Priced to Move: The ships of "Wilson's Wood Row"

This photo from the collection of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society is captioned "Wilson's Wood Row,” a somewhat derisive pun meant to mock the fleet of half-finished ships no longer needed for the war effort. It seems that at the end of hostilities of World War I our government was saddled with a large surplus of ships commissioned for the war effort. Thus in 1919 Lake Union was turned into a sort of showroom for a clearance sale of vessels built in Northwest shipyards. The flotilla consisted of at least 40 hulls -- the number fluctuated – of unfinished wooden steamships and barges.

A Bridge of Ships

The United States entered World War I in April of 1917. Almost immediately the country’s Shipping Board created the Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC) with orders to speed up manufacturing of merchant ships under American flag. A “Bridge of Ships” was called for to connect the US continent with Europe and support the war effort. With federal dollars pumped into the industry a huge shipbuilding effort commenced on both coasts with both private shipyards and purpose-built yards brought into service. For roughly 18 months business boomed, then just as suddenly as it began the war was over, as was the immediate need for ships. The result? The EFC was saddled with hundreds of unfinished ships as well as contracts for hundreds more and precious little demand. A mission to build ships became a mission to dispose of them at the least cost to the government.

So what was the fate of these ships? The answer is not simple.

A review of articles in the Seattle Daily News tells part of the story. Early in 1919 unfinished hulls and barges coming out of northwest shipyards were collected together in Seattle’s Lake Union, a convenient freshwater body of water only recently open to shipping with the completion of a canal linking it to Puget Sound. The local paper reported a number of sales over the next few months and other “deals on.” The tone of the articles was optimistic:

The price of ships, spot delivery, is going up. Last Friday, the U.S. Shipping Board sold a steel vessel at $210 a deadweight ton. It had other offers for ships at the same price on Saturday… The advance in the price of ships is regarded as a good omen for the shipbuilders, as the prices for future deliveries are bound to be affected by the prices for spot deliveries. (The Seattle Daily Times, June 10, 1919)

Unfortunately, the first flurry of buying was quickly over, if it had ever really existed in the first place. By December 1919 the EFC was offering steamship hulls for sale at the bargain price of $75,000 apiece for the Ferris type, a far cry from the $200,000 to $400,000 each one cost to build. At the same time the corporation was defending itself against charges of mismanagement and Northwest ship builders were fighting rumors regarding the seaworthiness of their wooden hulls.

C.H. Hamilton, president of the Washington Wood Shipbuilders’ Association, was quoted in the Times:

When the public looks at the idle fleet in Lake Union it should remember that they represent part of the tremendous war effort of the United States at a time when the whole civilized world, including ourselves, lived under the shadow of the German menace. Many of them went into the water when the British army had its back to the wall to use the term of Field Marshall Haig. The fact is that the ships in Lake Union represent the best efforts of the Washington builders, whose work kept steadily improving right up to end of wood construction. If the completed ships can operate with remarkable success, these other vessels, if completed, should operate with even greater success for they were built when the yards had grown more efficient and experienced.” (Seattle Daily Times, November 2, 1919)

By 1920 the EFC resorted to a series of bid requests for the ships, as well as direct negotiation with prospective customers. In December 1921 a published advertisement invited offers on 32 steamships hulls and 11 converted barge hulls moored in Lake Union, as well as hulls in Portland and Alameda, on the west coast, and Wilson’s Point, Connecticut, and Hog Island, Pennsylvania, on the east. In effect the boats were to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Two months later, the Seattle Daily Times reported the sale of 75 west coast vessels for a total of $125,000, less than $2,000 per ship, including all the Lake Union ships.

False ending

This would appear to be a convenient way to end the story. Too convenient.

The late Tom Sandry, one of the founders of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, recalled his teen years on Lake Union during the early 1930s in an oral history interview:

The Lake Union streetcar continued around a bend, and looking out on the lake, I remember seeing 40 ships anchored out there, the wooden ships left over from World War I.

So we look a little further into the historical record. In the decade following the purported sale of the 75 boats we find references to more ships coming and going from what was becoming known as the “boneyard” of Lake Union; ships taken back into service for a few years and then returned unwanted; ships sold to Japan for scrap; and one ship briefly considered for use as a floating jail. In more than one case ships were towed out of the lake by their new owners and burned for scrap metal.

In one dramatic instance, 13 hulls, or “hulks” as the paper termed them, allegedly once worth four million dollars, were towed down to Steilacoom and burned.

The four-million dollar bonfire caused considerable excitement in Tacoma and vicinity. Tacoma citizens were soon calling the fire department asking the location of the huge blaze. Hundreds of residents of the Upper Sound district received calls from neighbors, dressed hurriedly, and went down to the shores of the sound to watch a spectacle which far outshown any pyrotechnic display offered on a Fourth of July program. Those who had small boats approached the burning hulls but were driven back by firebrands and the terrific heat. It was the last dramatic episode of the careers of the ships, built in feverish haste in war days at war prices. (Seattle Daily Times, June 11, 1926)

Bit by bit the “Lake Union Fleet” was dispersed to the four winds. An item in the paper from 1939 gives an indication of the demise of the remnants of the flotilla.

In compliance with the order of the City Harbor Department to clear Lake Union of idle ships, the United States Maritime Commission’s freighter Pacific Redwood was moved through the Ballard Locks this forenoon and taken to a new “boneyard” in Port Orchard. The ship had been a familiar part of the Lake Union scene since she was tied up there eight years ago. The Pacific Redwood built for the U.S. Shipping Board in World War days was one of seven vessels formerly in the service of the Dimon Line as lumber carriers between the Puget Sound and the East Coast. (Seattle Daily Times, July 18, 1939)

Things were about to change drastically on the world scene transforming shipping and shipbuilding in the Northwest yet again. But that’s another story.

Courtesy Library of Congress