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.

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

Customs by the Sea

Port of Call: Monterey. The old Mexican Customhouse, the oldest extant governmental building in that state, stands in Monterey State Historic Park, close by that city's Fisherman's Wharf. For roughly two decades (1827-46) Mexican authorities attempted to constrain foreign merchant ships to stop in Monterey, unload all their goods, and pay duties before going on about their businesses. It must have been hit or miss, relying on word of mouth and veiled threats of repercussions for those who failed to stop. The resident park ranger allowed as how many a wily sea captain unloaded his best goods in the Channel Islands before dropping anchor in Monterey to claim his right of passage.

All the Way to Chinatown

 

I thought I had been to San Francisco's Chinatown before...but I was wrong. There are two Chinatowns (at least two). One for the Chinese, one for the tourists. OK, so they kind of blur together. Still it is easy to tell the difference. Chinatown for the tourists is lined with shops that feature signs in Cantonese and English. Chinatown for the Chinese needs no English and the trinket shops are far outnumbered by the fruit and vegetable sellers, butcher shops, and Chinese bakeries.

I set out to visit Chinatown, taking a city bus from my hotel on the waterfront into the heart of the city (how brave am I!!). More or less by accident I arrived on Stockton Street amid the hub bub of early morning produce deliveries and the opening of all the shops. Within half an hour the sidewalks were so crowded with shoppers I could barely navigate. For blocks I saw no other occidental person. It was only when I turned east to Grant Street that the crowds thinned and the more familiar tourist Chinatown took shape.

So why is my photo (all my photos) of Grant Street and not Stockton? I can only assume I was afraid of doing the Ugly American thing by pulling out my camera to take photos of the quaint shops! Fortunately there is no dearth of images on Flicker.

See all the people: Mt. Virgin Church changes with the times

A somewhat longer post than usual. I prepared this originally for publication on SouthEndSeattle.com.

 

The old church, St. Boniface, appears in this circa-1915 sketch prepared by Nellie Roe, Master’s candidate at the University of Washington, for her thesis “The Italian Immigrant in Seattle,” University of Washington,  Special Collections.

Her caption reads: "The Catholic Church and School on 29th Ave. So where 102 Italian children attend."

HERE IS THE CHURCH

It started with a small wooden church on a hill between the Rainier Valley and Seattle’s Central District named for the patron saint of Germany. St. Boniface was built, probably sometime in the 1890s, by and for German Catholic immigrants to the city who hoped to worship in their own language.

 
Information on the little German church is scarce. The 1901 and 1902 Seattle Polk Directories list St. Bonifacius, German Roman Catholic” at 28^th South and Massachusetts, along with the words “no services.” Later additions of the directory make no mention of the church at all. The 1912 Baist Map show the church alone on the hillside except for a small house immediately to the north. Anecdotal evidence indicates that a succession of caretaker families lived in the basement of the church, some German-speaking, some Italian.

THE ITALIAN TRANSFORMATION

 

By 1910 the area surrounding St. Boniface was made up largely of Italian immigrant families --  so much so that the area was nicknamed “Garlic Gulch” --  and thus the little church was the natural choice for an Italian parish. Seattle Bishop O’Dea called on the Jesuits to minister to the growing Italian community in the city. On September 10, 2011 Fr. DeRop, S.J. said the first mass in Italian at the church. The diary of the Jesuit order notes that two weeks later Fr. DeRop took “some of our old pews” to the new Italian church. About this time the church’s name was changed to Our Lady of Monte Virgene, after a well-known church in Caserta, Italy. A sketch rendered by Univeristy of Washington graduate student Nellie Roe in 1914 depicts the church and school surrounded by a fenced garden. The caption states that “102 Italian children” attend the school.

 

In 1913 Fr. Lodovico Caramello arrived to take over for the ailing Fr. De Rop and immediately began to fast track plans for a new, grander edifice in the Florentine style of his homeland. The fruition of this project in 1915 is credited largely to Fr. Caramello’s commanding personality and his contacts in his native Italy.

The Italians built their church just to the west of, and back-to-back with, the old German church. The 1916 Sanborn map shows “Mt. Virgin R.C. Church” almost touching the “Old Church.” The small house is labeled “School,” although it was also the parish rectory. With the tower removed, St. Boniface became the parish hall and later served in a number of capacities, including as a gym, kindergarten, and workshop, before ultimately being torn down about 1970. Army surplus buildings, placed on the church property in the 1940s, became the Mount Virgin School where local children received instruction from Irish Dominican nuns and sometimes from the priests themselves.

For several decades, Mount Virgin and Father Caramello were the heart of the Italian community in Seattle. Long-time resident Ralph Vacca recalled:

The church in the Italian community, at least in that generation, was the center. And Father Caramello was God in America. You could take a string or measuring stick and go out whatever distance from Mount Virgin Church and there would be a lot of Italian names and families.

 

Vincent LaSalle spoke of the Italian culture that defined the church:

I was raised in the Catholic school with the Dominican nuns, Mount Virgin, the little Italian parish. And I became an altar boy when I was only in about the fourth grade and Father Caramello says he’s “gonna make an altar boy out of me.” So I became an altar boy; I was number one! And you never seen anything like it – such beautiful boys! You know the altar boys at the end of the year, they used to have a great big party, you know, all the Italian kids. They were all Italian, all of them.

To this day Our Lady of Mount Virgin is designated as a “national parish,” one without traditional geographic boundaries. Specifically it was, and is, an “Italian National Parish,” one of several in the country created to serve a specific immigrant community.

OPENING THE DOORS

In the last decades of the 20^th century, the Italian population in Garlic Gulch began to disperse, pushed out by the I-90/Mount Baker tunnel projects and changing demographics. Many Italian-Americans had already moved out to the suburbs by the time the second major freeway expansion began in 1979. Attendance at mass dwindled steadily and there were fears the church might close altogether. However, in that same year the first of several waves of Laotian Catholic refugees arrived in the Rainier Valley. Assisted by an Italian Catholic group working with the tribal people of Laos, these refugees were adopted into the parish, bringing new life to the little church.

Mount Virgin also has a special relationship with Native American Catholics in Seattle. For a number of years the parish offered a special mass for Native Americans. Today it continues to offer a meeting place for the Kateri Circle and a home for a parochial vicar for the Native American community.

Today Mount Virgin offers a weekly mass for the Laotian community, as well as a mass for ethnic Chinese, spoken in both Mandarin and Cantonese. A Lao and a Chinese deacon are in residence, assisting Fr. Clarence Jones. The early 8:00 a.m. mass, however, is the province of “a faithful remnant” of Italian families from the neighborhood, in the words of Fr. Jones.

Although the school attached to the church closed its doors in 1978 after being open continuously since 1911, the classrooms find use as a private pre-school and for many community functions.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

In 2008 a group of sixth graders from The New School toured Mount Virgin and reported on their experience. Several wrote about Fr. Jones’ vision for the parish:

What the priest of Mt. Virgin wants for the future is for the church to be more diverse. Even though they accept everyone, they have different service times for different ethnics/languages. -- B.J.

I thought the priest was going to say something like “I hope more people come to church.” What he said was kind of like that, he wishes to have more nationalities at church. There is Italian, Chinese and white people; he would still like more though.—Asia

Things have changed for Mount Virgin, but there is hope for the future as the church embraces the Catholic tradition of “adopting and adapting” to new circumstances and cultures.

Update as of 2025: Sad, little hope for the future. The church is fully closed now, with some exceptions for special events.

****

Information for this story was drawn from the archives of the Seattle Archdiocese, Special Collections at the University of Washington, and oral histories collected by the Rainier Valley Historical Society, as well as the project “Bringing World Religion Home,” conducted by Mikala Woodward for the Rainier Valley Historical Society and The New School and funded by King County 4Culture.

 

 

The "new" church today: Our Lady of Mount Virgin. Photo, Alan Humphrey.

Point of No Return: the Will Rogers - Wiley Post Memorial Seaplane Base

Photo: Alan Humphrey

Wiley Post and Will Rogers were the super stars of their time...an aviator with one-eye and a part-Cherokee lasso-twirling humorist, both out of Oklahoma. When they died together in a plane crash in Alaska August 15, 1935 it was a national tragedy.

Post and Rogers were a week into their trip of exploration. Post planned to fly across to Siberia and perhaps even repeat his round-the-world feat of 1933. Rogers was along for the ride, or part of it. The end came all too soon when the cobbled-together float plane Wiley piloted stuttered on lift-off from a brief stop and crashed into a lagoon near Point Barrow.

The Seattle Connection
Post and Rogers' final journey began in Seattle...or more specifically at the Renton Airport (sometimes called Bryn Mawr airport) on the southern shore of Lake Washington. From here the fellows took off in the unnamed plane for the north after fitting it with pontoons and test flying it over the lake. The rest, as they say, is history.

Where tragic history goes, a memorial follows. At least one. The City of Renton chose to remember the heroes in 1949 by naming the refurbished float plane facility the Will Rogers-Wiley Post Memorial Seaplane Base. Fourteen years to the month following the tragedy the base was formally dedicated with the unveiling of a plaque and speeches by Governor Arthur B. Langlie and Renton Mayor Perry Mitchell. The solemnities were augmented with a bathing beauty competition and various seaplane-themed contests, including an award for the seaplane carrying the most girls. (Seattle Daily Times, 8/16/49 and 8/29/49).

Fast forward to the 21st century. Flying buffs, including Washington Seaplane Pilots Association president Bob Dempster, a story unto himself, advocated for improvements to the monument. Specifically, Dempster and others pushed for additional plaquage describing the lives of the celebrated pair, as well as the provenance of the doomed plane. A second dedication of the monument was held August 7, 2003, 68 years to the day after lift-off.

How to get there from here
Finding a small monument in a busy airport is not as daunting as one might think. Enter the Renton Airport from the west side off Rainier Avenue South. The left fork will take you easily to a small parking area near the shore line just outside the airport perimeter fence. The monument appears on a small hillock ahead of you.

Full text of the original panel:

Will Rogers - Wiley Post, Memorial Seaplane Base, Dedicated August 28, 1949. To the memory of Will Rogers, America's most beloved ambassador of good will and his fellow Oklahoman, Wiley Post who took off from this base August 7, 1935, on their ill-fated flight to encircle the globe. City of Renton.

Will Rogers and Wiley Post at Renton Airport prior to take-off, August 7, 1935.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, Museum of History & Industry, Seattle; All Rights Reserved.

 

Point Reyes Coast Guard Cemetery

This obscure little cemetery contains only a handful of graves: four surfmen who died while serving at the nearby Life Saving Station and the family of the the man who first commanded the station. If others are buried here, the markers have been lost. Most of the graves date from the 1890s.

It is easy to breeze by the cemetery on your way out to Drake's Beach or the Point Reyes Lighthouse, although it is only a few hundred feet off the main road. A sign pointing the way from Sir Francis Drake Boulevard reads "Historic Life-Saving Station Cemetery;" some find this amusing.

I love to stop here because of the beauty and serenity of the spot up on a small hill under eucalyptus trees with a beautiful 360 degree view of the bay and meadows. A great spot to see birds, too.

 

Anderson and Carstens, as well as Larson (below) died in accidents caused by large waves hitting their boats. Korpala died from a sudden illness.