The Boat Shops - By Dick Wagner
The first step in the Transportation grant project is to document and identify the unique history and stories of Lake Union that could be shared through exhibits and interpretative activities.
The founder of The Center from Wooden Boats, Dick Wagner, is documenting many of the compiling stories and the history of Lake Union, from his unique perspective of living and working on Lake Union for over three decades. These narratives are in draft form, and should be considered a work in progress. We welcome any thoughts, comments or stories you may have.
The Boat Shops
There was a landrush to Lake Union from boatbuilders on Elliot Bay and the Duwamish when the locks and ship canal were completed in 1917.In 1912 there was one lonely boatshop in the lake, the Tokyo Tea House on the University of Washington campus’ Portage Bay shoreline. The brothers Pocock, George and Richard, were lured from their Vancouver, B.C. boatshop. The U.W. crew coach, Hiram Conibear wanted fledgling rowers to have competitive shells and the Pococks were the only professional shell builders on the west coast. They came to the U.W. campus to build eight oared shells. The 1909 Tea House, built by volunteer Japanese carpenters in one day, was a left over from the AYP Expo. There is probably no other boatshop in history called Tokyo Tea House, even in Tokyo.
The first to take dibs on the lakeshore after the ribbon was cut in the locks was Lake Union Drydock Company. They brought in a second hand drydock capable of lifting the 3-4 masted schooners which weighed 400-500 tons of clear, tight-grained Douglas fir.
The sole power of the schooners was their sails. Steam tugs brought them to the lake. They arrived in October after the fishing season in the Bearing Sea and departed in April with 400-500 tons of rock salt in their holds toperserve the cod.
Lake Union protected the schooners from the winter storms from the southwest and from the teredoes. Teredoes are worms with a big appetite for wood. Their favorite environment is a still, saltwater harbor where they happily munch through underwater planking of the moored vessels. Fresh water is free of teredoes.
The cod schooners hauled and repaired by LUDCO included the Azalea, C.A. Thayer, Charles R. Wilson, John A., Sophia Christenson, La Merced, and Wawona. The Wilson and Sophia Christenson were built by the Hall Brothers yard in Port Blakely. What a contrast between he mighty boxy hulls of the cod schooners at LUDCO and the delicate elegant shells at the Tokyo Tea House.
A flood of boatshops that set up for business on Lake Union between 1919 and 1929, when the stock market crash put our economy in the dustbin. The 1920’s were truly an age of style. Most of the shops at that time were building motor and sail personal yachts in greater size and numbers than ever before. There was a peak of recreational boatbuilding following the Gold Rush in the first decade of the century, but this time the boat culture had expanded exponentially.
Yachts, some over 100’ and 100 tons were being built in the shops of N.J. Blanchard, Vern Grandy, the Prothero brothers, Jim Chambers and Thornhill and Vic Franck, Thornhill Shertzer, Anchor Jensen, Shain and Bryant.
This was not lean-to shacks and hand tools backyard operations. The shops all were built on pilings, all had marine railways or drydocks, had multiple bandsaws and shop trucks. When big jobs came, more boatwrights were hired from the taverns of Ballard or the boarding houses of Pioneer Square. The workers would arrive by streetcar. Help was required in boarding and leaving the streetcar on their 1st day because they had to bring their own hand tools in 5 or 6 very heavy wooden chests.
The Seattle Yacht Club moved from the Duwamish River to Portage Bay in 1920. They established themselves on the site where Chief Chi-Siak-Ka carved cedar canoes.
There were also shops building workboats, tugs, trollers, cannery tenders, and halibut schooners. These yards were mainly on the Ballard side of the ship canal. The sons of the boatbuilders were usually expected to spend after school time sweeping up the shop at age 10 and begin building when they were 12.
Prohibition worked the end of the roaring 20’s, and offered boatshops some roaring business. Some built fast bats with capacity for carrying and sometimes quickly disposing of beverages, purchased by those entrepreneurs known as rumrunners. At the same time they built fast and well armed enforcement boats for the US Coast Guard.
In the Depression years of the 1930’s the big yachts were out of the picture, but the Puget Sound folks had become addicted to pleasure boating, so the shops remained busy building small boats for the rental places of urban centers and the resorts built for the blue collar families looking for the biggest bang from their recreation dollars. The Marty Monsen shop opened in 1930 (?) next to Blanchard on the northeast shore of Lake Union. Monsen built lapstrake rowing boats for resorts, Grandy built them for the life guards at Seattle Parks, Blanchard built 18’ Ted Geary designed flat bottom racing sloops and 24’ cruising sail boats using the stock star-class spars, sails, and keels. Lake Union Drydock built slim low power raised deck cruisers called Lake Union dreamboats. In other words, the shops were busy building small boats of high quality for affordable prices.
Because of the many industries around the lake and the bustling boat traffic, the US Army Corps of Engineers found it necessary to assign a snag boat to keep Lake Union free of debris. In 1929 they had Lake Union drydock build the 163’ stern wheel steamer W.T. Preston. The cost was $20,832 fro the wooden hull. The twin engines, boiler wheel, stack and deckhouse was transferred from the 1914 snag boat Swinomish. The Preston began leaking from the tremendous stresses of hauling in logs and sunken boats. In 1937/9? another welded steel W.T. Preston was built at Lake Union Drydock.
In 1936 the Seattle School System founded a school for boatbuilding. It was called Edison Technical Institute and was located at the old Schertzer shop at the foot of Stoneway. The purpose of Edison Tech was to provide fresh, well-trained high school graduates for the wooden boatbuilding industry. By the 1930’s the tradition of child labor in the shops had gone with the tide.
Edison Tech’s training was perfect. The first class graduated as America was positioning itself in relationship to conflicts in Europe and Asia. The boatshops were getting contracts to build boats for the Navy, Army and Air Force and Cost Guard. Many of the old hands at the Lake Union shop had to take night courses in using tables of offsets to loft the boats. A lot of the master builders had learned lofting from half models. Their teachers were the 20-year-old grads of Edison Tech.
Following World War I, Lake Union became the parking lot for several square riggers that were seized as enemy vessels off our Pacific Coast, and several built wooden freighters with steam engines that were built for the war effort in Seattle, Tacoma and Vashon Island. They were locally known as Wilson’s Wood Row. The sailing shops were the Monogahela, Tonawonda, and Mosholu. The tall ships had to be moved out of the lake in 1932 in order to drop in place the center span of the George Washington Memorial Bridge over the Lake between Queen Anne and Fremont.
During World War II the 167’ four masted schooner, Fantome was a fixture in Portage Bay, just off the Seattle Yacht Club piers. Fantome was owned by the Guinness (beer) family. It concluded its cruise in Australia in 1939 when all Europe was up in flames. Fantome and the square-riggers became endeared feature of Seattle, proving once again the irresistible
The sole power of the schooners was their sails. Steam tugs brought them to the lake. They arrived in October after the fishing season in the Bearing Sea and departed in April with 400-500 tons of rock salt in their holds toperserve the cod.
Lake Union protected the schooners from the winter storms from the southwest and from the teredoes. Teredoes are worms with a big appetite for wood. Their favorite environment is a still, saltwater harbor where they happily munch through underwater planking of the moored vessels. Fresh water is free of teredoes.
The cod schooners hauled and repaired by LUDCO included the Azalea, C.A. Thayer, Charles R. Wilson, John A., Sophia Christenson, La Merced, and Wawona. The Wilson and Sophia Christenson were built by the Hall Brothers yard in Port Blakely. What a contrast between he mighty boxy hulls of the cod schooners at LUDCO and the delicate elegant shells at the Tokyo Tea House.
A flood of boatshops that set up for business on Lake Union between 1919 and 1929, when the stock market crash put our economy in the dustbin. The 1920’s were truly an age of style. Most of the shops at that time were building motor and sail personal yachts in greater size and numbers than ever before. There was a peak of recreational boatbuilding following the Gold Rush in the first decade of the century, but this time the boat culture had expanded exponentially.
Yachts, some over 100’ and 100 tons were being built in the shops of N.J. Blanchard, Vern Grandy, the Prothero brothers, Jim Chambers and Thornhill and Vic Franck, Thornhill Shertzer, Anchor Jensen, Shain and Bryant.
This was not lean-to shacks and hand tools backyard operations. The shops all were built on pilings, all had marine railways or drydocks, had multiple bandsaws and shop trucks. When big jobs came, more boatwrights were hired from the taverns of Ballard or the boarding houses of Pioneer Square. The workers would arrive by streetcar. Help was required in boarding and leaving the streetcar on their 1st day because they had to bring their own hand tools in 5 or 6 very heavy wooden chests.
The Seattle Yacht Club moved from the Duwamish River to Portage Bay in 1920. They established themselves on the site where Chief Chi-Siak-Ka carved cedar canoes.
There were also shops building workboats, tugs, trollers, cannery tenders, and halibut schooners. These yards were mainly on the Ballard side of the ship canal. The sons of the boatbuilders were usually expected to spend after school time sweeping up the shop at age 10 and begin building when they were 12.
Prohibition worked the end of the roaring 20’s, and offered boatshops some roaring business. Some built fast bats with capacity for carrying and sometimes quickly disposing of beverages, purchased by those entrepreneurs known as rumrunners. At the same time they built fast and well armed enforcement boats for the US Coast Guard.
In the Depression years of the 1930’s the big yachts were out of the picture, but the Puget Sound folks had become addicted to pleasure boating, so the shops remained busy building small boats for the rental places of urban centers and the resorts built for the blue collar families looking for the biggest bang from their recreation dollars. The Marty Monsen shop opened in 1930 (?) next to Blanchard on the northeast shore of Lake Union. Monsen built lapstrake rowing boats for resorts, Grandy built them for the life guards at Seattle Parks, Blanchard built 18’ Ted Geary designed flat bottom racing sloops and 24’ cruising sail boats using the stock star-class spars, sails, and keels. Lake Union Drydock built slim low power raised deck cruisers called Lake Union dreamboats. In other words, the shops were busy building small boats of high quality for affordable prices.
Because of the many industries around the lake and the bustling boat traffic, the US Army Corps of Engineers found it necessary to assign a snag boat to keep Lake Union free of debris. In 1929 they had Lake Union drydock build the 163’ stern wheel steamer W.T. Preston. The cost was $20,832 fro the wooden hull. The twin engines, boiler wheel, stack and deckhouse was transferred from the 1914 snag boat Swinomish. The Preston began leaking from the tremendous stresses of hauling in logs and sunken boats. In 1937/9? another welded steel W.T. Preston was built at Lake Union Drydock.
In 1936 the Seattle School System founded a school for boatbuilding. It was called Edison Technical Institute and was located at the old Schertzer shop at the foot of Stoneway. The purpose of Edison Tech was to provide fresh, well-trained high school graduates for the wooden boatbuilding industry. By the 1930’s the tradition of child labor in the shops had gone with the tide.
Edison Tech’s training was perfect. The first class graduated as America was positioning itself in relationship to conflicts in Europe and Asia. The boatshops were getting contracts to build boats for the Navy, Army and Air Force and Cost Guard. Many of the old hands at the Lake Union shop had to take night courses in using tables of offsets to loft the boats. A lot of the master builders had learned lofting from half models. Their teachers were the 20-year-old grads of Edison Tech.
Following World War I, Lake Union became the parking lot for several square riggers that were seized as enemy vessels off our Pacific Coast, and several built wooden freighters with steam engines that were built for the war effort in Seattle, Tacoma and Vashon Island. They were locally known as Wilson’s Wood Row. The sailing shops were the Monogahela, Tonawonda, and Mosholu. The tall ships had to be moved out of the lake in 1932 in order to drop in place the center span of the George Washington Memorial Bridge over the Lake between Queen Anne and Fremont.
During World War II the 167’ four masted schooner, Fantome was a fixture in Portage Bay, just off the Seattle Yacht Club piers. Fantome was owned by the Guinness (beer) family. It concluded its cruise in Australia in 1939 when all Europe was up in flames. Fantome and the square-riggers became endeared feature of Seattle, proving once again the irresistible