back to back and apparently set afloat in the hope that they would reach land. No lifeboats were removed from the falls.
The last word from the SOPHIA’s radio operator was at 5:20 when he reported that water was over his feet and pleaded, ‘for God’s sake come and save us!’
By then the storm made rescue impossible. The wreck was not visible and, with her radio out of commission, there was no means of guiding the waiting craft through the high seas. At daybreak they steered a compass course in blinding sleet and, on approaching the reef, saw only a foremast rising from the water where the PRINCESS SOPHIA had been. She had slipped from her wedged position to a lower shelf on the reef, carrying with her everyone aboard. Those who attempted to float or swim away were coated with oil escaping from the ruptured fuel tanks. One man succeeded in reaching shore, but died on the beach from exhaustion before his presence was discovered.
One of the intercepted wireless messages entered as evidence by claimants in the lawsuit stated that nearly all of the passengers, believing themselves doomed, were writing farewell notes. Counsel for the claimants alleged that bodies must have been searched upon recovery by persons looking for any messages that might have cast blame upon the company. No letters written in the last hours reached their intended destination except one, concealed in the back of a watch.
Bodies were picked up for a long time, but not all were recovered. One man was found with $40,000 in a money belt. A woman had $80,000 in bills sewn into her coat and another’s body carried $5,000 in jewels.

Tender MONAGHAN
Scene of the wreck and loss of the PRINCESS SOPHIA.
MONAGHAN, shown here on Vanderbilt Reef,  
was built by Capt. Charles H. Curry, at Brown's Bay, 
Orcas Island, WA in 1911. At the helm is
Capt. Robert O. Griswold, Shaw Island, WA,
 who helped to collect 26 bodies from Shoal Point, Douglas Is.
Two original photos from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

 






      













      

In June, with hundreds of damage suits shaping up, the Canadian Pacific Railroad Co. instituted suit in the US to limit the liability of the owners to the value of the vessel and the freight and passenger money paid for the trip. Attorneys for the heirs sought to recover under Alaskan law $10,000 for each adult human life and $3,000 for reach child lost.
US Commissioner A. C. Bowman was assigned as special master to hear the arguments of a corps of attorneys representing the company and William Martin of Seattle on behalf of the claimants. Taking of evidence covered six years, with hundreds of witnesses called before Bowman. Martin repeatedly charged that the PRINCESS SOPHIA had put to sea with a crew of untrained boys and with old style lifeboat gear that was difficult to handle. He alleged that the company ordered the passengers kept aboard the steamship until its own vessel could arrive in order to save salvage money.
When the case went to the District Court, Judge Jeremiah Neterer narrowed the company’s blame down to two points—that proper lookout was not maintained and the vessel was traveling at an excessive speed. He decided that failure to transfer the passengers was due to the captain’s error in judgment and the company could not be held responsible for his act.
While his findings appeared to open the way to collecting heavy damages, the judge cited a federal maritime law centering around the condition of the ship and the crew at the time of the disaster. He held that the insurance money on the ship belonged to the company and not to the passengers and that the liability was limited to the value of the vessel when salvaged and the fares and freight charges for the voyage.
As the ship was virtually worthless and the Court of Appeals, in a 30-page decision, upheld Judge Neterer, the years of litigation—one of the longest drawn-out cases in history—resulted in nothing except the heap of printed documents.
In the Seattle Hist. Society’s library at the Museum of History and Industry in years to come researchers may read the accusations and arguments of attorneys, the testimony of witnesses, and their interpretation of events in that critical 40-hours, when 343 lives were balanced perilously upon a rock in Lynn Canal."
Text by author/historian Lucile McDonald
The Seattle Times, 24 January 1965

The history link to San Juan County is through the Orcas Island built wooden, tug/tender,

the 56-ft MONAGHAN operated by Captain Robert O. Griswold, as mentioned in the photo text.

For additional reading, there are at least two books in print on the loss of the PRINCESS SOPHIA.
      The Sinking of the PRINCESS SOPHIA, Taking the North Down with Her by Ken Coates and Bill Morrison. University of Alaska Press, 1991.
      The Final Voyage of the PRINCESS SOPHIA, Did They All Have to Die? by Betty O'Keefe and Ian MacDonald. Heritage House, 1998.

Veteran Scientist-Educators recall early Institution in Friday Harbor

“As the only major marine institution of its kind in the continental US on waters of the Northeast Pacific, the island establishment has gained eminence in the world of research.
   

Professors Trevor Kincaid (L) and Thomas C. Frye
original photo 1961, by Roy Scully.
from the archives of
the Saltwater People Historical Society.

   






















      Two men who now are professors emeritus comprised the entire faculty of the laboratories when they opened in 1904 as the Puget Sound Marine Biological Station. They find the present highly specialized program for graduate students vastly removed from the summer natural-history courses they conducted at Friday Harbor.    
      ‘Instead of studying all about a sea cucumber, someone studies its blood supply’, said Prof. Trevor Kincaid, zoologist. ‘There is a shift in emphasis. Biological science has become an adjunct of physics and chemistry.'
     Dr. T. C. Frye, Kincaid's partner in the original enterprise, remembers how the pair divided studies so that one took all marine animals and the other, all marine plants. They also divided administration matters, Kincaid planning and scheduling expeditions, and Frye keeping the accounts.
     Kincaid, 88, was here at the inception of the Friday Harbor project. Dr. Frye, 91, who still keeps office hours in the botany department at the university, joined the faculty after the site had been chosen. He was in time to initiate the first season's work.
     The two men alternated as director for a number of summers, to permit each to engage in other fieldwork. 
     The staff is recruited from the departments of botany, meteorology and climatology, microbiology, oceanography, zoology, and the College of Fisheries. 
     Speaking of the laboratories' long incubation period, Kincaid said that when he arrived in Seattle as a student in 1894, a member of the Young Naturalists Society, Philip P. Randolph, took him on a weekend expeditions to dredge for specimens in Puget Sound. They used a two-handled windlass rigged to a small tugboat, the MOTH, which was fueled with driftwood.
     For two summers Columbia University maintained a temporary marine laboratory on a wharf at Port Townsend. The presence of this New York contingent stimulated the desire of the U of WA faculty to have similar facilities.
     Kincaid who meanwhile had attained teaching status, and N. I. Gardner, a graduate student in biology went to Friday Harbor about 1899 on a collecting trip and were entranced by what they found.
     When the Board of Regents of the university was won over to the idea of a marine laboratory, I opposed going as far away as the San Juans. Kincaid and H. R. Foster, botany professor, were instructed to find a site nearer Seattle, such as the old camping place at Rocky Bay or the abandoned Columbia University site, which Port Townsend had offered.
     ‘I had it in my head that either move was merely temporizing to satisfy the authorities and that we would make no mistake at Friday Harbor where opportunities for marine studies were exceptional’, Kincaid said.
     In the spring of 1904, the university announced opening of the station with an enrollment fee of $10 and $3 for lab charges. The entire cost of fees, board, laundry, and incidentals, for a season was no more than $45.
     Classes began 23 June in a cottage rented from Edward G. Warbass, on the south side of the harbor. The 19 students and two faculty members lived in tents. They built their own kitchen, dining, and lab tables.
      

University students and their tents on "campus"
at the Puget Sound Marine Biological Station 
Friday Harbor, WA., undated original photos from
the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

      Opening day, breakfast was served at 4 am so students could be on their way by launch to Minnesota Reef to gather specimens on an extreme low tide. In the next 6 weeks, the rented craft that carried them on trips to Lopez, Stewart, Waldron, Orcas, Shaw, Sucia Islands, and several smaller ones.
      At other times, parties walked along the coast of San Juan or crossed the island by lumber wagon to tramp in mud over their shoe tops, gathering mollusks and seaweed at Kanaka Bay and other shallow bays. It was Dr. Frye’s first experience at the seashore—he was from Illinois—and he has not forgotten the day the dredge brought up a fighting eight-ft shark.
      The next summer, classes moved into the unoccupied Pacific American Fisheries cannery, using the ‘China house’ for kitchen and mess hall and the main building for laboratory. Tents were scattered behind the establishment. 
      These facilities were available until cannery operations were resumed in 1905. Boat transportation in this period was furnished by a shrimp-dredger *.
      Kincaid in this interval, had established a cooperative plan of studies, attracting professors and their students from Oregon, Iowa, Kansas, and the normal school at Bellingham, now Western Washington College of Education.
Washington State College opened a marine-studies camp at Olga, on Orcas Island, and in 1909, the two schools arranged for students to spend three weeks there and three weeks in the old facilities at Friday Hbr. The university temporarily reoccupied the Warbass cottage, then owned by Andrew Newhall.

Early Warbass/Newhall estate, Friday Harbor, WA.
Original photo from the archives of S. P. H. S.©

 









      The joint arrangement was impractical, as tent floors and kitchen equipment were cumbersome to transfer from one island to another.
The State Legislature had appropriated $6,000 for a lab building and the university tried to obtain federal land on which to erect it. To keep the establishment at Friday Hbr, Newhall donated a four-acre site with 1,000 yards of waterfront, adjoining the old cottage.
      The lab, standing several stories high, still can be seen, overhanging the water. It stood partly on cement piers, with a landing float anchored in front.
Again students slept in tents scattered up the slope. Toward the end there were 61 tents.
‘We needed to expand, Kincaid said, ‘and Mr. Newhall asked a high price for additional land. A highway had been run across the property, taking out a large part of it, making an escarpment on the upper side of the road and furnishing a perpetual source of dust. It was becoming very uncomfortable.
‘We decided to try again to obtain a portion of the idle military reservation on the north shore of Friday Hbr. An act of Congress was required to get it for us.
  

U of W Marine Labs, Friday Harbor, WA.
Undated photos from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©
top photo by Ferd Brady.

       The land was secured in 1921, and construction of new buildings was started two years later. The government retains ownership of the property in emergencies; in wartime, this was a Coast Guard station.
The year Dr. Thompson became director, the oceanography department got funds for the laboratories from the Rockefeller Foundation.
      ‘Dr. Thompson was a chemist who specialized in sea water, a dynamic person who was bound to make the institution go places,’ said Kincaid. ‘Under him, the type of studies expanded and changed.’
The work at Friday Hbr has broadened to such an extent that the labs have attracted foreign experts in their special marine fields and the station has been the scene of international conferences. So much has been accomplished in studies of worldwide impact that the humble beginning of the place has been lost.
Today’s work runs to parasitology, behavior of certain sea creatures, endocrinology, the physiology of reproduction, the electric, chemical, and mechanical aspects of a crustacean’s neuromuscular inhibition, the distribution of an enzyme, and the mechanism of uptake of radioactive phosphate from seawater, by an embryo sea urchin.
The research now is all highly refined and far-reaching in results compared to light-hearted students of nature who roamed the islands with buckets in those early years."


Above text by journalist/historian/author Lucile McDonald (1898-1992)
Seattle Times, February 1961.
McDonald authored or co-authored 28 books. From 1932, except for 3 years absence, she lived in Washington State. She and later, her son, donated her papers to the University of Washington Library.

*A post on the beginning shrimp fishery in Washington State with images of the early boats, some built in San Juan County, can be viewed here

AN EPIC OF THE PACIFIC

RYO YEI MARU, Seattle, WA. 1927.
Photo by author, O. M Salisbury.
A scan from the book This Was Seafaring published by 
the author's son, Albert who owned Bonanza Publishing.

"On the last day of October 1927, as the big freighter MARGARET DOLLAR, Seattle-bound from San Francisco, approached Cape Flattery, a small two-masted, weather-beaten craft, with tattered remnants of sails blowing in the breeze, was sighted off the mouth of Quillayute R. rolling in the long ocean swell and steadily drifting toward the shore, six or seven miles away. The hoarse whistle of the big boat stirred no evidence of life on the drifter, so a boat was lowered and pushed off to investigate.
      As the boarding party approached the small craft, the characters on her stern identified her as Japanese, and her hull, encrusted 4-inches deep with barnacles, and seaweed 2-ft long waving to and fro in the heaving waters, proclaimed a vessel long in salt water, while the damaged rigging and sail tatters, told of fierce struggles with the elements.
      When the boarders climbed her side they were greeted by bleaching bones scattered about the deck, but not a sign of life. Empty fish holds, fore and aft, and fishing gear carefully coiled in baskets on top of the cabin, showed the derelict to have been a fishing boat, and a dismantled gas engine revealed the cause of its plight; while huddled in a corner of the little cabin, the mummified bodies of two men showed the fate of the crew.
      Disabled engine, sails carried away, empty water casks, absence of every trace of food, weed and barnacle loaded hull, and shriveled human forms, told plainly a story of terrific tragedy--accident, struggle, drifting for months, and thousands of miles, starvation, and death.
       But where were the rest of the crew? Clothing scattered about indicated the presence of a number of men. The small boat was gone. Had those two figures in the corner been abandoned by the others? And what were those bones on deck--so many, and all so clean?
      Search furnished no information. Letters and papers in a rattan basked in the cabin were in Japanese, as were the inscriptions painted on a cedar board in the cabin, they could not be read without an interpreter.
      The freighter towed the boat into Puget sound and left it at quarantine at Pt. Townsend, but carried the papers and the painted board to Seattle, where the captain turned them over to the Japanese consul for the information they might contain.
       The message painted by the captain of the ill-fated boat on the piece of board revealed the name of the boat to  be RYO YEI MARU, meaning 'good--prosperous-ship', and that, with a crew of twelve men, she had sailed from the village of Misaka, Japan, for the tuna fishing grounds on 5 Dec, 11-months before. While fishing, the engine had broken beyond repair, a fierce hurricane had driven them off the banks, and in time their store of food, eight bushes of rice, was consumed. All hope was gone when the captain painted his message on that piece of board on 6 March 1927, and death was awaited by the despairing men.
      A tragic story with all the details to be read between the lines.
      A later and more careful search by the US Customs officials, after the boat had been towed to Seattle, added much to the story, for a diary was discovered in the effects of, presumable, the last survivor, which detailed the whole harrowing tale from the time the little craft sailed from Japan, until the date of the last entry 11 May.
       The staunch little boat, 86-ft L x 15-ft B x 12-ft D, was powered with a 2-cyl gas engine, supplemented by the sails characteristic of the native boats.
      The diary told of its departure from Misaka and that five days later an engine valve broke, leaving the boat at the mercy of the hurricane. On 13 Dec a Japanese fishing boat was sighted, on the 16th, another fishing boat and a big Japanese liner were sighted, but none of them paid heed to their signals of distress, it they saw them, and even a fire built on the deck, failed to attract. Those were the only boats sighted during all the terrible months of starvation and mental agony.
      Friends and relatives of the members of the crew in San Fran and Seattle, have furnished information that when all the other fishing boats had found their way back to port after the storm the RYO YEI MARU was given up as lost, and on 16 Dec. services were held for the dead. Not long afterwards, insurance on the craft was paid by the underwriters to some thirty stockholders in Japan and in CA and WA. The same informants have told that boat was ill-fated from the first. She was an innovation from the old Nipon construction in many respects. It was the first 'great ship' to be built in the village of Wabuka, was five times the tonnage of the native boats, and was considered a palatial affair. She was also the first 'vompany' ship to be floated in that locality; the first to carry ice for the preservation of her catch; and the first to be equipped with an engine.
       Sutyi Izawa, the cook, started the diary in lead pencil in a little water-stained book, and it is a wonderful revelation of physical suffering and mental agony--click on "read more" button below--

INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE by Skip Bold

When I was in my teens, in the late 1950s to early 1960s, I spent a fair amount of time in Deer Harbor. Deer Harbor and the closest grocery store, post office, shower, laundry, gas for my boat, and in my late teens, girls, and the Deer Harbor Dance Hall. What a hoot that place was! Two of the more colorful locals I recall were Sherman Thompson who had the saw mill at the lagoon, and 'Mississip' who had a  work boat and who specialised in such water front activities as log salvage.
      The story I am about to relate likely took place in the later fall of 1958.

Drawing by Skip Bold, to illustrate his essay.

      Friday.     
      That weekend dad and I took the KLICKITAT to Shaw late that night.
      Saturday. 
      The next morning I was amazed to discover that half the cove, in which the Neck Point float resides, was filled with logs. That is to say that there was a large, fresh, log boom moored to the trees along the rocky western shore of the cove. I can't remember how many sections the boom had, but it was all of 200-ft long. I do remember the whole cove being fragrant with the scent of fresh cut timber. There were no boats nor anyone around to explain the boom's presence.
      Sunday.    
      The net morning dawned bright & sunny with a light NW breeze.

Tug drawing by Skip Bold.

 Soon after daylight, a tug approached rapidly from Deer Harbor. The tug identity remains a mystery.¹ In a life time of messing with boats I can remember the names and sheer lines of nearly every vessel that held any meaning for me. The name of this tug, however, has always drawn a blank. I suspect now, 52-years later, that the name and port of hail had been painted out.
      The tug roared right up to the boom, made up alongside, set up a bridal and towline, sent a couple of guys ashore to cast off from the trees, and got underway with the tow, for Deer Harbor. I don't think the tug was in the cove here for more than ten minutes. It was a very focused and rapid retrieval.
      Later that spring I learned more about the mysterious log boom when I related my story to Jack Tusler on Coon Island. He laughed and said 'Well, that would have been 'Mississip & Sherman', and then proceeded with the local scuttlebutt--
      It seems a tug in BC waters had gotten in trouble and had to abandon her tow.²
      The Deer Harbor boys heard of the drifting tow on the Marine radio³, and thought this might be a fine entrepreneurial opportunity.
      They got someone with a tug involved and went up to BC at night, found the log boom and brought it back across the line to the San Juans. They had ditched the boom at Neck Point while they figured the next move.
      I don't know where the tow went from here, but I did hear that various authorities took a very dim view of the Deer Harbor boys' experiment in International Free Trade. I don't believe anyone was incarcerated, but it is likely that substantial fines were levied.
      I never saw that mystery tug again.

      ¹ Mystery Tug: Small for a top house tug, 70-ft LOA or less. Two old style masts w/boom. Boat deck too small for standard lifeboat on davits. Fairly flat sheer w/low free board. Modern high speed diesel, surely not the original machine.
      ² Abandoning a tow. Dirty weather had something to do with this because the logs had recently lost a lot of bark. Possibly fuel got stirred up in dirty tanks and caused injector problems. Another possibility would be stuffing box or sea chest problems, necessitating a convenient beach, without delay.
      ³ Marine Radio. In those days, Victoria or Vancouver Coast Guard (BC) would give scheduled notice to mariners broadcast on the radio. Deadheads, missing buoys, drifting tows, and other unexpected navigational hazards would be described with reported locations, thus aiding our friends discovery process.
Above submitted by 
Skip Bold, Wasp Passage, San Juan Archipelago.
2013.

✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ Island Built Towboat KLATAWA Home Port, Friday Harbor

Tug KLATAWA (O.N. 210245)
Photographer, date, and location, unknown.
Scan purchased from the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society©
Please see this P.S.M.H.S. if you'd like to purchase a copy.

This gal's name was spelled CLATAWA when her documentation papers were sent to the US Department of Commerce and Labor, but when the Master Carpenter's Certificate arrived home, the 'C' was struck and her name was KLATAWA.
      The gas screw KLATAWA was built by Delbert E. Hoffman (1870-1915), when he operated his boat shop adjacent to what we now know as the Shaw Island ferry landing in San Juan County. 
      Mr. Will Jakle *, a businessman from Friday Harbor, had come to Hoffman with a design he found in a magazine. The builder tried to convince Jakle that it was not a suitable design for a vessel carrying a lot of weight, as for the intended purpose of hauling fish. The builder knew she needed more freeboard aft and his grandson, Henry, remembers hearing that grandpa quietly snuck on approximately 8 more inches of freeboard and the vessel was launched in 1912. 
      The tonnage admeasurement papers include more measurements that you might care to read; her registered length was listed as 50.2' x 15.8' B x 4.8' D; tonnage was 23 G. tons and 15 N. tons burden.
      The year after launching Captain Jakle was mentioned in the local news for hauling hay and produce from homeport to Pt. Townsend. In 1914, KLATAWA towed Scow IPC-No. 1 with 100 head of young sheep sold by Ed Chevalier of Spieden Island to a farmer in Sydney, B.C. A few years later she was hauling two new Ford cars for Ed Allen who sold them to N. P. Tuck and Walter Arends, both of Roche Harbor. In 1917, Jakle sailed to Seattle to have a new engine installed, a new 60-HP heavy duty Troyer-Fox. According to the supportive local news reporter, she was promoted as the equal of any tug, of her dimensions, on the Sound.
      We can view an early photo of KLATAWA in the local history book by Beryl Troxell Mason, John Troxell, the Fish Trap Man. That was a play day for the hardworking tug to transport some Lopez folks off to a picnic. Most of her career was spent pulling as a towboat in Puget Sound. 
      At one time she was owned by the well known, 'Doc' Freeman, of Seattle. 
      Later, tugboat operator, Mr. Ken Thibert of Anacortes, had KLATAWA towing log booms to the Morrison Mill in Bellingham and to a mill in Stanwood. In 1955, KLATAWA tossed Thibert overboard; he almost drowned as a cable tightened while they were towing boom sticks off the beach. That was the last towboat he owned; afterwards he went into fish boats. 
      KLATAWA was still in registery in 1981.
      You might possibly understand some boats are deserving of special status. When the boatbuilder's great grandson, Michael, located KLATAWA in the 1990s, he made arrangements for the native born boat to come home to Shaw Island. There were some serious dreams of restoration but all KLATAWA needed was a haul up above the shore, to enjoy the royal view of Hix Bay. A fitting, final, resting place for one of the family.
     * William Jakle (1874-1955) was born at Cattle Point, San Juan Island, son of early pioneer residents. His father was a soldier stationed at American Camp and his mother was one of the first white women on the island. 
     Well-known mariner and marine artist Steve Mayo of Bellingham, did a beautiful watercolor of KLATAWA working in her home waters, for the Jakle family. He generously agreed to let the Shaw Island Historical Museum have professional copies made for the museum collection and also for the Henry Hoffman family.  

SEA SCOUTS ON ORCAS ISLAND

Sea Scout Group Formed on Orcas Island,
March 1945.

SEA SCOUTS ACTIVIAN, 1945.
Possibly at their camp on Cypress Island, WA.
Photo purchased from the Whatcom Museum of History and Art©
Please contact them if a copy of this image is needed.

The S. S. S. MORAN was launched Saturday, 24 February 1945, in the dining room of Norton's Inn, Deer Harbor, with a chowder feed and appropriate and impressive ceremonies. Until the day when the organization can secure an actual sea-going vessel, the S. S. S. MORAN will be a land-ship in scout terminology.
      Officers as commissioned are: Skipper, Rev. Harvey Robinson; mates, Mr. Burt Winne, and Dr. W. C. Adams. The ship's company is made up of Jim Hendron, Richard Phillips, Dan White, Jack Coffelt, Dever Cunningham, Ed Coffelt, Bill Kelton, and Verne Coffelt. The launching of the MORAN marks the beginning of a Senior Scouting program on Orcas Island. Boys eligible for membership are those 15 to 18 years of age.
      The evening's program was carried on through the cooperation of people from every community of the Island.
      The Sea Scout ships ACTIVIAN and FLYING CLIPPER from Bellingham, and the VIKING from Mount Vernon brought 64 Sea Scouts and officers to carry out the Bridge of Honor and the launching ceremony.
      The boats were tied up in Deer Harbor Saturday, and on Sunday morning sailed to East Sound where the boys from the Bellingham ships and the Orcas Island group attended the church service. In the afternoon many interested persons were taken aboard the ships for refreshments and a cruise around the bay. The boats departed about 3:00 o'clock, leaving on Orcas Island, an organized and active Sea Scout Ship.
Friday Harbor Journal, 8 March 1945.  

Lopez Island Dock and Ferry Recollections

Ralph HItchcock's route from Anacortes to Lopez Island, WA.
Click to enlarge.
Small detail from Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands
Revised 4th edition, 1989, not for navigational use, R. O. Malin copyright.
Courtesy of Sobay Maps, Olympia, WA. ©
Please don't copy; these artistically drawn maps are available
from retailers and from their website, here.
Our c. 53"x30" copy shows numerous WA. State Parks, shipwrecks, 
ranging from Olympia, WA, up north to Saltspring Island, B. C.
(for sailor Doug), it shows the area near Cypress Island 
where Capt. Vancouver lost his anchor in 1792.

"These memories start in 1955 when we acquired waterfront acreage on Swift's Bay, Lopez Island, two miles from the Upright Head ferry dock. In 1923 the original ferry dock was at Port Stanley when the steam ferry CITY OF ANGELES was serving the San Juan Islands and Sidney.

CITY OF ANGELES
Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

 In the 1950s the daily mail came to the Lopez ferry dock and the other San Juan islands by the mail boat BRISTOL until she was sunk in a collision (apparently while on automatic pilot). Her successors included the DENNY M, MACARD, and finally the WATER BABY. After that the mail was flown to and from Lopez.
      Starting about 1957, the Lopez dock attendant was Robert Frederickson, whose wife Mary operated the restaurant they built adjacent to the dock. One of the favorites was Mary's lemon pie, ordered by most customers until it was gone. Which leads to an anecdote about the ferry VASHON.
      On summer weekends in the late '50s and early '60s, the VASHON was the Sunday 'cleanup' boat.

The darling VASHON
Pre 1960.
both original photos from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

     







 







She was to be in the islands in the afternoon to take overload cars off Orcas and Lopez to Anacortes on the mainland. Her crew was very fond of homemade lemon pie. So the VASHON would arrive at the Lopez ferry dock early just about every Sunday afternoon, tie up, and send a few crew members to the restaurant for lemon pie. After they'd eaten, they would undock and cruise toward Orcas to pick up at least part of the overload.
      After we had erected a simple cabin and acquired electrical power in 1959, we spent many weekends at 'Driftide' on Swift's Bay, avoiding Friday and Sunday ferry overloads by leaving our car at Anacortes. Our principal supplies (mostly food) were neatly packaged in a big, canvas, tote bag. Upon arrival at Lopez, we walked up the dock to the restaurant where we kept a two-wheeled cart into which the tote bag closely fit. The road beyond Odlin Park and past Swift's Bay had recently been blacktopped, so it was a very pleasant two-mile walk to the cabin. On Sunday afternoons, we reversed the process, walking back to the ferry dock past scores of waiting cars in the lineup. We dropped off our cart and walked aboard the ferry. 
      We recall one sunny Sunday afternoon returning to Anacortes on the VASHON. Because of the noisey crowd on the passenger deck, we decided to stay on the car deck, seating ourselves at the foot of the stairway with our backs against the stair trunk sidses. It was one of those days when the swells from the west on the Strait of Juan de Fuca were rounding Colville Point and coming north on Rosario Strait parallel to the ferry's course. After coming out from Thatcher Pass and past James Island we were astonished to feel the stair trunk sides flexing as the ferry gently rolled in the swells. It became quickly obvious that the whole ferry house was swaying on the deck as she rolled. We concluded we didn't want to travel on the VASHON during a southeast storm when it gets really lumpy in Rosario Strait. We wonder if the passenger deck beams were ever reinforced with heavier gussets to the sides of the house.
      The VASHON had only manual steering--no power boost--and the quartermaster had to work hard, especially when docking.
      One weekday, with Capt. Snart in command of the VASHON, we were in our car with friends next to the VASHON's bow at the starboard bulwark. It was a morning trip--very foggy. Either the radar wasn't functioning or had not yet been installed. Soon after departure from Anacortes, two of us left the car to bring coffee and doughnuts to the ladies, saying to them jokingly, 'We'll be right back in case there's any trouble.' We quickly returned with the food and were eating when a great indefinable shadow loomed up on the starboard bow. Then the VASHON's engine shut down and we glided toward that nearing threat. I said, 'let's get our of the car!'
      The VASHON's engine went into reverse. We realized that thankfully, the unknown shape was not a ship but rocky land, now dead ahead.
      Within a ferry's length of a steep rocky cliff, the VASHON stopped and very slowly commenced moving away. We had almost landed on the southern end of James Island, more than a mile off course. To our knowledge, that was the closest a ferry had come to landing there. We slowly moved north, past James Island and into Thatcher Pass where the fog in the Strait cleared. Soon we were docking at Lopez. There is a manually controlled siren at the Lopez dock to assist ferry captains in locating the dock in dense fog. Fortunately, it wasn't needed by Capt. Snart for that particular trip.
      Another time we were on the KLICKITAT eastbound to Anacortes on a cloudy day. A strong southeast wind was blowing. The captain elected to hold course toward Guemes Channel. The KLICK was occasionally slamming into the heavier seas and rolling considerably--enough so that the unoccupied observation cabin chairs slid back and forth from side to side on the linoleum deck.
     

Lopez Ferry Landing
both images from the S. P. H. S.©

 
      In the summer of 1964, the ferry system started work on a new ferry dock at Lopez. One September day, a floating crane lifted the old dock bridge out, and lifted the new dock bridge in. The next morning the KLICKITAT was dispatched on a special trip (no car or passengers) to Lopez to act as a tugboat and pull out the old ferry dock wing walls.
      On a few occasions, we had breakfast on the ferry while travelling from Anacortes to Lopez. We particularly remember getting good pancakes and coffee in the KLICKITAT's galley, which, in her old arrangement, was at the opposite end of the passenger cabin from the observation room. 
      

Washington State ferry EVERGREEN STATE
Photo by Bernie McNeil
Published by Smith Western Co., Inc., Tacoma.
from the archives of the S. P. H. S. ©

Our most enjoyable ferry trips to and from Lopez were on the EVERGREEN STATE when Capt. Cecil Weyrich's crew were on duty. We had good camaraderie with Ted Gagner, the mate, Vic Bottoms, an able seaman and sometime quartermaster, and Sam Kerris, ordinary seaman. Captain Weyrich was easy to talk to, and welcomed us in the pilothouse after undocking and before docking, on several occasions."
Text by Ralph Hitchcock
Published by the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society
Quarterly journal, The Sea Chest, September 1994.
      The present day, dedicated editors of the publication, volunteers Ron and Connie Burke, have led their team to a highly regarded, first class publication, now with touches of color added. The Sea Chest, going into its 45th year, is a benefit of membership. Here's a link.

Ralph Hitchcock, 1965.
Author of this essay and former Lopezian.
Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S. ©

      
















Mr. Hitchcock and his wife Eva were both life members of the PSMHS, with keen maritime interests. 
      After Ralph retired as a Boeing engineer for 27 years, he expanded on his avocation, to become a professional model builder for 25 more years, producing 22 models, most all of museum quality. There are three donated to the Lopez Island Historical Museum. In retirement the Hitchcocks lived on Lopez Island for a dozen years.
      There is another log entry written by model maker Mr. Hitchcock, which can be viewed here