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108-537: Puget Sound and the many adjacent waterways, inlets, and bays form a natural transportation route for much of the western part of Washington. For navigation purposes, Puget Sound was sometimes divided into the "upper Sound" referring to the waters south of the Tacoma Narrows , and the lower sound, referring to the waters from the Tacoma Narrows north to Admiralty Inlet . The first steamboat to operate on Puget Sound

216-545: A 14-year-old black youth, named Charles Mitchell, hid on board the Anderson , seeking passage to Canada to escape slavery . He'd been working on the vessel, and another older black man working on the Anderson as a "temporary steward" had helped him find a hiding place on the steamer. He was discovered either at Steilacoom or Seattle, and was not held right away, because he promised to work off his passage. It happened that acting territorial governor McGill and his family were also on

324-623: A Port Townsend pilot who fell from a ladder in rough seas in late December, 1912, when trying to board the steamship Setos from the pilot launch. A great danger to all wooden boats was fire. One of the worst disasters in all shipping history was the fire in New York harbor of the General Slocum on June 15, 1904, in which more than 1,000 people died. While the General Slocum was a large vessel, similar sized wooden boats were on Puget Sound and

432-523: A United States vessel of war there at the time, the affair would not have been so terminated. Mitchell had been born in Maryland (a slave state) the son of a white man named Mitchell and an enslaved woman. His mother died and he came to be enslaved by James Tilton, who later was appointed as the territorial surveyor of the Washington Territory. Although in theory the Washington Territory was free soil,

540-626: A beach where she gradually disintegrated. Of her fate, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote, on March 31, 1898: The old Eliza Anderson, after an interesting career of 40 years, is at last a total wreck. During a terrible storm early in March she broke from her anchorage at Dutch Harbor and went ashore before any assistance could be given her. She is now lying on her side, with the tide ebbing and flowing through several jagged holes in her bottom. She will surely and slowly go to pieces. The news of

648-609: A chance to make money. She was then fixed up sufficiently to make voyages as far north as Wrangell, Alaska . When the Cassiar rush gave out, the Anderson was returned to Seattle, where she lay between 1877 and 1883, eventually sinking at her moorings. In 1883, Captain Wright raised the Anderson , pumped her out, cleaned her up a bit, and put her on the run from Seattle to New Westminster , British Columbia, with Captain E.W. Holmes as her master and O.O. Denny her chief engineer. By this time,

756-494: A crewman on the Corwin when the revenue cutter had set out in 1897 to search for the missing Anderson . Braddock told Wiedeman that in the course of the search, he'd questioned two brothers, Erik and Olaf Heestad, on Kodiak Island. They'd been operating the cannery near where the Anderson had sought safety. When Anderson left Kodiak after coaling, Erik had stowed himself away on board, hoping to get to Dutch Harbor to ask an uncle for

864-645: A floating museum. It is one of few mosquito fleet-era ferries operating on Puget Sound today. It runs every half-hour beginning on the hour and half-hour on the Port Orchard side and 15 and 45 minutes after the hour on the Bremerton side. One-way fare is $ 2.00. Occasionally, talk of restoring the mosquito fleet revives, which in modern parlance has become known as the "passenger-only ferry", although apparently not much has come of these ideas, as they seem to be dependent on public funding or subsidies. (Although not necessarily

972-451: A narrow island or headland, for most of the whistle continued by on both sides. With only a few seconds' leeway, the navigators also had to decide whether the echo was bouncing from floating logs, buoys – or even a solid fog bank. An experienced captain needed years of navigation on a particular route to be able to safety pilot his boat through a fog bank or a dark, rainy night using this method. This, of course, made it difficult simply to put

1080-471: A new boat on a particular route without a crew with strong local experience. Olympia's main steamboat landing was Percival Dock. In 1910, boats operating from this dock included the then-new gasoline-engined tug Sandman , the Foss launch Lark , and the mail boat Mizpah . The sternwheeler Multnomah also came to Percival Dock on her Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia route. The little sternwheeler Willie (67 feet long)

1188-575: A number of effects on the Canadian west coast, perhaps the most important of which was the establishment of British Columbia as a separate colony from Vancouver Island . For the American steamboats, they benefitted by decision of Canadian governor James Douglas to grant "sufferances" to them to allow them to work on the Victoria to Fraser River route at a levy of $ 12 per run. Eliza Anderson arrived just at

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1296-620: A particular route. Some of the reasons for this were economic, as high-passenger routes, such as the Seattle-Port Orchard or the Seattle-Tacoma routes might justify one or even several high-speed passenger-only vessels, like Tacoma, Flyer , or Athlon . Others, like the East Pass route of the Virginia V , warranted a mixed-use passenger/freight/mail boat. One important consideration of

1404-516: A propeller, built at Philadelphia in 1847, and somehow brought around South America to California, where she had collected gold from gold seekers during the great California gold rush. Paid off by her California competitors in a typical monopolistic deal of the era, Major Tomkins was sitting idle at the dock in San Francisco in 1854 when she was bought by Capt. James M. Hunt and John M. Scranton, who brought her north to Puget Sound. Once she arrived,

1512-541: A showing of compliance by the vessel's owners.) As automobile ownership rose and highways and roads improved, passenger travel fell off. Many boats were converted to automobile ferries, the first being the Bailey Gatzert . Others were eventually just abandoned on beaches or never repaired after a wreck or a mechanical breakdown. Some, like the Magnolia , were converted into towboats. Others had different fates. Arcadia ,

1620-422: A subsidy, since they were getting paid the going rate for the work, the first mosquito fleet was heavily supported by mail carriage contracts.) Some movement towards this may be happening. In August 2007, the city of Kingston received a $ 3.5 million grant from the federal government to cover at least some of the costs of building a terminal and a passenger-only ferry between Kingston and Seattle. In April 2007,

1728-553: A surprise inspection of the steamer Garland on February 6, 1904, these defects were found: Similar conditions were found on the same day on the Prosper , and to a lesser degree on the Alice Gertude and the Whatcom , although they were referred for special boiler inspections. The inspections and fines assessed on these four vessels were just part of a campaign by the inspectors to enforce

1836-511: A ton, were forced to pull Otter off the Fraser run, at least temporarily. With Otter gone, fares shot back up to $ 6 per passenger and $ 6 per ton. Beaver and Labouchere made some runs on this route, but neither did well at carrying passengers. Julia , then running the mail, was a shallow-draft riverine vessel not fit to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca during the winter. On November 1, 1859, she

1944-418: A variety of tunes, including (to the irritation of Canadians when she operated north of the border) " Yankee Doodle " and " Star Spangled Banner ". Other boats began to appear, and by 1864, J.B. Libby , Mary Woodruff , Pioneer , Alexandra , and Jenny Jones had all appeared on the sound. Steamboat operations were still irregular and unsatisfactory to the general public, as shown by a newspaper commentary of

2052-610: Is not entirely clear, but McGill went ashore and either acquiesced in the assertion of the Canadian court's writ over the vessel, or, as the Pioneer Democrat later insisted, protested vociferously against it. Either way, Mitchell was removed from the vessel by the Canadian authorities and became a free man. This was none to the liking of Olympia's newspaper at the time, the Pioneer Democrat , which in an article quite free with racially derogatory terms, stated that war would have been justified to prevent Mitchell's release: Had there been

2160-629: Is to say, paper promises to pay. Finch bought these up for 20 cents on the dollar (he paid more for better-quality debts) and eventually collected most of the principal and interest from them. When things were winding down for the Anderson on the Olympia–Victoria route, she was tied up to Percival Dock in Olympia for some time, until the Cassiar Gold Rush in northern British Columbia seemed to offer

2268-401: The Anderson and she was back in the water on July 31, 1897, and she was somehow able to meet the approval of hulls and boilers inspectors Bryant and Cherry. On August 10, 1897, she began her voyage to Alaska under Capt. Thomas Powers, with about 40 passengers, including a few women and children. The plan was to take the entire fleet up to St. Michael, the only port anywhere near the mouth of

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2376-411: The Anderson in 1897, was still very much alive and did not die until 1906. Still the story made the rounds among the superstitious and stuck around for a long time. Ghost helmsman or not, the ship was forced to run for shelter on Kodiak Island . Fortuitously, she found an unused cannery on the island, complete with 75 tons of coal. (Here is where the "Ghost Helmsman" mysteriously vanished.) This supply

2484-459: The Anderson place on the Olympia–Victoria mail run, which resulted in the Anderson ' s being returned to the Fraser River route. In mid-September, 1859, a wedding was held on the Anderson just off Queenborough, one of the early settlements on the Fraser River, between Carrie A. Gray, from Hope, British Columbia , and Jacob Kamm , one of the earliest, and later among the most successful of

2592-521: The Anderson would sink on the way. The little fleet ran into a gale near Kodiak Island and the Merwin ' s tow line parted. Merwin , and the 16 unlucky souls aboard her, were only recovered with difficulty by the Holyoke . Holyoke , Merwin and Bryant became separated from the Anderson , and when they arrived at Dutch Harbor , they reported her missing. The revenue cutter Corwin went out to look for

2700-534: The Anderson . D.B. Finch, once the purser on the vanquished Enterprise , shifted over to the Anderson , and later became a part-owner and master. Captain Finch had a head for figures, and became one of leading bankers in the Washington Territory , conducting finance at every landing called at by the Anderson . Counties in those days were poorly funded, and paid their bills not in cash money, but "warrants", that

2808-478: The Anderson . Mitchell confided to McGill's son that he intended to desert the ship in Victoria, and the son told the father. Governor McGill then told the ships officers, and when they were just four miles out of Victoria, they seized Mitchell and held him in "close confinement". Once in Victoria, word got out that Mitchell was being held against his will aboard the Anderson . A group of protesters composed of both white and black citizens of Victoria marched down to

2916-621: The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company was making its bid to monopolize all water and rail transport in the state of Oregon and the Washington Territory. This brought on a rate war with the monopoly's newer sidewheeler, George E. Starr , under Captain George Roberts. In April 1884, Anderson was run hard on the Victoria run against the Oregon company's Olympian , a huge and expensive-to-run sidewheeler. Anderson ran fares down to $ 1.00 and

3024-465: The Pumpkins , as the locals called her, made her very slow way (about 5 miles per hour) among Olympia, Seattle, Victoria, and other places, carrying mail, freight, and passengers. Pumpkins was lost at Victoria, blown ashore in a squall following a mistake in navigation; all aboard reached safety in a narrow escape. Other boats were brought in during these early times, including Traveler , Constitution ,

3132-705: The Strait of Georgia , and the Fraser River but also for short periods in Alaska . She was generally known as the Old Anderson and was considered slow and underpowered even for the time. Even so, it was said of her that "no steamboat ever went slower and made money faster." She played a role in the Underground Railroad and had a desperate last voyage to Alaska as part of the Klondike Gold Rush . Eliza Anderson

3240-480: The Tacoma (launched 1913) or brought in from other areas, like Indianapolis , Chippewa . The Tacoma could make the run from Seattle to Tacoma in 77 minutes dock to dock. Over 40 different steamboat routes were on Puget Sound. While steamboats were shifted from route to route, also a strong tendency existed for vessels to be run on the same route for a long period of time, and in fact many vessels were purpose-built for

3348-532: The Yukon River , abandon the Anderson there, and then take the Merwin up the Yukon to the gold fields. Merwin herself had her funnel and paddlewheel unshipped for transit and the boat been completely boarded up for the sea voyage. Even so, the company still managed to find 16 people willing to book passage on Merwin . Many considered the ship inspectors' assessment of the Anderson as overly optimistic: In spite of

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3456-507: The Yukon Territory . Gold seekers were willing to book passage on just about anything that floated, and the owners of various dubious craft seized their chance. By this time, Anderson had been tied up for quite some time, and had been functioning not as a steamboat but a roadhouse and gambling hall. A flotilla of dubious vessels, since described as "floating coffins," was organized, consisting of Eliza Anderson traveling in company with

3564-589: The $ 36,000 per year mail contract. The Anderson ran on the Victoria run until 1870 when she was replaced by the Olympia . Anderson continued to serve until 1877 as a reserve boat. While the events leading up to the Civil War were far away from Puget Sound, they affected the people in the Northwest just the same. The Anderson played her role in these events, including the Underground Railroad . On September 24, 1860,

3672-423: The American settlers, who only began to arrive in very small numbers in 1846. In 1851, Olympia became the only formal American town on Puget Sound. In November 1851, the schooner Exact disembarked passengers at Alki Point , which was the beginning of the city of Seattle. In February 1852, three of the settlers, Arthur A. Denny, C.D. Boren, and William N. Bell, took soundings on the east side of Elliott Bay, found

3780-415: The Anderson's wreck was brought to Seattle by the steamer Bertha. ... The wreck in the far north is a fitting end to the steamer, which has several times been rescued from the boneyard and put back into commission. In 1956, Thomas Wiedeman Sr., who had been on board the Anderson during her last Alaska trip, wrote in an article that in 1953, he'd been introduced to Joe Braddock of San Francisco, who had been

3888-591: The Columbia River (for example, Alaskan , Olympian , and in particular Yosemite , which routinely boarded more than 1,000 passengers), where on a busy day or a crowded excursion such a death toll could have occurred. Hunter, one of the premier historians of steamboats on the Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri river systems, well summarized the causes of fire in wooden steam craft: Thin floors and partitions, light framing and siding, soft and resinous woods,

3996-619: The Columbia or the Moyie on Kootenay Lake in 1957. Races were staged up through the 1950s, and a few revivals on a few runs, even as late as the Second World War. By the late 1920s, though, automobiles and highways had filled the transportation needs that steamboats had once supplied, and in 1930, the Tacoma made her last run on the Seattle-Tacoma route, under the command of Captain Everett D. Coffin,

4104-785: The Fort Langley route, the Eliza Anderson , the Beaver , and the Governor Douglas . Enterprise ' s captain, Tom Wright, thought he could do better by moving Enterprise down to the Chehalis River . In June, 1859, Captain Wright brought Enterprise down to Victoria, and arranged in July to have Eliza Anderson tow the sternwheeler around to Grays Harbor , where the Chehalis River flows into

4212-438: The Fraser River, and returned to Victoria on Wednesday. On Thursday at 3:00 a.m. she'd steam back to Olympia, laying over there to repeat the journey at the start of the next week. On the route down Puget Sound, the Anderson stopped at Steilacoom , Seattle , Port Townsend and way ports. Fares on this run were $ 20 a person, freight $ 5 to $ 10 a ton, and cattle could be shipped at $ 15 a head. The Anderson also benefited from

4320-687: The Narrows ), a strait , is part of Puget Sound in the U.S. state of Washington . A navigable maritime waterway between glacial landforms , the Narrows separates the Kitsap Peninsula from the city of Tacoma . The Narrows is spanned by the twin Tacoma Narrows Bridges ( State Route 16 ). An earlier bridge collapsed shortly after it opened. In 1841 Charles Wilkes , during the United States Exploring Expedition , named

4428-602: The Northwestern Steamship Company, which was managed by Capt. D.B. Jackson. The Anderson had been acquired by Daniel Bachhelder Jackson (1833–1895) who was organizing the Washington Steamboat Company. Starting in about 1890, Eliza Anderson was laid up on the Duwamish River during the financial crises of the early 1890s, and would have rotted away there except for the discovery of gold in

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4536-461: The Olympia–Victoria mail run during the month of August, 1859. This was arranged by her agent, John H. Scranton, who had the mail contract. Scranton was also the agent for the steamer Julia , the first sternwheeler to operate on Puget Sound. Scranton seems to have been an interesting character, as he was openly referred to in Olympia's newspaper as "Crazy Jack" and "Commodore Scranton." In September 1859 Scranton arranged to have Julia take over from

4644-510: The Pacific. Shortly after setting out, Enterprise developed mechanical problems and both vessels were forced to turn back to Esquimalt to await the arrival of new parts for the Enterprise from San Francisco . Returning to Victoria, Eliza Anderson picked up a load of miners bound for Olympia arriving there for the first time on July 9, 1859. Once she arrived in Olympia, her owners put her on

4752-653: The Starrs would pay Finch for keeping the Eliza and Olympia at the dock. Captain Geo. E. Starr died in 1876, but his company survived him, and built in 1879 the sidewheeler George E. Starr named in his honor. By the 1880s and 1890s, the population of the Puget Sound region had risen greatly, and steamboat technology had also improved. Many new and fast vessels were launched, such as the sternwheelers Greyhound and Bailey Gatzert and

4860-456: The Starrs, who had found the cash to buy the Varuna and build the sidewheeler Alida and the propeller Tacoma in the water. A fare war broke out, and on June 23, 1871, the Starrs brought into Puget Sound the then-new sidewheeler North Pacific to run against the Olympia . When North Pacific proved faster than Eliza , the fare war was ended with the customary anticompetitive agreement, whereby

4968-527: The Territorial legislature had declared that after the Dred Scott Decision , the federal government could not bar slavery in the territory. Curiously, although the Pioneer Democrat denounced the action of the Canadian court, blaming the situation on "sharp dressed" black people and misguided whites, the Pioneer Democrat also denied that he was a slave, claiming that he was some type of ward, even though

5076-501: The U. S. Steamboat Inspection Service . Each vessel's certificate stated how many lifeboats, fire axes, and similar items were supposed to be carried. Yet, that year had the tragic loss of life on the Clallam , which left Seattle bound for Victoria on January 8, 1904, under the command of Capt. George Roberts. A storm came up as she neared Victoria, and she started taking on water. When her pumps failed (apparently they brought water into

5184-656: The United States on November 4, 1860, even though the news had reached Olympia on November 22. The Anderson ' s next challenge on the Olympia–Victoria route came from Enterprise , a sidewheeler under the command of Captain Jones. Enterprise had been built in California in 1861, intended for the San Francisco – Stockton run. Her owners brought her north to compete with the Eliza Anderson . The Wrights bested them, by lowering

5292-510: The beach at night. (Following her failure on the upper sound, Fairy was placed on the much shorter Olympia-Fort Steilacoom run, until 1857, when her boiler exploded. No one was killed, but that was the end of her.) The next steamboat on the Sound was the Major Tompkins , which arrived on September 16, 1854. Tompkins (151 tons and 97 ft or 29.57 m long) was an iron-hulled steamer with

5400-408: The business. It was said that this broke Captain Wright's heart and his finances. In October, 1886, Captain Wright sold Anderson to the Puget Sound and Alaska Steamship Company, which ran her hard under Capt. J.W. Tarte on the Victoria route again. As late as 1888 she engaged in a steamboat race with another old vessel, the sidewheel steam tug Goliah . Eliza Anderson last ran on Puget Sound under

5508-406: The competition among them, they manage to keep afloat, continue in trade, and the owners of some evince a degree of disrespect for popular favor very indicative of plenty of business and fat purses. ... The arrivals and departures of steamers at both ends of the route, as well as way ports, seem especially arranged to discomfort, rather than accommodate the public. Steamers come and go like a thief in

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5616-748: The county Department of Transportation. Kitsap County voted in 2016 to subsidize three passenger ferries to Seattle. One, a low wake catamaran started service in July 2017 with six round trips daily, three in the morning and three in the afternoon. Service from Kingston to downtown Seattle began November 26, 2018 with three round trips each in the morning and afternoon. Previously riders from Kingston arrived in Edmonds and must take ground transportation from Edmonds to Seattle. One more route from Southworth to downtown Seattle began in 2020. These join two other mosquito routes, Bremerton to Port Orchard and Bremerton to Annapolis. Tacoma Narrows The Tacoma Narrows (or

5724-529: The countywide The King County Ferry District was formed to expand transportation options for county residents through passenger ferry services. The district board is composed of all nine members of the Metropolitan King County Council . On July 1, 2008, the KCFD took over the operations of two existing passenger-ferry services and considered up to five new routes. In 2015 the district was absorbed into

5832-408: The day: It has been generally supposed by everybody that steamboating on this Sound was an unprofitable business, and that without mail subsidies and such like emoluments it was scarcely possible for even a single steamer to make weekly trips and pay expenses. ... We do know, however, that several steamers, large and small, are constantly plying the Sound, and even with their annoying irregularity and

5940-399: The degree of detail that an experienced crew could deduce by echo location: Experienced navigators not only could estimate how far they were from shore, but also could determine their position by the sound of the echo. This, despite the fact that a low shoreline, a high bank, or a gravel beach all return a different sound. Another determinant was the length of the echo. A short echo denoted

6048-487: The diminutive Water Lily , Daniel Webster , Sea Bird , and the steeple-engined Wilson G. Hunt , none of them succeeding particularly well until the Fraser River Gold Rush in 1858. Puget Sound then became a shipping point for supplies and goldseekers, and the steamboats profited well. Bellingham Bay was one jumping-off point for the rush, which was handicapped by the almost complete lack of roads or paths into

6156-548: The dock. A lawyer presented a petition for a writ of habeas corpus to Chief Justice Cameron, who granted the writ. Armed with the writ, sheriff Naylor and a police constable boarded the Anderson , presented the writ to the officer in charge, and demanded that Mitchell be released to them. The officer in charge told them he didn't think he could do anything until Captain Fleming returned to the vessel. When Captain Fleming returned, he in turn deferred to Governor McGill. What happened next

6264-431: The east coast. Supposedly a tug, Cyrus Walker also carried freight and passengers; in those days on the sound, no firm distinction was necessarily drawn between steam tugs and other steam-driven craft. Eliza Anderson was still dominating the main route on the sound at the time, which was the Olympia to Victoria run. Slow but cheap to operate, the Eliza bested all competitors, including Josie McNear , New World , and

6372-489: The end. As a modern reminder of the little ships, in 2001, Kitsap County inventoried all the many landings and docks of the mosquito fleet on Bainbridge Island and the Kitsap Peninsula , and developed the Kitsap County Mosquito Fleet Trail for bicycles and foot traffic. Presently, Kitsap Transit operates a passenger-only ferry between Port Orchard and Bremerton. The Carlisle II has been designated as

6480-437: The era prior to radar, GPS, or depth-sounders, was the degree to which navigational skill and experience on a particular route played in making sure each run was completed safely and profitably. The steamboats could not stop running at night or in bad weather. Heavy fog was particularly hazardous, and could come any time of year. Once a steamboat was in a fog bank, a captain would have to reckon very carefully from his experience on

6588-768: The excursion business with the Virginia V then under the same ownership. Steamboats attracted a lot of nicknames, not all of them complimentary. As mentioned, the Tomkins was called the Pumpkins . The Greyhound was called the Hound , the Pup and the Dog. Wealleale was known to all as Weary Willie. The Robert Duinsmere , originally as a sidewheel steamer in Canada for the Vancouver- Nanaimo route,

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6696-399: The famous propeller steamer Flyer . Roads were still poor, and of course as yet had no automobiles. The water route was the preferred way to travel between the cities on the sound. In 1890, for example, regular daily service began between Tacoma and Seattle with the Greyhound . In the early 1900s, larger and more durable steel-hulled boats were either built at Puget Sound shipyards, like

6804-413: The fare to Victoria to fifty cents, with free meals. This drove Enterprise off the run after six months, and in February 1862, Captain W.A. Mowat paid $ 60,000 to buy her for the Hudson's Bay Company . The Anderson's owners bought the Enterprise ' s walking-beam engine and used it to repower their boat. Another would-be competitor, the Josie McNear , similarly faltered in her efforts to compete with

6912-403: The help of a tug. As she left that last time on her return to Seattle, Tacoma passed the hull of the Greyhound , once the fastest boat on the sound and now, minus her upper works, engines, and sternwheel, in her last service as a mudscow. The Washington State Ferries system now runs on many of the routes of the mosquito fleet, of which the fine steamer Virginia V , newly restored, is one of

7020-445: The last blast die away slowly, until it was only a moan in the throat of the whistle. "That's the last time we pass each other," he said. When Tacoma arrived at her dock in Tacoma harbor that last night, every ship in the port blew three blasts on their whistles as a salute. Andrew Foss, the owner of the great Foss tug concern, sent Foss No. 17 to help Tacoma make her landing, though two years had passed since Tacoma could afford

7128-476: The last passenger vessel (capacity 275 passengers, 100 tons freight) operating between Tacoma and upper Puget Sound landings under the command of Capt. Bernt Bertson, was sold to the federal government for use as a tender for the federal prison on McNeil Island, where she was renamed J.E. Overlade . This was not the end of Arcadia , however, as in 1959, she was bought back from the federal government by Puget Sound Excursion Lines, renamed Virginia VI , and placed in

7236-627: The last remaining vessels. The oldest remaining vessel is the motor vessel Carlisle II , built in Bellingham in 1917 and still in regular revenue service between Bremerton and Port Orchard for Kitsap Transit. Of the other little ships, Gordon Newell, one of their greatest historians, wrote: The little ships had much of humanity in them. Few had great adventures, for they had their humble, daily tasks to do in their own small world ... from Flattery to Olympia. They worked hard and well, making many friends. They seldom hurt anyone. They managed to keep their particular sort of jaunty, wind-swept beauty until

7344-406: The loss of the Clallam , and the license of her master, George Roberts, a 29-year veteran steamboat man, was suspended, and that of her chief engineer was revoked. The supply of signalling rockets also seemed to be insufficient. Following the Clallam disaster, a crackdown on violations of the steamboat safety regulations began, which seems to have been widely ignored. At Port Townsend, following

7452-434: The mainland of British Columbia at the time, and boats were also brought in to carry miners from Victoria to the mainland, and thereafter up the Fraser River. In the 1860s and the 1870s, many new steamboats, most built of wood, were brought into the area or built. One of the earliest, and most famous, boats was the sidewheeler Eliza Anderson . Her owners equipped Eliza Anderson with a steam calliope which blasted out

7560-571: The many defects found by the steamboat inspectors on Puget Sound were typical of the lax standards of the day, which contributed to the horrible death toll in the loss by fire of the General Slocum . This loss, which occurred while the General Slocum was packed with a crowd for an excursion, produced swift results on Puget Sound, as inspectors strictly counted the total numbers of persons boarded on each vessel, and gave notice that remissions of fines for equipment defects would be no more. (By custom, heavy fines imposed on steamboats would be remitted upon

7668-493: The maximum amount of draft for the fire. Added to this was the risk, in the days before electric light, associated with oil and kerosene lanterns and other sources of ignition. Many vessels were destroyed by fire, two examples being Mizpah and Urania . Collisions were also too common, when steamboats continued to operate in fog or night, without radar or other modern navigation aids, and often caused greater loss of life than fire. Unlike fire, which often could be fought until

7776-496: The missing sidewheeler. The Anderson it turned out had run out of coal in the middle of the storm. Her lazy crew had not fully coaled the ship at Kodiak and had simply hidden the sacks that they were supposed to haul on board and heave into the coal bins . The crew and passengers were forced to burn the wooden coal bunkers, and eventually the cabin furniture and even the cabin partitions. Passengers were writing notes to loved ones and tossing them overboard in bottles, of which there

7884-516: The more superstitious said the spectre was the ghost of Captain Tom Wright. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed the story as coming from "an old sailor": Capt. Tom's spirit saw our danger. He knew and loved the Anderson , and that was how it happened that a stranger came out of the storm and brought us safely to land. It would require an exceptional level of credulity to believe this tale, as Capt. Tom Wright, whose "ghost" supposedly appeared on

7992-439: The mosquito fleet, the 99-foot Dode left Seattle every Tuesday on the run to Kingston , Port Gamble , Seabeck , Brinnon , Holly , Dewatto, Lilliwaup Falls , Hoodsport , and at the end of what must have been a long day, Union City. The next morning, she returned to Seattle on the same route. Safety was a constant issue for steamboats. Some vessels, particularly the later steel-hulled ones, had perfect safety records. This

8100-510: The much larger steam schooner Jeanie . The night was clear, and the collision seems to have been caused by an error of the Dix ' s unlicensed mate, who had the wheel while the captain, consistent with the practice of the day, collected the fares. Though the collision speed was small, Dix was lightly built and top-heavy; she quickly heeled over, filled with water, and sank in 103 fathoms, taking 45 people down with her, including her mate. The wreck

8208-399: The night, and no man knows the day or the hour. After spending a whole week of sleepless nights, waiting and watching for boats, passengers frequently have to make two-forty time, in their stockings and nightcaps, to reach the landings before the steamer shoves out. Though they take a whole week to make a twenty-four-hour voyage, they hurry in and out of a way port as if the devil or a sheriff

8316-476: The oddly designed (as a result of her steeple engine) Wilson G. Hunt The Eliza ' s monopoly on the main route was broken in 1869, when first she was taken off the main route. Her owners led by Captain Finch, replaced her with the newer Olympia . To make matters worse, the mail contract which had sustained Eliza was awarded to a firm of upstart competitors, led first by Captain Nash, and then by his financiers

8424-518: The old (built 1877) but still powerful steam tug Richard Holyoke towing, astoundingly, three craft behind her, the sternwheeler W.K. Merwin , the hulk of the old sidewheeler Politkosky (once a Russian gunboat, now a coal barge), and William J. Bryant , a yachting schooner owned by a wealthy playboy named John Hansen. Merwin , built in 1883, had been laid up from 1894 to 1896 with the Eliza . The Moran shipyard in Seattle finished quick overhaul on

8532-565: The only skipper she had ever had. This marked the real end of commercial passenger activity for the steamboats. Newell and Williamson documented the occasion: The Tacoma and the Indianapolis passed a little south of Three Tree Point. ... Capt. Coffin pulled down a window and leaned out in the driving rain. The Indianapolis floated by, a dozen squares of light topped by a star. She spoke; three long, lingering blasts. ... Capt. Coffin reached for his own whistle cord. Three long blasts. And he let

8640-493: The opinion of the inspectors, many seafaring men pronounced the Anderson unseaworthy, and dozens of persons who came here from the east to go north on her were influenced by local friends to change their minds and take passage on other boats. Every day since she left Seattle it has been common talk that if she withstood the seas of the North and reached St. Michael in safety she would do something no one expected her to do. The trip north

8748-493: The passengers and crew. When the Eliza Anderson arrived at Comox, British Columbia , incompetent coal loading by her crew caused the steamer to veer out of control into the ship Glory of the Seas sustaining minor damage to one of her paddle guards. Finally the fleet reached Kodiak, Alaska , still a very long sea journey from St. Michael. There, as the Anderson took on coal, five passengers got off and refused to reboard, convinced

8856-466: The regulations on all steam craft operating in Puget Sound. By February 17, 1904, 16 more vessels, including some well-known ones, had been inspected, found deficient, and fined for similar reasons, and in addition failure to maintain adequate fog horns and not providing sufficient written instructions to passengers as to the location of life preservers. Vessels found deficient included the well-known George E. Starr , Rosalie , and Athlon . All of

8964-516: The right time, making her first run to Fort Langley on the Fraser river, just one day after her arrival at Victoria from the Columbia River. From Fort Langley, the sternwheeler Enterprise , under Capt. Tom Wright (1828–1906), took or at least endeavored to take, goldseekers up to the head of navigation at Yale By March 30, Eliza Anderson had completed two round trips to Fort Langley, and returned to Victoria carrying $ 40,000 in gold dust. By May, 1859, three vessels were operating in competition on

9072-477: The rougher winter weather in the lower sound, and after a few runs from Olympia to the then small village of Seattle was eventually replaced by a sailing schooner , which ran irregularly and, more predictably, by mail and passenger canoes. These were owned and crewed by the First Nations. In those days, at least two days and often three were needed to make the trip from Seattle to Olympia, and travellers camped on

9180-417: The run just where his boat was. With no radar, captains proved remarkably adept at determining their position with echoes from the steamboat's whistle. Sound travels at about 1,080 feet per second in a fog bank, and rounding off to 1,000 feet for safety, that meant that if an echo was heard one second after the whistle blast, the steamboat was 500 feet from shore. The maritime historian Jim Faber well-summarized

9288-535: The sound on October 31, 1853. Fairy was the first steamboat on Puget Sound to have a formal schedule, published for the first time on November 12, 1853, in the Columbian newspaper of Olympia. The "splendid steamer" Fairy , as she was advertised, was supposed to make two trips a week between Olympia and Steilacoom, and one trip a week from Olympia to Seattle. Fares were high, $ 5 for Olympia-Steilacoom, and $ 10 for Olympia-Seattle. Fairy , however, proved unseaworthy in

9396-403: The steamboat men. The couple were already sufficiently noteworthy to warrant a 13-gun salute following the ceremony. At that time Anderson was fighting one of her many fare wars, this one with the Canadian steamboat Otter . Fares were driven down from 50 cents per passenger and 50 cents per ton of freight. The Otter ' s owners, who had before advertised rates at $ 10 per passenger and $ 12

9504-538: The strait simply Narrows . Its name was formally set as The Narrows by Henry Kellett during the British Admiralty chart reorganization of 1847. 47°17′N 122°32′W  /  47.28°N 122.54°W  / 47.28; -122.54 This Pierce County, Washington state location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . PS Eliza Anderson The PS Eliza Anderson operated from 1858 to 1898 mainly on Puget Sound ,

9612-412: The title of their article used the words "fugitive slave" and the protest by Captain Fleming that it printed described Mitchell as Tilton's "property." In the early 1860s, there was no telegraph in Puget Sound, and mail carried by steamboat was the fastest way of transmitting news. Thus, on November 27, 1860, the Anderson brought to Port Townsend news that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president of

9720-529: The vessel rather than evacuating it), her boiler fire was extinguished by the rising water, and she lost all power, save for an emergency sail. The captain ordered three lifeboats launched, and put into them the women and children, yet no ship's officers went on board to command the boats in the rough seas. All three boats were lost with all the passengers on them. Clallam stayed afloat long enough to be found by rescuers, but even so, 54 people died. Serious ship handling and mechanical defects seemed to have caused

9828-462: The vessel reached a beach where passengers and crew could evacuate, collisions came suddenly. Where a substantial difference existed between the size or construction of the vessels, such as steel against wooden hull, destruction could be quick. Thus, on the night of November 18, 1906, the small, lightly built passenger steamer Dix (130 tons), designed specifically for the very short run across Elliott Bay from Seattle to Alki Point , collided with

9936-521: The water to be deep enough near the shore to form a port, and staked land claims along the water. The first American steamboat on Puget Sound was the sidewheeler Fairy built in San Francisco in 1852. Captain Warren Gove, born in Edgecomb, Maine, in 1816 (one of three Gove brothers involved in early maritime affairs) brought Fairy to Puget Sound on the deck of the bark Sarah Warren and lowered her into

10044-402: The whole dried out by sun and wind and impregnated with oil and turpentine from paint, made the superstructure of the steamboat little more than an orderly pile of kindling wood. The cause of fire can be readily seen when one considers that in the midst of this pile of oil-soaked wood was placed the biggest furnace that could be afforded by the owner, capped with an enormous smokestack to generate

10152-407: Was after them, and the people generally are beginning to indulge the hope that one or the other of those persons may speedily catch and keep them. In April 1866, the sidewheeler Cyrus Walker arrived in the sound under Capt. A.B. Gove. Seattle residents, predominantly male and apparently hard-drinking, mistook her for the promised ship full of brides that Asa Mercer was supposed to be bringing from

10260-475: Was an ample supply since most of the boat's stock of whisky had been consumed in an effort to keep up morale. Just as Captain Powers had given the order to abandon ship (which would have been difficult to execute as the lifeboats had been swept away), the tale goes that a tall, ghostly, white-haired, bearded figure clad in foul weather gear entered the pilot house, took the wheel and steered the ship to safety. Some of

10368-492: Was beating both Olympian and Geo. E. Starr until she was seized by the customs collector, Captain H.F. Beecher (youngest child of the famous abolitionist minister Henry Ward Beecher ) on charges of bringing in immigrants contrary to the Chinese Exclusion Act . Eventually Captain Wright was able to clear himself of these charges, but with the Anderson having been off the route so long, the competitors had captured all

10476-637: Was built at Seattle in 1883 for the Samish River service. In 1886, Capt. Ed Gustafson bought her and put her on the Olympia-Shelton route. In 1895, Captain Gustafson replaced her with the City of Shelton , and Willie went north of the border to serve on the Fraser River . In 1899, service to Hood Canal from Seattle's Pier 3 (now Pier 54) was effected by the propeller steamer Dode . A typical wooden boat of

10584-408: Was from the start a near fiasco. Anderson ' s owners had oversold her tickets, and the passengers, finding much less space aboard then they'd been promised, were only prevented from throwing the purser overboard by the personal intervention of Captain Powers. Shortly after departure, it was found she was missing a large variety of basic seagoing equipment, such as a compass. Fights broke out among

10692-450: Was later rebuilt as propeller collier, thereby suffering the misfortune of becoming known as the Dirty Bob . The City of Shelton , lacking a spray guard over her paddlewheel, was called Old Wet-Butt by crew of the propeller Marian , her competitor on the Olympia-Shelton route. And in the 1920s, Barely-Gets-There was the appellation for the once-sleek Bailey Gatzert sponsoned-out as she

10800-501: Was launched on November 27, 1858, at Portland, Oregon for the Columbia River Steam Navigation Company. She was a sidewheeler driven by a low-pressure boiler generating steam for a single-cylinder, walking-beam steam engine . She was built entirely of wood, measuring 197 feet long, 25.5 feet on the beam, and rated at 276 tons' capacity. After her trial run on the lower Willamette and Columbia rivers, she

10908-455: Was not always true, and the lives of both passengers and crew were often endangered. Many instances of crewmen falling off vessels and drowning occurred. Crew did not wear life preservers, as is now required on all riverine vessels. For example, in the case of the Mizpah , the engineer went on deck, apparently slipped, fell overboard, and was drowned. Another case was that of Captain O.A. Anderson,

11016-423: Was quickly seized upon by the Anderson ' s company, and with it the boat was somehow able to stagger on to Dutch Harbor. At Dutch Harbor, following a steam pipe explosion and collision with a dock, the Anderson was abandoned by her passengers, who shifted over to a steam schooner to reach the mouth of the Yukon River . Anderson stayed moored at Dutch Harbor until March 1898 when a storm washed her up on

11124-506: Was said to have composed a little tribute to two Seattle pioneers and two famous steamboats as: Ezra Meeker , just before he died Said there's just one steamboat I'd like to ride; Joshua Green said what will it be ... The George E. Starr or the Rosalie ? A single "last voyage" of the mosquito fleet never occurred, in contrast to the famous last runs of the Georgie Burton in 1947 on

11232-507: Was so deep that no bodies could be recovered. Similarly, but less tragically, the wooden sternwheeler Multnomah was rammed (also in Elliott Bay, the scene of much marine traffic) by the much larger, steel-hulled, express passenger Iroquois on October 28, 1911, sinking Multnomah in 240 feet of water, but with no one killed. By 1904, the causes of shipping losses were well-known and safety measures had been established by law, and enforced by

11340-518: Was sold to a consortium of John T. Bradford, some Canadian stockholders and three brothers, Tom, John T. and George S. Wright, who were early steamboat operators in the Pacific Northwest. Under Capt. J.G. Hustler, she was brought around to Victoria , arriving in March 1859. Because of the Fraser River Gold Rush , there was a shortage of steamboats in British Columbia in 1858–1859. This had

11448-497: Was taken off the Olympia–Victoria mail run, and shortly thereafter she was replaced by the Anderson , with Capt. Tom Wright (returned from the Chehalis river) as her new master. In December 1859 Captain Wright set the Anderson ' s schedule at one trip to Olympia and one trip to the Fraser River every week. Every Monday at 7:00 a.m., the Anderson left Olympia bound for Victoria. On Tuesday, she left Victoria for New Westminster , on

11556-572: Was the Beaver , starting in the late 1830s. Beaver was a sidewheeler built in London, which reached the Northwest under sail, with her paddle wheels dismantled. In 1853, Hudson's Bay Company brought a new steam-powered vessel into the area, the Otter , a propeller-driven bark. The Native Americans traversed Puget Sound in well-built cedar canoes, as they had for thousands of years, and for some time so did

11664-469: Was to carry as many autos as could be loaded on her, and made more ugly yet with the addition of a loading elevator on her foredeck. The sidewheeler George E. Starr lasted from 1879 to 1911, and slowed down to the point where a song was composed about her: Paddle, paddle, George E. Starr , How we wonder where you are. Leaves Seattle at half past ten. Gets to Bellingham, God knows when! William J. Fitzgerald, who later became Seattle's fire chief, at age 8

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