Making the Cut: Ships in the Locks (Photo Forensics 101)

Puget Sound Maritime researcher Joe Baar takes a second look at some photos associated with the Lake Washington Ship Canal. This is one of an occasional series of essays commemorating the centennial of the Ballard Locks and the Ship Canal.

Several early photographic images of vessels transiting the Ship Canal are well known and the captions commonly associated with them claim they were taken during the canal’s first day, or first year, of operation. Sometimes we must take such assertions with a large dose of salt.

In one example, the photo reproduced on page 262 of The H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest (Gordon Newell, ed., 1966) shows the tug HORNET towing the freighter ss EASTERN MERCHANT eastbound out of the large lock; the caption purports EASTERN MERCHANT was the “...largest vessel to pass through the locks in their first year of operation.” That year would have run from August 1916 through August 1917. Lloyd’s Register of Ships tells us Asano Dockyard in Tsurumi, Japan, completed the 8,152-ton EASTERN MERCHANT in December 1919 to the order of the United States Shipping Board. As well, Merchant Vessels of the United States shows the tug HORNET was built in Seattle in 1920, so this photo could not have been taken earlier, belying the McCurdy caption. Much gratitude to Karl House for pointing out this inconsistency.

Confusion has resulted from the fact both locks were open to traffic by early August 1916, although the project’s official dedication and the celebratory maritime parade did not take place until July 4, 1917. By that date, shipping had been arriving in Lake Washington via this conduit for eleven months.

ss Roosevelt followed by mv Orcas at the Fremont Bridge, 7/4/1917;
 Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Joe Williamson Collection

ss ROOSEVELT at the Montlake Cut, 7/4/1917;
Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Joe Williamson Collection

The REAL First Transit

The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey ship GEDNEY, shown immediately below, most likely records the first transit of the Lake Washington Ship Canal by an ocean-going vessel. This event probably would have occurred during 1916. A jubilant note on one copy of the print’s reverse side informs us this trip was made with “No Pilot.” This notation lends credibility to the photo’s provenance because survey ships normally gather information about uncharted waters without using local guides. Also of interest is the absence of smaller craft visible in the image (aside from tugs), a certain indicator this trip was not the same one as the July 4th, 1917 transit led by the ROOSEVELT.

Survey ship USC&GS GEDNEY Eastbound from the Large Lock, c. 1916;
Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Joe Williamson Collection

Survey ship USC&GS GEDNEY at Sitka, Alaska, before 1912;
Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Joe Williamson Collection

-- Joe Baar

Joe Baar has been fascinated with ships since his childhood on Brace Point. His lifelong avocation has included stints with the Sea Explorers, small boat school courtesy of the U.S. Army, working on yachts on Lake Union, and amassing a large collection of maritime books.

Deep Focus, Part II: Joe Williamson, Reluctant Photographer

In our very first blog post we talked about the Joe Williamson Collection of maritime photographs which forms the heart of our archives. In researching the story we learned some interesting tidbits about the man who was an avid collector of photographs, a photographer in his own right, and a sailor, as well as one of the founders, and first president, of our historical society.

First and foremost Joe Williamson (1909-1994) was a man who loved ships. Almost every article and interview about him refers to the fact that he wasn't wild about photography itself. It was the output of his work that held his fascination. He loved developing film.

In 1979 intrepid newspaperwoman Lucile McDonald interviewed Joe for an article, reproduced here, that appeared in the December issue of the The Sea Chest, the quarterly journal of the historical society. Read it to hear, in Joe's own words, how he amassed his collection of maritime photographs, as well as stories of his early seafaring adventures.

This photo shows Joe, as a lad of six or so, on a bike along with his brothers Glen (left) and Paul, circa 1915. Photo courtesy of Leslie Williamson Lowell. As a young man Joe could be spotted riding his Indian Scout motorcycle on his rounds making deliveries for Bartell Drugs and other concerns.  

Ships and shops

By his late twenties, Joe had settled down somewhat and was selling maritime photographs from a waterfront shop he called the “Marine Salon.” Between 1937 and 1962 Joe operated a series of small shops, all on or near the Seattle waterfront.

PSMHS Research Coordinator Karl House recalls patronizing Joe’s shops as a youth:

I first met Joe Williamson because I used to buy pictures of tugboats from him when I was a young boy in elementary school, maybe eight or nine years old. I knew where it was, ‘cause you could go there on the bus. Well, I knew the shop because I’d been in with my dad before, and I knew it cost 50 cents to buy an 8 by 10 picture of a tug. Their photo salon was on the little viaduct that goes from First Avenue over the railroad tracks into the Colman Ferry Dock. That was the first Joe Williamson shop I was in. Subsequent to that he moved to a larger shop in the ferry dock itself and I bought a number of pictures over the years there. He was in the shop on the ferry dock for several years.

He was courteous and he would pull out pictures of various tugs, even though I only had enough money usually to buy one at a time. I’d pick out a picture and he’d sell it to me. If he wasn’t there, his wife would wait on me. She knew about everything that was in there, where the things were filed and so forth. Everybody on the waterfront pretty much knew a lot about what Joe did.

Ron Burke, long-time editor of the PSMHS journal The Sea Chest, also has fond memories of visiting Joe’s shop.

I grew up in Bremerton and whenever I came to Seattle [on the ferry], I would walk past Joe Williamson's Marine Photo Shop on the Marion Street pedestrian viaduct from the ferry dock. As a teenager and a Sea Scout in the 1940s, I got interested in maritime history and I used to drop by his shop and talk to him about it.  

One Christmas my grandmother gave me five dollars.  I took it to Joe's shop and started to order photos and told him to stop me when I reached the five dollar limit.  As I recall, I was able to buy eight photos, all of which I still have and [some of which I]  have used in The Sea Chest. 

Later, during my college summers, I worked on eight different ferries and ships and bought photos of each of them from Joe.  Also, in that work, I needed Coast Guard endorsements which required current photo ID cards and I always went to Joe to take my photos.

Indeed, Joe’s work extended beyond simply taking pictures and selling them. He was a creative entrepreneur, turning ships photos into Christmas cards, selling photos to various newspapers and periodicals, and collaborating with marine historian Jim Gibbs on a series of pictorial books.

During the same period he owned two ships, which he christened PhotoShip and PhotoQueen, respectively, and which he captained in his quest for adventure and photos. Karl House remembers them:

He had two different boats from which he took pictures. The first one was called PhotoShip and I’d say it was maybe a 30-foot boat. Then he bought a larger boat, called PhotoQueen, which was probably 50 or 55 feet. He could stay out on that boat for longer periods of time because it had all the cooking and live-aboard facilities that you needed on a boat that size. So he’d go as far out as the San Juan Islands and do some photo shoots there. Anyplace there was a photo opportunity.

Joe’s shop was always more than a collection of prints; it grew into a sort of gallery of maritime artifacts, including ships models, ships name plates, and other “relics and souvenirs” as the daily paper described it. One particular relic surfaced among Joe’s trove in 1947: part of the whistle from the well-beloved Bailey Gatzert, a sternwheeler which plied the waters of Puget Sound from 1890 to 1926. The familiar Bailey Gatzert whistle consisted of four chimes (some say five), one of which Joe holds above. Seattle Times Archives, December 7, 1947.  

Joe at MOHAI

Museum of History and Industry Curator of Photography Howard Giske met Joe shortly after his collection was acquired by PSMHS and conveyed to storage at the old MOHAI at Montlake. In his early 70s at that point, Joe traveled from his home on Bainbridge Island to lend a hand in the darkroom:

He lived in Winslow, not far from the ferry dock. He would walk down to the ferry dock, get on the boat, gab with old pals and cronies, I’m sure – he knew a lot of the ferryboat people. He would walk off at Colman Dock and would walk from there to MOHAI…to Montlake! He always had interesting stories, charming tales to tell about his walk to the museum that day. Just a chatty, lively fellow to have on the team.

PSMHS board member Pat Hartle remembers that Joe would also walk from the ferry dock to the Yankee Diner in Ballard for dinner meetings of the historical society. Each jaunt was a walk of about five miles in one direction!

Former Puget Maritime Board President Jim Cole, who led the charge to obtain the Williamson Collection, recalls Joe at MOHAI:

Of course, the collection was his child. He wanted to make sure everything was done right. It was probably hard to let go.

The Man with the Pipe

Joe is most often remembered as the man with a pipe in his mouth. Howard Giske recalls setting up some of Joe’s old darkroom equipment at MOHAI: 

He had always been a pipe smoker [so] we really had to work hard to get those lenses and condensers and things all cleaned up. He loved the darkroom work, he said. He really wasn’t all that interested in the photography and the camera work, but he’d smoke his pipe back there [in the darkroom.] A cloud of smoke! You couldn't catch anything on fire really, but he would kind of pollute the air with that old pipe. In a lot of the pictures taken of him you see him with his pipe.

Joe (center) with the other founding members of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society in 1948. From left: Jim Gibbs, Tom Sandry, Joe, Bob Leithead, and Austen Hemion. Photo, PSMHS.

-- Eleanor Boba

Sources:  

• The corporate records of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society.
• McDonald, Lucile. “The Famous Williamson Photo Collection.” The Sea Chest December 1979.
• Hemion, Austen. “Joe D. Williamson.” The Sea Chest June 1994.
• The Seattle Times Historic Archive, various articles.
• Oral history interviews with Jim Cole (2015), Karl House (2015), and Howard Giske (2015.)
• Email communication with Ron Burke (2015) and Pat Hartle (2015).
• Special thanks to Joe’s great niece, Leslie Williamson Lowell, for use of a family photo.

Deep Focus, Part I: The Joe Williamson Photographic Collection

Joe Williamson: sailor, photographer and collector. 

Photo, circa 1940; photographer unknown.

Joe Williamson is a name often associated with the photographs of the Puget Sound Maritime Collection, but who was Joe, what is his collection, and how did it transform the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society?

Wikipedia labels Joe “Sailor and Photographer.” In his lifetime, much of it spent on the water, Williamson documented a wide swath of Northwest history with his camera, yet he does not garner the name recognition of Darius Kinsey, Joseph Scaylea, or the Curtis brothers. Perhaps this is because he himself did not consider photography his primary vocation. Photography was the means to an end and that end was spending as much time as possible on and around boats.

In his lifetime Williamson did everything from delivering photo orders by motorcycle for Bartell Drugs to running a darkroom to patrolling for fish pirates off the coast of Alaska. He traveled throughout the Northwest, wherever water could take him. And he took a lot of photos. In later days, he held court at a small photography shop close to the Seattle waterfront.

We’ll have more on Williamson’s storied and multifaceted career in future posts. Today we will focus on his photo collection and what became of it.

CHALLENGE

Joe collected maritime images and by the time of his retirement had amassed a collection of more than 60,000 prints and negatives. Exact numbers are hard to obtain, but it appears that about half the collection consists of photos Williamson took himself and the other half is made up of images purchased from other photographers or outlets. The sum includes 3,000 glass plate negatives acquired from the Webster & Stevens commercial photography company. A number of the images in the collection date to the late 19^th century.

Williamson was aware of the value of his collection. In fact, he had set himself a very specific dual life-goal: to document maritime life and to build an asset that would serve to help fund his retirement. In 1979, at the age of 70, he offered the entire collection up for sale. The asking price: $50,000 ($163,000 in today’s dollars.) The San Francisco Maritime Museum was quick to make an offer, but Williamson hoped to conclude a sale with Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, the organization he had helped found in 1948.

Board vice president (soon to be president) Jim Cole remembers vowing aloud that the collection would not leave Puget Sound. The board had had enough of the better funded and more pro-active San Francisco Maritime Museum cherry-picking maritime artifacts from their backyard. Cole soon realized that his statement meant he was volunteering to lead the effort to raise the funds needed.

For the first time in the life of the Society the board jumped into the deep waters of fundraising to raise the $50,000 purchase price. Because of his close personal association with the group, Williamson allowed the group a year to reach this goal. Led by Cole, the board reached out to their membership and beyond, contacting old friends in the maritime trades and sending letters to businesses and foundations in the area.

Jim Cole remembers the challenge:

We talked about how we were going to do this. I had never done this kind of thing. We did send letters out. There was a lot of word of mouth activity. My late wife, Myrna, typed 180 letters to companies here.

A promise of $5,000 from H.W. McCurdy lent impetus to a campaign that was slow gaining momentum. Several companies made sizable donations, but the vast majority of the 476 gifts received came from individuals. It took nearly the entire year, but the group made their goal with enough to spare to purchase filing cabinets to house the collection.

Williamson's photo of a "Tugboat Annie" race, probably the 1940 event in Tacoma Harbor held in conjunction with the premier of the second Tugboat Annie movie, Tugboat Annie Sails Again.

CELEBRATION

As PSMHS zeroed in on its goal in the spring of 1980, the Museum of History and Industry, the Society’s partner and home base, showcased the collection in its Maritime Gallery (aka the Joshua Green-Dwight Merrill wing). The exhibit included 60 images along with ships models and other maritime artifacts. Jim Cole recalls that the exhibit opened with ceremony:

‘Mac’ McCurdy was going to cut the ribbon and he wanted Myrna to assist him. I said I’ll talk to her. She said “No, I’m not doing that.” I reported to him, and he said “She’ll do it!” I asked her a couple more times. She still said no. Well the night of the opening Mac makes this nice speech. There was a crowd there. And then he says “I would like to ask Mrs. Cole to help me cut the ribbon,” and that woman said “I would love to!” 

TRANSFORMATION

The huge Williamson Collection became the centerpiece of the PMSHS archives, which to that date had owned only a few small photographic collections to supplement its ships plans, models, and books. Acquisition of the wide-reaching collection transformed the PSMHS archives from a little known resource to an important and recognized repository of maritime history.

It transformed the Society in other ways, as well. Collection management became more than an abstract concept. Once PSMHS had taken possession of the thousands of prints and negatives, the real work began. 

-- Eleanor Boba

Sources:  

The corporate records of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society; interview with Jim Cole, 2/23/15; McDonald, Lucile. “The Famous Williamson Photo Collection.” The Sea Chest Dec. 1979; Hemion, Austen. “Joe D. Williamson.” The Sea Chest June 1994; The Seattle Times Historic Archive. Special thanks to Karl House and Judy Kebbekus, PSMHS volunteers.