Ship Shapes: The Ed Monk Sr. Ships Plans Collection

This post was first published on Inside Passage, the blog of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society.

Grant funding from King County 4Culture has allowed us to plunge into the daunting task of preserving and cataloging the remarkable Ed Monk Sr. collection of ships plans. In this essay we'll revisit the man with the plans.

Ed Monk Sr., circa 1967.

In 2014 Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society accepted a large collection of drawings, documents, photos, and artifacts related to the work of renowned naval architect Edwin Monk (1894-1973) from his family. Monk was a designer and builder of boats large and small, pleasure and commercial. His vessels are familiar to mariners all along the Pacific Coast. The collection is an invaluable resource to those fortunate enough to own a Monk-designed boat, as well as to all interested in the history of boat design. We would like to thank Ed Monk, Jr., son of the shipbuilder, for arranging the donation of this collection to PSMHS.

Ed Monk at his National Building Office, circa 1967

Edwin Monk began his career as a shipbuilding apprentice in 1914, working with his father who was a shipwright in the Puget Sound area. He built the first boat of his own design in the backyard of his Seattle home. While working at the Blanchard Boatyard on Lake Union, Monk had the opportunity to meet the legendary naval architect Ted Geary. In 1926 Geary hired Monk as a draftsman. When Geary decided to move closer to lucrative prospects in California, Monk joined him there, taking his young family to Long Beach for two years.

Around 1934 Monk returned to the Pacific Northwest and designed and built the 50-foot live-aboard cruiser Nan. Moored at the Seattle Yacht Club, the boat became both his office and home for his family for six years. A few years later he moved his work space into a small corner of the Grandy Boat Company and later to an office at on Westlake Avenue.

In 1947 Monk, joined by fellow naval architect Lorne Garden, moved to the National Building near Colman Dock. From here he commuted to his home at Hidden Cove on Bainbridge Island. After an illustrious career, Monk died in 1973 at the age of 79.

The Monk Collection includes over 2,000 individual vessel designs on over 7,000 pages. In addition we have been given several of Ed Monk’s half-hull ship models, his drafting curves, and his shop sign. His photograph collection, which chronicles the construction of his ships, is currently being cataloged for accession. 

Remembering the Man and his Boats

The acquisition of the Monk Collection inspired us to learn more about the man and his world. We conducted oral history interviews with his daughter, Isabel Van Valey, and with his niece-by-marriage and one-time secretary, Doris Colbert. These personal accounts supplement the great information in the book Ed Monk and the Tradition of Classic Boats by Bet Oliver (1998). Transcripts of the interviews may be viewed by arrangement at the PSMHS office.

Isabel Val Valey in her home overlooking Rich Passage.

Isabel Van Valey, Monk's daughter, recalls excursions on the Ann Saunders, the first boat Ed Monk built for himself.

The boat was a typical…I think what they call a dreamboat design…and it was kind of like a shoe, with a hull and a cabin that came up….It reminded you of a shoe. And the cockpit had a nice, big long seat on it, so we could sit on it. He was very, very cautious about us not falling overboard, and so when we went through the locks or there was any bad weather we were tied. It didn’t bother me at all, but it bothered my sister terribly. She was older and she would sit on the ropes, because she didn’t want anyone to see her. [laughs] The life jackets those days were just great big bulky pieces of cork, and this was much simpler for us.

Going through the locks was the most interesting. Mother would take the bow line and Dad would take the stern line because he was near the wheel, and we would have to sit in the back on our ropes. This lady once said, “Oh, look at those poor children tied up like dogs!” And my mother was very indignant and said “I’d rather have them tied like dogs than drowned!”

That was my earliest memory [of the boat], and I remember a big electric storm with thunder and lightning bolts while we were crossing in the boat. And I think that’s why I don’t like thunder and lightning now.

Monk's plan for a troller

Another memorable Monk boat was the Nan, the family's home for several years.

Well, it was a live-aboard. It was designed especially for us. My sister and I had a stateroom and my parents had the back stateroom and our living room was the pilot house, which eventually [had] an office in one corner. And the galley was down below on the bow. Mother didn’t like it down there because she couldn’t see where we were going or what we were doing, and I think that was one reason why Dad was inspired to move the galleys up to the pilot house.

Doris Colbert recalled working with Monk during World War II:

When I started to work for him he was called up by the army to make a trip up to Alaska to design flat-bottomed boats for the rivers up there because the United States government was putting in the Alcan [Alaskan-Canadian] Highway. And so they needed these flat bottomed boats to cross the rivers. This is what he designed. At that particular time it was mostly work for the government, but there were times when he did fishing boats, too, because we had to feed the troops and Seattle was a port of embarkation. 

Embarking on a Voyage of Preservation

The Monk plans, photos, and objects, while well organized, require proper archival storage and cataloging. It is a big job! UW Information School students Jodi Myers and Suzanne LeDoux have laid the groundwork for us by formally assessing the collection and estimating the resources (time, money, personnel) required to complete conservation. They also drafted a user guide for staff and volunteers working on the conservation project.

PSMHS volunteer John Kelly has helped curate the Puget Sound Maritime ships plans collections for years. 

Cultural resource specialist Katherine Kidwell has been working with PSMHS staff and volunteers since January of this year to place the ships plans into archivally safe storage and entering detailed information about each hand-drawn page into our PastPerfect database. A great deal of work remains to be done, but we are pleased to have set sail on this exciting voyage!

Katherine Kidwell shows us how the Monk ship plans are stored.

--John Kelly and Eleanor Boba contributed to this post. Special thanks to King County 4Culture for funding this important preservation project.

The Short Career of the Alida

This iconic image of the Alida snug up to the shoreline of Seattle about 1870 has been frequently reproduced in newspapers and books. The Territorial University of Washington can be seen on the crest of the hill. The log pond is that of Yesler's Mill on the waterfront. Courtesy of Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society.

In 1870 local Washington papers announced a new member of Puget Sound's Mosquito Fleet.

The "Alida." -- This new steamer, formerly known as the Tacoma, intended for mail and passenger service between Olympia, Port Townsend and Victoria, and owned by the Starr Bros. of Portland, under the construction of Mr. Hammond, is now nearly completed, and will make her trial trip in about ten days, and on and after the first of July run regularly between the above named ports. Her length of keel is 115 feet; depth of hold 6 feet. She has one boiler with six ten-inch flues, and forty-four four-inch tubes, with a heating surface of twenty-two hundred feet; double engines of two hundred horse power, with 14 1/2 inch cylinders; and one mast with a jib-sail. On the upper deck there will be twelve state-rooms, one ladies' cabin, a dining saloon, 60 feet long, and a promenade deck forward of the pilot-house, and one aft of the ladies saloon. The model and powerful engines indicate considerable speed, whilst her general appearance in creditable to her builders. (The Commercial Age, June 18, 1870)

Lewis & Dryden describes the Alida as a "neat little craft" and explains  an early change in ownership. Apparently a man named Nash had secured the federal contract for mail delivery between Olympia and Victoria and commissioned the building of the new steamer to that end in Olympia, but for financial reasons he turned the vessel over to the Starr brothers before it was complete.  This may explain the reference in the above citation to the name Tacoma.

It is common to find references to the Alida's 20 year history. All agree that the steamer ended her days by fire in 1890 while anchored off Gig Harbor. Apparently a brush fire sent burning embers on the wind which set fire to the ship. However, a review of sources indicates that she ceased active life much earlier. An article in the Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer from 1884 states:

The Isabel, Alida and Otter have long been lying in Gig Harbor, out of commission. The Otter has been condemned and been shoved up on the beach. She will probably never again be floated, while the Alida is not expected ever again to turn a wheel. ("Steamboat Matters," April 16, 1884)

The Alida's short career was due both to her lack of sea-worthiness and to the cutthroat competition that abounded among the Puget Sound steamers of the day. In the days before highways and trucking firms, the cost of transporting mail, freight, and passengers throughout the inland waters of Puget Sound and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca was critical in determining success or failure on the water. Larger, faster boats had a natural advantage. 

An engraving of the Alida from Lewis & Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, 1895.

Only a year after the Alida had entered service, her owners, the Starr brothers (the Oregon Railway and Navigation Co.), put a larger steamer, the North Pacific, on the Victoria mail run. The Alida was assigned to service only inland ports from Olympia to Seattle to Port Townsend, sometimes meeting up with her sister ship, the Isabel, which made the crossing to Victoria. The Starrs also faced stiff competition from a firm headed by George S. Wright which operated the large steamers Eliza Anderson and Olympia.

Competition between steamers sometimes involved actual races, both short and long. These events were trumpeted in the press and were the occasion for heavy betting. The Washington Standard, an Olympia paper, reported on one such contest in 1873:

The steamers Zephyr and Alida engaged in their usual weekly race last Wednesday, blowing their whistles at the same moment, casting off lines together, and starting from the dock almost abreast. The captains and owners show considerable pluck, but as the victory is always on one side -- in favor of the Zephyr -- we fail to see the object of this strife. ("Race," October 11, 1873)

This race exemplified the rivalry between a side-wheeler (the Alida) and a stern-wheeler (the Zephyr). More than once in the history of the little steamers, the operators of side-wheelers attempted unsuccessfully to drive stern-wheelers from the scene with unproven safety concerns.

The Alida came out on top in a contest of a different nature in 1876. It seems another vessel, the Eureka, accused the crew of the Alida of cutting the ship's hawser (mooring rope), perhaps deliberately.

The Eureka* claimed $30 for the hawser cut, $30 for dragging the bottom for its recovery, $25 for loss of half a day's time, and $10 for a steamer to tow her out of the harbor -- $95 in all. The plaintiff lost not only the damages but the costs of suit, amounting to upwards of $50. (Washington Standard, August 12, 1876)

In the mid 1870s there are newspaper mentions of the Alida carrying passengers and freight around Puget Sound, although it appears she had lost the all-important mail delivery contract to the North Pacific and others. An item in the Washington Standard from July 8, 1876, notes that "the (ss) Alida was obliged to get a special permit to carry the large number of passengers returning [to Olympia] from the Seattle 4th celebration." A similar item in that paper from 1874 refers to the vessel as "the old (ss) Alida" -- only five years after her keel was laid! Nostalgia seems to have been a manufactured commodity in many cases.

Mentions of the Alida in newspapers peter out about 1877 and it is likely that she was spent more than a decade cooling her heels in one or more ports-of-call. She did make one attempt to escape her fate. The Seattle Daily P-I reported in 1883,

The steamboats Alida and Isabel, which have been moored off the railroad wharf for some months, on Saturday last dragged their anchors and went to sea without commander or pilot. The steamer Otter, lying at the wharf, was sent after them. She towed them into Quartermaster Harbor [Vashon Island], where they are now anchored. (January 13, 1883)

The geography of this paragraph is somewhat questionable. It is highly unlikely that the sisters left Puget Sound. A likely scenario is that they slipped their moorings at Gig Harbor and headed into the Sound where they were overtaken by the Otter in the passage between that community and Vashon Island.

Despite her few years on the water, the Alida, like many of the Mosquito Fleet, left an indelible mark on maritime history. An 1883 item in the Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer refers to the little steamer as "that favorite of the traveler of by-gone days" -- those days being only five or six years distant. The column details the visit of the former captain of the Alida  to Seattle, noting "Mr. Harker looks as young and handsome as when in the '70s he daily mashed the girls in the towns on the route of the Alida." (August 18, 1883)

A scale model of the Alida graces the gallery at Foss Maritime Seaport in Tacoma.

-- Eleanor Boba

Sources for this essay include Lewis & Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest; Joe Williamson and Jim Gibbs, Maritime Memories of Puget Sound; various articles from the Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times, and the Washington Standard.

*Note, this would not be the ferryboat Eureka, now berthed at San Francisco's Hyde Street Pier, which was built in 1890.

Ghost Ships at Work

A lovely panorama of a Puget Sound marina with snow-capped mountains. Photo, Alan Humphrey.

But wait! What's really going on here? What is familiar about that shape in the middle with the small forest growing out of it?

This is actually the ship La Merced, once a proud schooner, now a permanent part of a breakwater for nautical businesses on Guemes Channel at Anacortes.

Over fifty years La Merced has created its own ecosystem. Photo, Alan Humphrey.

La Merced was built in 1917 in Benicia California, during the ship-building boom of World War I. She carried petroleum products for Standard Oil and other concerns. Like so many of the big ships, she was eventually converted for us as a cannery in Alaska. In 1966 she was sold to Lovric Shipyard in Anacortes where she was filled with sand and dirt and grounded on a bed of rubble. The ship was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

La Merced at Anacortes, circa 1966. Photo, National Register of Historic Places.

There are a number of examples of ships used as breakwaters. La Merced is a bit unusual among these in that the hulk is raised completely out of the water and thus readily visible. In most cases, ships enlisted into service as breakwaters have been sunk to the waterline or just above, with only portions visible at low tide.

D-Day -- June 6, 1944

The most notable historical example are the ghost ships of Normandy -- a flotilla of American and British merchant ships on a suicide mission. As the Allies prepared to storm the beaches of Normandy in an all-out assault on the entrenched German forces, somewhere between 50 and 100 older or damaged ships limped across the English Channel to be deliberately sunk as part of the complicated landing strategy devised for the treacherous beaches. Called "corncobs," these hulks did their part to create breakwaters to protect troop transports.

The Ghost Ships of British Columbia

We have several examples of ship breakwaters in our own backyard -- almost. Three such installations exist on the inner coast of Vancouver Island -- at Royston, Kelsey Bay, and Oyster Bay, as well as one at Powell River on the mainland of British Columbia. All were built in service of the lumber industry beginning in the 1930s, creating sheltered harbors -- uh, harbours -- for log booms. The Powell River group is the largest floating hulk breakwater in the world, according to Tourism Powell River. The 10 concrete-hulled ships, many of them damaged in service to the U.S. Army, are sunk 12-15 feet underwater and held in place by concrete anchors. 

Ship breakwater at Royston, Vancouver Island. Photo, Gerry Thomasen, [Creative Commons]

A number of the Vancouver Island hulks have Puget Sound connections. The St. Paul is an 1874-built clipper ship which ended her days afloat as a museum ship berthed at Seattle's Hiram M. Chittenden Locks during the 1930s. In 1942 she was towed up to Oyster Bay and sunk. The five-masted barkentine Forest Friend was built in Aberdeen in 1919 and served, naturally enough, the lumber trade, including mills on Puget Sound and Lake Washington. However, her career lasted barely a decade, far less than the St. Paul, before damage and legal troubles sidelined her. At some point in the 1950s she was "holed, sunk, and used as a breakwater," according to her registry. (James) A floating drydock from Puget Sound is an even more unusual addition to the Oyster Bay breakwater.

The St. Paul under tow out of Seattle, circa 1923. 

Courtesy Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society (Williamson Collection)

SOURCES

• Rick James, The Ghost Ships of Royston (Vancouver: Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia, 2004).
• Rick James, "Fine Old Ships of Yesteryear continue to serve...but perhaps for not much longer," Resolution (Maritime Museum of British Columbia), Winter 1995, pp. 13-17.
• Joseph Israels II, "Ghost Ships at Normandy," New York Tribune Inc., November, 1944.
• National Register of Historic Places, Registration Form for La Merced, 90000588.
• Brochure: The Giant Hulks Tourist Information, Tourism Powell River.

Snagboats on Puget Sound: A Photo Essay

The snagboat Swinomish in Lake Washington, circa 1916. The lowering of the lake to accommodate the new Ship Canal left many snags exposed. The photo is credited to Asahel Curtis. 

Photo, Shoreline Historical Museum, #1249.

Snagboats were a familiar site on the Ship Canal and on Puget Sound rivers from 1885 to 1981. Berthed at the Ballard Locks, the snagboats Skagit (1885-1914), Swinomish (1914-1929), and W.T. Preston (1929-1981) were charged with clearing snags and other debris from the region’s waterways. Aside from this primary duty, the snagboats were called to serve in many other ways.

For the full story of the Puget Sound snagboats, read Ron Burke's detailed and beautifully-illustrated article for The Sea Chest -- "Heritage of a Snagboat" (June 2001).

The snagboats Skagit and Swinomish side by side in 1915. Their A-frame cranes sit on the bows. 

Photo, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In 1980 and 1981 Pam Negri conducted a series of oral history interviews for the Corps of Engineers with current and former crew members of the W.T. Preston. The men shared a number of stories detailing both their ordinary duties and some unexpected tasks. (Tapes and transcripts in the care of the Anacortes Maritime Heritage Center)

WHOOPIN' IT UP!

In a 1981 interview, Sandy Welsh Jr. explained that the Preston ended up with the whistles of both earlier snagboats, as well as its own:

The two big steam whistles from the Swinomish and the Skagit, they operated together. Mine was, well I call it a whooper, and it was kind of a steam siren. I operated it independently. You could kind of play a little bit of a tune with them both going. We had a lot of fun. There was a couple other steam boats that had whooper sirens on them. We would whoop back and forth.

People really get a thrill out of listening to the steam whistles. You'll go by, like through the Lake Washington Ship Canal, and people will come out of their offices or on the boat next to you and yell, "blow the whistle, blow the whistle.“ I'll always give an extra toot for a thank you for each of the bridges we go through. Most of the time the bridge tenders will give a little toot back in answer. Especially Bill, who works on the Ballard Bridge up there, he says, "how about a real long one with the bridge opening?" So, I'll give him a little bit extra long one because he really likes to hear the steam whistle. It's really funny though. You'll just see the people, and if you can't hear them you'll just see the arms pump up and down. "Blow that whistle!“ (Oral History, Virgil (Sandy) V. Welsh Jr., Second Mate and Caption on the Preston, 1975-81.  From the archives of the Anacortes Maritime Heritage Center)

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

Captain William M. Morgan at the helm of the W.T. Preston, 1975. 

Photo, Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society.

Captain William W. Morgan told Pam Negri about part of the job that involved burning derelict houseboats:

We used to do quite a bit of work in conjunction with the Seattle Harbor Patrol. They would assist us, either bring in snags or tell us where they were at. Anyway, we were burning a considerable amount of houseboats, and they were the ones that were towing the boats down to Montlake across from the old canoe house at the U.W. There were times when we would have a half-dozen houses. We would burn them right down to the logs, then pick the logs up and set them on the beach.

This one particular time, we used to go in and open the valves or break the water lines so there was no water remaining to cause any possible explosions. We'd gone through this one house and broke a few lines, opened all the valves we could see. Then we set our fire. Well, it was really burning pretty good. The old tar paper roofs-everything was really going strong. Here comes a harbor police boat heading toward the shore-must have been an emergency. We were all standing on our deck, watching this houseboat burn when all of the sudden there's this terrific explosion. Here goes this hot water tank, shooting out across the water, landing right in front of this police boat coming full out towards it. It was pretty funny at the time, but could have been extremely serious.

[The Harbor Patrol] kind of laughed it off. Particularly one of them that I knew quite well, he said, "Wouldn't that look good on the front page of the PI [Post-Intelligencer], Preston torpedoes Seattle police boat with hot water tank." (Oral History, William W. Morgan (Tape 16), Deckhand, First Mate, Second Mate, and Captain 1952-1982. From the archives of the Anacortes Maritime Heritage Center)

COWS ON THE BRINK

Norman Hamburg began his career as a cabin boy on the Swinomish in 1927 and later transferred to the Preston. In his 1982 interview he told Pam Negri about one little-known aspect of the work:

A lot of times there was a lot of erosion along the [river] banks. The cows would get too close to the edge of the bank eating grass, and sometimes the bank would cave in and down would go the cow in the river. We picked up quite a few cows in the river, set them back down on the bank for the farmer. [How?] Put a rope sling around 'em, just behind their front legs and just ahead of their rear legs, picked 'em right up with the donkey engine and swung them over and set them on the bank. They very seldom hurt themselves; they landed on the soft mud in the river there.  (Oral History, Norman Hamburg (Tape 10), January 15, 1982. From the archives of the Anacortes Maritime Heritage Center)

Crew of the W.T. Preston, 1939. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

WARTIME

Hamburg explains the effect of World War II on the snagboat business:

During World War II, when they stopped all river and harbor work, they tied the Preston up at the locks wall. They transferred all the laid-off crew that didn't have 15 years of service in. They found other jobs for them, but what I mean [is] they were laid off the Preston. They kept the captain, the chief engineers, myself and the cook. We stayed aboard the vessel for quarters and helped keep the vessel in shape, and we were transferred over to the locks. The chief engineer and I were transferred over to the machine shop -- working for Charlie Seagren. We were outfitting boats for Alaska and a lot of the boats were going up to [Adak?] Island, building the airbase up there. Also, the Alcan Highway [Alaska-Canadian]: we did a lot of work at the locks for the Alcan Highway making different things in the machine shop and the blacksmith shops. They didn't bring the Preston out until after World War II....but they kept us crew aboard in case some emergency would arise.

I remember when we came to work on December 8th [1941]; it was on a Monday morning. Driving down from Mount Vernon, we were stopped at the main gate going in -- soldiers galore. Went through  our suitcases. They went through our luggage and they walked with us down to the Preston to get verification that we belonged to that crew. Our cook -- little Fritz -- fed about, I'd say, 30 soldiers for the meals on the Preston until they had facilities built and they built barracks down at the locks for these soldiers to stay in because they were on guard there -- on duty 24 hours a day. The barracks at that time were built on a wall just west of the administration building. 

One of the first jobs the snagboat had was to lay a cable across from the small locks over to the south end of the spillway to hang a netted, mesh fence on there to stop anything that could drift down to blow up the spillway. Everything was very vulnerable. They had blackouts for all the sawmills, the homes, the street lights -- everything had to be turned out at dusk and you had dark blinds over your windows in the homes. There was absolutely no light on the west coast at all, until they found out just how vulnerable it was. They were afraid of a Japanese attack on the west coast. 

There were a lot of boats tied up in Lake Washington and Kirkland in the area.....Lake Union....and if something would have happened to the locks there, it would have drained the water out of Lake Union and been a real disaster. (Ibid.)

Coast Guard barracks and mess hall at the locks, August 14, 1943. 

Photo, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The last of the Puget Sound snagboats -- W.T. Preston -- was retired in 1981. Such snagging duties that are left on our well-traveled waterways are now carried out by the Puget, a small derrick barge. Two years afterwards, the Preston was acquired by the Anacortes Maritime Heritage Center where she may be seen today.

-- Eleanor Boba

The W.T. Preston, with sternwheel, was an impressive sight passing through the locks, February 3, 1972.
Photo, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

In Sight of Shore: Prison Ships

By the light of the torches, we saw the black Hulk laying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah’s ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw him taken up the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as it if were all over with him.

Young Pip from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations witnesses an escaped convict returned to his floating prison in the Thames estuary.

Down through the centuries ships have been turned to many dark purposes. Most with even a passing knowledge of history know of the slave ships that brought Africans to the New World, of the convict ships that took prisoners from Great Britain to its far-flung colonies, as well as of the widespread use of both slaves and convicts to row galleys from ancient times through the 18th century. (Think Jean Valjean.) World War II brought the Japanese “hell-ships” that transported POWs to labor camps.

Not all may be familiar with the history of ships as anchored, floating prisons. 

HORRIBLE HULKS

In retrospect, the use of old, retired ships – or hulks – as places of incarceration is only logical. The derelict vessels were ready-made, needing only simple adjustments, the surrounding water made a natural moat or barrier to escape, and the nearness to shore allowed for the dispatch of parties of prisoners under guard, and often chained, to be used as forced labor or rented out to local farmers. Little niceties, such as humane treatment for prisoners or communication with families, could be more easily overlooked in the isolated conditions afforded by these offshore prisons.

The Jersey, a sketch from the memoirs of Captain Dring.

Prison hulks were an accepted sight on the Thames and at other locations in Dickens’ time and before. They also became a familiar sight in New York Harbor and other points along the shores of the colonies during the American Revolution. The Jersey was perhaps the most infamous of several ships used by the British to confine rebels taken prisoner during that conflict. Captain Thomas Dring of the Continental Navy wrote later of his months as an inmate of the ship, describing the abysmal conditions in lurid detail:

But terrible indeed was the condition of most of my fellow captives. Memory still brings before me those emaciated beings, moving from the Galley, with their wretched pittance of meat; each creeping to the spot where his mess were assembled, to divide it with a group of haggard and sickly creatures, their garments hanging in tatters around their meagre limbs, and the hue of death upon their care-worn faces. [1]

Historians believe that more American combatants died while imprisoned by the British than perished on the battlefield.

CLOSER TO HOME

Gold Rush California was served by at least two prison ships, both anchored in San Francisco Bay. That town was overpowered by a ragtag influx of gold-seekers from all over the world in 1849 and the early 1850s. The single “calaboose” supplied by the Mexican authorities soon proved inadequate to house the many rowdies. It was natural for the town council to turn to one of the many abandoned sailing vessels in the bay. The Euphemia was purchased from her owner for $3500 and retrofitted for use as both a prison and an insane asylum beginning in 1850, the same year California became a state of the Union. [2]

About a year later the state obtained the Waban for service as a prison ship. Local newspapers deplored the congested and unsanitary conditions of both the water-borne and land-based detention facilities, comparing them to the Black Hole of Calcutta.  These floating dungeons did not last long; by 1852 prisoners from the Waban were being used to build San Quentin Prison.

MARE ISLAND

In the 20th century, a more developed correctional system in the United States had no need for make-shift prisons for civilian prisoners. However, the United States Navy found a use for prison ships for court-martialed sailors at a number of bases and shipyards. On the West Coast the shipyard at Mare Island, founded in 1853 and located in San Francisco’s North Bay, was the primary detention facility for wayward sailors from throughout the Pacific. Ships were pulled into service from time to time to take the overflow of miscreants from the ever-squeezed shore facilities. The prisoners included a fellow named McDonough, who deserted his position on the battleship Missouri in China in order to see his girlfriend, [3] and another man named Lukesh, a Navy Paymaster with a shady history which included disrobing in a public dining place, confined for public drunkenness. [4]  Both were held on the gunboat Manila in the early 1900s.

In 1944, during the infamous Port Chicago court-martial, a number of the accused were held temporarily on an overcrowded prison barge at Mare Island.

EVEN CLOSER TO HOME

But ships as prisons were something far removed from our shores in the Pacific Northwest. Or were they?

With the chronic overcrowding at the Mare Island prison facilities, the navy turned to its newer base on Puget Sound. In 1908, 70 detainees were taken on two ships from Mare Island to the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, to be housed on another ship – the USS Nipsic. That venerable gunboat had served in the Civil War for the Union Navy and barely survived a massive 1889 hurricane in Apia Harbor, Samoa, that destroyed a number of vessels. In 1892, newly repaired at Mare Island, she had been brought up to Bremerton to serve the needs of the newly established Puget Sound Navy Yard. At that time a large deck house or “barn” was constructed on her deck as a drill hall. Nipsic was originally used as a receiving ship – a barracks for new naval recruits. 

The Nipsic as she appeared when she first arrived in Bremerton. Photo courtesy of Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Joe Williamson Collection.

The Nipsic at anchor at Puget Sound Naval Yard; the new deck house is clearly visible. Photo courtesy of Puget Sound Naval Museum.

Sometime between 1903 and 1907 (sources vary), with the arrival of the larger USS Philadelphia, Nipsic was converted to a prison ship. However, she was not put into service as such until early 1908, in time to receive the Mare Island folks. At that time government records list her with a capacity of 125 inmates. The diagram below shows the lay-out of the ship with prison cells in the lower deck and something called “Dark Cells” in the hold below. One can only guess that the dark cells were solitary confinement. 

Inboard profile of Nipsic as a prison ship, ca. 1905. Adapted by Richard M. Anderson from a sketch in the Holbrook Collection, Kitsap Regional Library, Bremerton, WA; appears in Richard M. Anderson, “The USS Nipsic,” The Sea Chest, June 1996.

The centennial history of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard quotes one Ray Raines on his memories of the Nipsic.

All portholes and windows were barred over, and she was painted black from waterline to her stubby mastheads. The prisoners served court martial sentences for serious crimes -- not just drinking or a few days of AWOL. They were serving time at hard labor, and did menial work around the Yard, such as cleaning streets, raking leaves etc. They wore prison-grey uniforms and worked under the watchful eyes of a Marine guard armed with a sawed-off pump-action shotgun --- loaded with buckshot. I was told at the time, and quite likely it was true, that if a prisoner in a work party escaped, the Marine guard would be court-martialed, and if found guilty of neglect, he would be sentenced to serve out the unexpired term of the escapee ... I never heard of a prisoner escaping from a work party. [5]

Raines’ description might lead us to suspect that Mare Island sent its worst up to Bremerton. However, newspaper accounts of the day tell us of one man who had served several months on the Nipsic in 1909 for the simple crime of overstaying his furlough. This man, Chandler Rogers, made news headlines due to a subsequent bout of amnesia which wiped out all memory of his time on the prison ship. [6]

The Nipsic’s career as a prison ship was her last service to the US Navy. In 1912 the Nipsic was replaced by the cruiser Philadelphia as the station’s prison ship. The Philadelphia continued in that role for about four years until the Navy chose to consolidate its prison facilities at Portsmouth, New Hampshire (really in Maine!) and at Mare Island.

SUCCESS STORY

There is one other interesting historical anecdote connecting prison ships to Puget Sound. In 1915 a floating museum, the Success, dropped anchor in Seattle and in Tacoma; Her gangplanks were lowered for visitors to view exhibits depicting the British penal system of transporting convicts to colonies in Australia. The paradoxically-named Success had a lengthy history of displaying the horrors of penal transportation throughout the world, including an appearance at the San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. It was a supreme effort of showmanship worthy of P.T. Barnum – in fact, the Success had never been a convict ship, although it did have a brief career as a prison hulk in South Australia, approximately 1852 to 1857. 

The Success moored at the Tacoma Municipal Dock on Foss Waterway. Photo courtesy of Tacoma Public Library, Marvin D. Boland Collection G50.1.103.

The ship did make for enthralling viewing. In the words of a local reporter, “more than 15,000,000 persons have inspected the vessel, gazing with horror into her gloomy cells and blackholes, where the original chains and instruments of torture still clank tragically with the roll of the antiquated hulk.” [7]  That’s an impressive, if suspect, attendance figure, even if calculated over a period of some twenty years. According to the article, the Success was spending the winter of 1915/16 lying up in the Snohomish River.

Gruesome images of the displays on the Success, including this one, are available on the Facebook Page “Sailing Ship Success.”  

Promotional postcard; image courtesy of Rich Norgard, www.ShipSuccess.com.

For a more humorous look at the horrible hulk, go along with film stars Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand as they tour the ship in the film reel “Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World’s Fair at San Francisco,” available through the Library of Congress. Pick up the hijinks at about minute 10:00 and don’t miss Fatty’s interaction with the iron maiden!

UNCHAINED?

No prison ships currently ride the waves of Puget Sound. The same cannot be said with assurance of the rest of the seven seas. The very nature of ships – contained, yet movable – make them ideal for shadowy doings. It is likely that prison ships still float many parts of the world, with ghosts both dead and alive.

-- Eleanor Boba

ENDNOTES

[1] Thomas Dring, Reflections of the Jersey Prison Ship, edited by Albert Greene (Providence: H.H. Brown, 1829).

[2] James P. Delgado, "Gold Rush Jail: The Prison Ship “Euphemia,’ California History," Vol. 60, No. 2, Summer 1981.

[3] “Romance of Fleet Ends in Irons,” The (San Francisco) Call, December 15, 1908.

[4] “Lukesh put in Mare Island Prison Ship,” The (San Francisco) Call, January 9, 1907. “Lukesh Prevailed Upon to Resign,” Ibid., January 16, 1907.

[5] Louise M. Reh and Helen Lou Ross, Nipsic to Nimitz: A Centennial History of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (Bremerton, WA: Federal Managers’ Association, 1991).

[6] “S. Chandler Rogers Took Name of Kenny,” The Seattle Daily Times, November 1, 1911.

[7] “Convict Ship Success, Oldest Craft in World, Offered Grain Charter,” The Seattle Daily Times, February 20, 1916. It should be noted that the Success was not the oldest commissioned craft in the world; that claim was held then and continues to be held by the USS Constitution.


Special thanks to Karl House and Joe Baar, Puget Sound Maritime, and Megan Churchwell, Puget Sound Navy Museum.

Tales of my Grandfather

My maternal grandfather, Harris Gary Hudson (1888-1982), penned a five-volume memoir of his life over a five-year period in the 1960s. He was then living with my grandmother in retirement communities in Santa Barbara and Laguna Hills. He was also rapidly losing his eyesight, and when I say "penned," I mean he manually typed the manuscript himself. And when I say manually, I mean on a manual typewriter. He was that kind of man.

My grandfather had a long career in academia as a professor of history and a college administrator. He also had a most interesting childhood: born in Japan to missionary parents in 1888 and growing up in the Foreign Concession in Osaka with four siblings. 

His memoirs cover these early days in depth, including his stint in World War I, and his days as a scholar at Oxford University. 

The entire manuscript -- now edited and digitized-- is linked here. 

Thanks to my sister, Leslie Boba, mother, Elizabeth Boba, and cousin, Jared Scarborough, for editing the manuscript.

Family Photos

From left: My grandparents, Gary and Ruth Hudson, my sister, Leslie Boba, mother, Elizabeth Boba, and me, Santa Barbara Mission, circa 1968. Perhaps my father, Imre Boba, was the photographer.

My grandfather with his parents, in Osaka, Japan, 1888. The back of the photograph with the name of the professional photographer is below.

The "famous" photo of the whole family with my grandfather at the organ, Osaka, Japan, circa 1898. The other children are, from left, Ellis (or Herndon), Rowena, Paul, and Donald in his mother's lap. We still have the organ.

The Osaka Connection

Recently, my cousin Betsy Hudson and her husband Koichi Orita researched the Kawaguchi foreign settlement in Osaka and came up with some great information regarding this enclave where both our grandfathers were born. Her grandfather was the second son, Herndon Ellis Hudson. Here are some of the images they collected. Clicking on the image will allow you to see a larger version.

  

A model of the settlement in the (now closed) Osaka Maritime Museum. The arrow indicates where we think the Hudson house must have been. Photo from Wikipedia.

 

The red dot line area indicates the foreign settlement in Osaka, fairly close to main part of Osaka. Google map courtesy of Koichi Orita.

 

The area now is a warehouse/residential area. The only thing left from the era is Kawaguchi Church. Photo by https://www.inforsante.fr/7688976925.html. 

We found a map of the northern part of the settlement with names of families and schools/churches/shops. The red box indicates the family home as it was described in Gary's memoir as 16B. The image comes from  Momoyama Gakuin Educational Corporation/Momoyama Gakuin Historical Materials Room via the website: https://shepherdz.exblog.jp/29640167/

 

That house and the other houses where the lots have the same green are the Presbyterian properties. Other colors indicate other protestant denominations, or Catholic properties. This image and that below are found in the paper "Functional Transformation of Urban Space in Kawaguchi Settlement, Osaka," https://dlisv03.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/contents/osakacu/kiyo/111G0000009-2022-21-002.pdf.

 

Top row are the Warren house, then the Warren house, remodeled, and a building related to the Warren church. The bottom three are all schools in the concession. They all seem to be related to churches. The last one, Poole junior and senior high school still exists, but in a different location.

The settlement is long gone but there is a plaque outside a local elementary school now marking the settlement. Image from: https://okazin86.com/osaka-kawaguchi/#jp-carousel-6313

 The following four images are used with permission from Momoyama Gakuin Archives:

Panoramic view of Kawaguchi Settelment.

Wilmina Girls School on Reservation 22

A farewell party at the time of the abolition of the settlement.

Photo taken from in front of Reservation 16 looking north.