Digging Deep: A Photo Research Case Study

Puget Sound Maritime volunteer researcher Joe Baar was given the assignment of identifying a number of stray photos unearthed during preparations for our recent big move. His analysis of this photo demonstrates the difficulties and rewards of engaging in photo forensics.

Photo courtesy of Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, for now....

The Photo

Our photo is a black and white matte print, approximately 14 x 10 inches, of a Japanese motorship maneuvering in a waterway on the U.S. Atlantic coast, just offshore from lighted buoy #30, with a Moran ship-assist tug alongside. PSMHS records give no evidence of the print’s provenance.

The Ship

Neither the ship’s name nor that of the tug is fully legible on the print. However, the shipping company is clearly identified by the ship’s funnel insignia and by lettering on its hull: “Mitsubishi Line”. The ship’s hull, superstructure and masting shapes place it at a time after World War II; the tug’s streamlined funnel shape contributes to this placement. A rough estimate of a ship’s size depends largely on the relative size of its visible components, their proportions, and how they compare to other, known, vessels. If a normal deck is about 10 feet high, then what multiple of this distance matches the height of the ship’s bow as it appears in our photo? Since the ship is positioned at an angle to the camera and its bow is farther away than its other parts, how much should we correct this height for perspective? All this information taken together yields an estimate of around 450 feet in length and probably smaller than 10,000 gross tons measurement – a slightly less boxy design than our World War II EC-2 Liberty ships, but similar in size.

Lloyd’s Register List of Shipowners for 1959-60 shows vessels belonging to Mitsubishi Kaiun Kaisha to include six 7,500 GRT motor ships built 1951-56 and three 8,400 GRT motor ships built 1957-58. Photographs of all nine of these ships, available on the internet, show the former class was configured with a “three-island”-type hull and the latter class was flush-decked with a forecastle. Inspection of the vessel in our photo shows it to be one of the three later vessels, either CALEDONIA MARU, GLORIA MARU, or OCEANIA MARU. Very close inspection of the name visible on the starboard bow allows a conclusive identification as GLORIA MARU.

The When

Japanese shipping lines underwent a consolidation in April 1964 (Chida and Davies, The Japanese Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries, Bloomsbury, 1990). In that month Mitsubishi K.K. transferred its vessels to Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK Ltd.), whose funnel, hull colors and markings are entirely different from those of Mitsubishi, so our photo was taken between March 1958 when GLORIA MARU went into service, and April 1964. Lloyd’s Register also reflects this changeover.

A postcard sold in October 2014 on eBay shows GLORIA MARU in a view almost identical to the one in our photo. In general, the ship appears to be moving ahead slowly; a Moran tug is alongside the bridge superstructure moving ahead almost at full speed on what appears to be a parallel course. The card’s reverse side contains the following information:

NEW YORK HARBOR

The M.V. Gloria Maru, with a Moran docking tug at the bow, on its maiden arrival in the world’s busiest harbor. Photo from Moran.

This photo appears to have been taken less than five minutes later than the one in our print, adding significantly to our understanding of the scene. Lacking evidence to the contrary, for the time being we can accept this, and our own photo, as views of the ship on its first arrival in New York. 

EBay Postcard view of M.S. GLORIA MARU taken a few minutes later than our view.

The New York Times’ “Shipping -- Mails” news discloses 14 voyages GLORIA MARU made to the United States’ Atlantic Coast between March 1960 and June 1964. The first arrival occurred on 3/27/1960 from Japan via Cristobal, Panama, and that voyage departed New York on 4/9/1960 destined for Kobe, Japan. A similar pattern was in place for all the following voyages, with occasional intermediate stops, either inbound or outbound, in Hampton Roads, Philadelphia and Baltimore. GLORIA MARU’s Atlantic Coast service continued after June 1964 but since she came under NYK ownership and colors the previous April, information about these voyages is not germane to the identification of this photograph.

The Where

A foreground feature in our photo is lighted buoy number 30. The Moran ship-assist tug would seem to place the general location west of Sandy Hook and south of Orient Point, Long Island. The U.S. Coast Guard’s current Light List for the northern portion of the Atlantic coast discloses 29 red “30” buoys, of which four are lit. One of these is out-of-area in Maine and two have bells, one at Gowanus Flats in New York Harbor’s Upper Bay and one in Raritan Bay just south of Staten Island. The remaining R “30” buoy is in Arthur Kill between Fresh Kills Reach and Tremley Point Reach. The 1947 chart edition does not show any buoy at this location, and the 1966 edition shows this buoy just south of a relatively new pier and dredged dock at the channel’s bend between these two reaches. The surrounding land on both sides of Arthur Kill at this location is low and marshy, which corresponds to what our photo shows. Two chimneys north of Tremley Point, as noted on Chart 285 of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, are just visible in the distance on our print, ahead of the tug’s pilot house.

U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart 285, 1966, for the area covered by both photos, showing buoy R30.

The current Google satellite view shows the pier’s southwestern end collapsed into Fresh Kills Reach and the middle part of the pier is enclosed in what appears to be a steel-clad structure two or three storeys high, extending over the dock and supported on three large cylindrical caissons in Arthur Kill. The building extends inland some distance to at least 15 truck loading docks and the site includes baled material stacked on an associated hardstand and two loaded, uncovered barges moored at the remaining northeast pier. Google identifies this complex as the Pratt Industries Paper Division, whose own web site lists its activities as a paper mill for recycled corrugated cardboard. The whole complex is located just south of the Travis-Chelsea NRG Energy electricity generating plant, whose structures were first placed at this location in 1948 by Staten Island Edison. A road and conveyor system connect Pratt and NRG, making possible use of Pratt’s waste products as fuel for the power plant. Further research is needed to determine what the predecessors of the recycling facility were, in order to understand what cargo GLORIA MARU brought or took away in 1960.

In our photo GLORIA MARU appears to have just finished backing down and her engine has completed shifting to an ahead bell. Evidence for this activity is the flattening boil of propwash along her starboard quarter with a growing wash into the stream astern; and a dispersing cloud of smoke wafting toward the photographer. These ships were propelled by a single direct-drive 16-cylinder diesel engine, normally producing visible exhaust when revolutions are increased under maneuvering conditions. GLORIA MARU has backed out of her berth at Travis-Chelsea and is headed north toward Kill van Kull and New York Harbor. If the date is before April 8th then she’s bound for Norfolk; if it’s April 9, 1960 then she’s headed to Kobe, Japan via Panama.

The Why

The print in our collection lacked any material to substantiate its origin, either as notations on the print’s face or on its reverse side, or as an attachment. A search within the contents of all our Deeds of Gift might turn up a reference specific to this print, but such a search would consume far more resources than we have available. We are thus unable to determine where this photo should reside in one of our collections, but whether it should reside there is now easily answered: since our identification process has now placed the photo’s venue definitively on the Atlantic Coast, it clearly falls outside our area of interest and is most likely a candidate for de-accession from our collection.

****

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.

Navigating the Archives with Karl House

Anyone who has called on the resources of the Puget Sound Maritime archives in the past decade has likely made contact with Karl House, the Society’s Research Coordinator. If he can’t find it, it probably can’t be found.

Karl’s long career navigating on sea and land may have helped prepare him for this position. In a series of oral history interviews, Karl shared his personal history with us, a history that begins close to the water.

Before he was four, Karl spent time on board the tugboat Defiance, captained by his father for Washington Tug and Barge Company.

He was towing sawdust barges between the mill at Port Gamble and the paper mill at Port Townsend. I was able to ride with him on some of those trips. They’re really etched in my memory and I’ve been fond of tugboats ever since.

Junior Mariner Karl House on board the tug Defiance, c. 1938. 
Photo courtesy of Karl House.

Like falling off a log

Tugboats became a recurring theme in Karl’s life. The day after he graduated from Queen Anne High School in Seattle, Karl signed on as deckhand aboard a Foss Company tugboat, the Hazel Foss. He continued to work for Foss and other companies during summers and breaks from college, earning enough to pay his way through the “U Dub.” He remembers the work being lots of fun, with the possible exception of one memorable event in 1952:

I fell off a log raft being towed by Foss #18 on the Duwamish River in December of 1952. It was dark out. I had moored a log raft at the South Island log storage on the Duwamish River. I had tied it up and I was returning to the tug to take the tug’s towing bridles off the front end of the log raft and when I went to remove the second bridle the boomstick [one of the long logs that corralled each section of logs] turned slightly and I fell overboard.

I was dressed in winter clothing: heavy jacket and shirt and I had on these heavy boots that were used for working on log rafts. When I fell overboard, because of the current going downstream in the river, I was washed under the logs in the first section of the tow. The logs were tight enough together that there wasn’t room for me to climb up on a log, so I had to stay underwater for about 70 feet until I came to the next section of logs where there was a crosswise boomstick and I knew there would be an opening of eight or ten feet [before the logs in the next section,] so I felt the bottom of the boomstick and I was able to grab the bottom of the boomstick and pull myself over the side and get up out of the water.

In the Navy

The year 1955 was an eventful one for Karl. In short order he graduated from the UW with a degree in transportation business, married his high school friend Deane Hullin, and was accepted to the Navy Officer Candidate Program in Rhode Island. By the end of the year he was commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve. Shortly thereafter Ensign House shipped out on the General J.C. Breckinridge, a Navy troop transport and passenger carrier home-ported in San Francisco, giving him his first true deepwater experience.

We’d make a trip from San Francisco to Yokohama, maybe down to Okinawa, then turn around and come back, get into San Francisco and spend maybe four or five days there, fix stuff that was broken, re-store the ship and head back out again. So the ships were underway a lot!

Karl, right, and LTJG Hal Murphy in the pilothouse of the Breckinridge, 1957. 
For some reason Karl acquired the nicknames "Brow" and "Charlie Brow" while in the Navy!
 Photo courtesy of Karl House.

In 1957 Karl was transferred to the General William Mitchell, home-ported at Pier 91 in Seattle. On the Mitchell as operations officer and navigation officer, Karl found himself often negotiating the approaches to Incheon [aka Inchon], Korea, a place made famous by General MacArthur’s surprise invasion of the peninsula during the Korean War. He describes the challenges:

Incheon is on the west coast of Korea and it is about 40 or 50 miles inland through a bunch of small islands and rocks from the Yellow Sea. The tidal range of Incheon is about 28 feet, similar to the tidal range of Anchorage, Alaska. Because of the tidal range at Incheon there are a lot of tidal currents and, at that time, 1956-1958, there were no current tables published for Incheon so it was quite a learning process to try to figure out the currents and their velocities while entering and leaving the approaches to Incheon.

We never ran aground or wrecked, but the best information we had for charts were British hydrographic surveys from 1938. Because up until the time General MacArthur ordered the invasion at Incheon it wasn’t much of a port really. There are no pier facilities there so anything that comes aboard ship or goes off ship has to go by lighter, and it is mostly done at at least half tide or higher.

Why would MacArthur pick that spot then?

Because nobody thought that he would do that due to the navigational difficulties, shallow water at low tide, and so on. Incheon is on a latitude right across from Seoul, Korea and the Korean peninsula isn’t all that wide. So the reasoning for going in at Incheon was to cut off the North Korean forces which had penetrated south on the peninsula almost to the end of Korea before they were stopped. So MacArthur ordered the Incheon invasion to cut off the North Korean army from their source of supply -- food and ammunition and whatever else an army needs.  

Cover of a booklet detailing life aboard the General Mitchell. 
Courtesy of Karl House.

Back on Dry Land

With the conclusion of his required active duty, and with a wife and two young sons at home, now-Lieutenant House began his land-based career, while remaining a naval reservist. Going to work for his father-in-law’s company, the venerable Hullin Transfer Company, and its sister concern, Federal Transfer Company, Karl learned the business of trucking freight, working his way up from unloading box cars at night to general manager of both companies. His career at Hullin/Federal spanned 29 years until the business ceased operation in 1988. All the while he continued to drill with the Naval Reserve, both at Lake Union and at Sand Point.

Working for Hullin gave the Houses a chance to use a company-owned boat, the Davy Bill, for family trips to the San Juans and the Gulf Islands. Once again Karl was back on inland waters! After retirement Karl and his wife purchased a 42-foot fiberglass Grand Banks boat named Rapture which took them as far as Alaska. A favorite place for cruising family vacations was Desolation Sound in British Columbia.

At the age of 65 Karl took on yet another maritime career: tour boat captain. With a master mariner’s license obtained in 1999, Karl was able to hire out as a relief captain on several of the sightseeing boats that churned the waters of Puget Sound and Lake Washington, including the Spirit of ’76. Although generally enjoyable, the work did have its hazards:

More often than any other activities done with the Spirit of ’76 was hauling parties of University students which from time to time got pretty unsettling. It was licensed to haul as many as 298 passengers. I recall one trip that we had almost capacity. We had the University of Washington marching band and they invited their friends from the UCLA band that was in town. There was very little room on that boat with all those people on it.

Navigating New Waters

In 1981 Karl’s mother gave him a gift membership to Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society. Some years later he answered the call of then-PSMHS librarian Jack Carver to help out in the library.

The first thing I had to learn was where the stuff was in the library and what the extent of some of the  collections were to help find answers to questions coming in. Then one of the things I did was process photo orders when the person in charge of photographs was not present to do so, so I became somewhat familiar with handling the photos and I got a lot of help from the MOHAI [Museum of History and Industry] people: Howard Giske and Kathleen Knies and Carolyn Marr. They were all very good at teaching me how to do these things and continue to be very helpful and excellent people to work with.

In the decade plus that Karl has been working in the library (both at the old MOHAI and the new), he has become the go-to guy for research inquiries on all things maritime. MOHAI Curator of Photography Howard Giske sums it up:

To all of his colleagues at the MOHAI Resource Center library, Karl House is a reliable, diligent and deeply knowledgeable partner, the right man with the right answers to pretty much all maritime questions. If he can’t locate it in PSMHS’s extensive collections, he may be able to find it at home! And Karl’s friendly, easy-going personality is always welcome aboard the good ship MOHAI.

PSMHS boardmember Roger Ottenbach concurs, adding

He does all this in a way that the person asking the question feels he really enjoys providing the info.

No doubt they are right!

A full transcript of the oral history interview with Karl House is available in the PSMHS office: admin@pugetmaritime.org. For information on the PSMHS research holdings and how to access them, see our webpage: pugetmaritime.org/research.htm.

-- Eleanor Boba

Karl and Deane House, 2008. Karl in his service dress whites. 
The Houses have two sons, Drew and Todd. 
Photo courtesy of Karl House.

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.

Picnic Point Mystery Vessel

Long-time PSMHS member Joe Baar asks if anyone can offer insights as to the identity of an abandoned vessel in Puget Sound.

The wreck in the photo is located approximately 800 yards north of Picnic Point, on the east shore of the entrance to Possession Sound, almost due east of Possession Point on Whidbey Island. (See the boxed icon on the right side of the NOAA chart above.) Just south of this site is an unnamed but inhabited point of land projecting westward from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe right-of-way.

The hull is of wood construction and I don’t believe it was a barge. It appears to have been a twin-screw vessel, perhaps a freighter. Part of a shaft strut is just visible above the water, below the red sign posted at the deck line on the port quarter. The stern is round or elliptical in plan at the main deck. The hull’s forward end incorporates quite a lot of steel, both along the sheer line and in way of the hawse. I estimate the vessel’s length between 200 and 300 feet. The hull’s shape reminds me of something L.H. Coolidge or H.C. Hanson might have designed for military resupply service to Alaska during World War II.

I remember the vessel’s first appearance at this location during the early 1950s when I used to travel to Wenatchee on the train that passes close to the east of this site.

This wreck and another submerged one are marked on nautical charts of this area; Google satellite view shows at least five skeletal vessel remains on this beach, and it appears the wreckers failed to burn only this one for the metal.

These photos are dated August 20, 2010. Any help in identifying the vessel can be noted in the comments section below, and is much appreciated!

-- 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.

Treasure Trove

The community of St. Michael, c. 1906. What appears to be water is frozen harbor ice.

Photographer unknown.

The Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society recently completed digitization of a unique group of primary historical records. The "Fragmentary Records of The Custom House of St. Michael, Alaska, 1894-1917" is now available to read via computer without risk of damage to the original documents.

Why is this important? The small island Alaskan community of Fort St. Michael, once a Russian trading post, then an American military site, sat close to the mouth of the Yukon River. As such it became the port of embarkation for miners headed up the Yukon River to the gold fields during the Gold Rush of 1897, as well as smaller strikes prior. In this chaotic period of marine traffic, the Customs House was a vital player in maintaining US law and order in a remote enclave.

A number of documents salvaged from the shuttered customs house found a home at PSMHS. In the early 1960s PSMHS member William Taylor, himself a traveler on the Dawson Trail as a boy, organized the material in a bound volume and provided a detailed historic overview in order to place them in context.

The document shown is a request for information to be used in a dispute over a "seaman's wages." 

MINING THE DOCUMENTS

The correspondence and records, both typed and hand-written, offer a window into life during this frenetic period of boom and bust. In amongst the routine matters of import, export, accidents, and taxation are glimpses of human drama:

There is a plea for special assistance from a miner “since I have already been so unfortunate as to have been blown into the Yukon.”

A request to the Treasury Department for clarification of some points of maritime law relating to stranded sailors reveals the precariousness of sea life: “I have the honor to inform you that on November 30^th last [1901], the Chilean steam whaler “Fearless” was blown on the rocks and wrecked at Dutch Harbor...The wreck of the vessel left the crew destitute.”

A “poor lone mother” in Ohio begs for information about her lost son: “His last letter was June 1902 and promised to be home and we received no more of since. He should have been on the General Siglin.” A hand notation on the page indicates there was no news of the boy and newspapers of the day gave the sealing schooner up for lost.

An unusual item, which may have been sent to all U.S. ports of call, is a request from the French ambassador to be on the look-out for a stolen work of art from the French town of Laguenne…”a so-called Eucharistic dove of the thirteenth century, of gilt and enameled copper, standing on an engraved copper tray hanging by four chains from a jeweled crown. The eyes of the dove are represented by gems, and the wings and tail are also set with rare stones. In the back there is a hinged opening for the introduction of the [sacramental] hosts.” An internet search easily picks up images of these religious artifacts.

It comes as little surprise that the regulation of the liquor trade commands a large share of the correspondence. Several documents relate to the request of a James Wilson to receive a permit to sell “intoxicating liquors for medicinal, mechanical and scientific purposes” at his place of business in Circle City, Alaska. The exact type of business is not specified, but it should be noted that Circle City was a distant outpost on the Yukon River populated almost exclusively by miners.

What type of medicinal liquor did Mr. Wilson propose to sell? The import permit issued at Sitka in 1896 lists the following:

200 gals whiskey

20 gals Rum

50 gals Brandy

50 gals Port wine

50 gals sherry

200 gals Claret

1 case Absinthe

1 case Chartreuse

1 case Benedictine

50 bbls Beer

5 bbls Porter

One hopes that these quantities were sufficient to last until the Klondike Stampede of 1897 turned Circle City back into a ghost town.

Others attempted less legal methods of bringing liquor to the cold country. In 1898 the Collector of Customs at St. Michael was warned by his counterpart in Sitka that “the steamship ‘Laurada’ has aboard a valuable cargo of whiskey, which it will be attempted to land unlawfully within the District of Alaska; that the bulk of the liquor is stored underneath the ship’s coal, so that great care must be taken that none of the liquor is landed over and above what appears on her manifest as ship’s stores, and in bond.”

IN THE HOLD

Digitization of a large volume is not inexpensive. We are grateful to a group of historians researching shipwrecks on the Yukon River, the S.S. Politkovsky research team, for a special donation to make this happen. PSMHS Executive Director Karen Marshall worked with the University of Washington Digital Initiatives Program to create high-quality scans of each page of the collection, including a map hand-drawn and colored by Mr. Taylor. Thanks to their efforts, Mr. Taylor’s compilation can be stored permanently within archival-quality housing while digital copies are available to view on CD-ROM.

PSMHS has over 800 cubic feet of archival materials available for scholarly and personal research, including over 60,000 maritime related photographs and negatives, including the Joe Williamson Collection, 7,000 ships’ plans, press clippings, legal and financial records of a number of maritime companies and shipbuilding firms, and detailed records of ships’ movement in and out of Puget Sound ports during the first half of the 20^th century. Our holdings relate to maritime life and commerce both in Puget Sound and up and down the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California.

If you are interested in working with our collections, please contact the PSMHS office to schedule an appointment in our research center, located in Georgetown at the MOHAI Resource Center.

-- Eleanor Boba

206.812.5464  research@pugetmaritime.org