Career of a Tugboat: The Anne W.

They called her “Gravel Gertie,” an honorific for the tug that routinely plied the waters between the Steilacoom gravel pit and the home of Pioneer Sand & Gravel Company on Lake Union. The Anne W. was a fixture going through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Ballard for decades. When she was retired in 1967, Bob Dorsey, her chief engineer, told a reporter “We’ve worn a groove in the water.”

The Anne W. was built as a steam tug in 1913 in a Portland shipyard. In 1927 she was converted from steam to diesel. During her half-century working life she survived two sinkings and one grounding, as well as an unexplained disappearance on an early trip up to Cook Inlet in Alaska where the she was hauling barges for the Alaskan Engineering Commission.

Most of the tug’s career was in the service of Pioneer Sand & Gravel whose products were much in demand for building materials: plaster, mortar, and concrete. In fact, she starred in an article about the industry published in the Seattle Daily Times in 1953 entitled “Legacy of the Ice Age.” The accompanying photo of the Anne W. pulling two heavily-laden scows, very similar to the photo in our collection, is credited to renowned photographer Joseph Scaylea.

Her first sinking occurred in 1944 and in the one of the worst possible locations: the “government” locks. The sinking was blamed on an errant log or “deadhead” which pierced her hull during the cycling of the lock. According to the paper:

The Annie (sic) W., a 100-foot funnel stern towboat, sunk so quickly that crew members had barely time to jump from the tug to an adjacent barge before her decks were awash. No feet were wet, but the tug’s cook lost his overcoat in the rush. (Seattle Daily News 2/22/1944)

Needless to say, the tug was also raised from the lock in a huge rush  with the assistance of six divers, two slings, and an Army Transport Service crane barge.

A second sinking took place without warning or explanation at her home moorage on Lake Union in 1963. Two years after that incident came the grounding of the Anne W. and two gravel scows on Vashon Island while on the way to Steilacoom. The explanation: the mate had fallen asleep on watch. Skipper Malcolm Lord, who had himself been asleep below deck, told the Coast Guard examiner “He sleeps like a log, same as I do.”

The last mentions of the Anne W. in the newspaper archives are a series of classified ads in 1978 and 1979 offering the tugboat for sale at the price of “$12,500 or offer.” The ads note that the boat “needs some repair.” No word on any takers.

Thanks to Karl House, PSMHS research guru, for valuable information.

Photo: The Anne W. at the Ballard Locks, date unknown. Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Joe Williamson Collection.