Boats – Page 11 – Sequim Daily Photo

History in boats

While the fishing industry commands a big spot in Northwest maritime history, the Columbia River Maritime Museum reaches into many aspects of maritime life to paint a comprehensive picture of life on the water. The boat above, a replica of the Spanish launch Buena Ventura, is an illustration of Spanish exploration of the Northwest coast. It was used in 1775 by the Spanish schooner Sonora as it surveyed and explored this region .

Beyond the Buena Ventura in this picture is a wall-mounted exhibit on tools and techniques used in traditional navigation. In addition to static displays video monitors describe and explain how the tools are used.

This is the pilot house of the U.S.S. Knapp, a Navy destroyer built in 1943. It was decommissioned in 1957 and scheduled to be cut up and sold for scrap metal in the early 1970s. The owner of the company that was to dismantle the Knapp donated the entire bridge and pilot house to the Maritime Museum, no small feat.

The entire bridge, shown here, weighs 13 tons. It was barged down the Columbia River, trucked ashore, and placed by a giant crane on the site of the museum. The museum building was then constructed around the bridge. Thus it’s not an overstatement to call this exhibit the centerpiece of the museum. It is in a room filled with exhibits depicting World War II and includes a period radio broadcasting Franklin Roosevelt’s historic Pearl Harbor speech.

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Message to City Daily Photo bloggers: The photo challenge for February 1st is If you had to leave forever the city from which you usually post, what would you miss most?
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Working boats

The first big exhibit in the Columbia River Maritime Museum is focused on fishing and includes three full sized fishing boats. Mannequins and fishing gear help illustrate the work and tools of commercial fishing.

This is a typical salmon troller. DH was excited to look into it and examine the gear (though he noted that some pieces were missing in the set-up).

This is a Columbia River gill netter, a sailing boat used in pre-motor-power days. The lines of this boat are gorgeous. A nearby wall and recordings portray life in historic canneries.

Columbia River Maritime Museum

Mid-winter is often a good time to stay indoors. Lately I’ve thought about an indoor adventure we had last year, a trip to the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. We had no idea what to expect. When we found it I was surprised and happy to see lots of windows and an open, sweeping design.

Beyond the museum are docks where two Coast Guard cutters were docked as well as a decommissioned museum light ship (a ship that functions as a lighthouse). But I was intrigued by what I saw in the huge front window. It looked like a big boat in action, tilted at a crazy angle.

This is the action side of the boat in the Museum’s front window, a Coast Guard cutter in a simulated rescue. It’s quite a compelling exhibit. At the mouth of the Columbia River is the Columbia River Bar, a treacherous area where the river meets the Pacific Ocean in one of the most dangerous spots on the globe. It’s called the “Graveyard of Ships” and it’s not hyperbole. The Coast Guard is the last hope for some unlucky sailors here and a diorama like this helps present the scale and scope of dangers faced by seafarers and those who protect them.

I’ll show you more of what’s inside the museum in the next couple of days.

Hidden danger

The boat above is the Saishomaru, a Japanese fishing boat that is on display in the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. It washed ashore at Cape Disappointment, Washington, part of a pulse of tsunami debris that flowed to the U.S. West Coast after the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan and killed over 18,000 people.

I was reminded of this debris when I read in the local paper Thursday that earthquake scientists who are studying earthquake faults in this region are puzzling over the inactivity of the Cascadia fault zone that runs along the West Coast from Northern California to Vancouver Island. Compared with other zones in the region, this one is “extraordinarily quiet” — not a good thing, geologically speaking. Most faults do some slipping and sliding, which relieves the stress that builds as the massive plates of the earth’s crust strike and move across one another. Scientists are concerned that the Cascadia fault may be “locked,” or stuck in one place as pressure to move mounts up, in this case over centuries. The more pressure that builds, the bigger the quake — and tsunami — that is eventually released. It could release a magnitude 9.0 quake, truly a monster tremor.

It might never happen in our lifetimes. I certainly hope it doesn’t. But the earthquake and tsunami in Japan is a frightening reminder of what might happen here.

Port of Kingston

Sailboats are lined up and ready for action at the Port of Kingston.

The long boat revisited

A couple of weeks ago I showed you this boat under sail. It is a replica of one of the long boats that Captain George Vancouver’s crew used in the 1790s to explore our region. I saw it again, moored in Port Townsend, when I returned last week to look at the ancient anchor that may have come from this expedition. This is a more placid view of the boat which is used for Marine Education at the Northwest Maritime Center.

It’s quite a lovely boat with a very sweet stern.

Here’s a lesson in oars from DH, who pointed out these details to me: The big square part of the oars shown here is called the “loom.” It’s notable for its square form which is functional as a counter weight, making it easier to lift the blade of the oar out of the water during rowing. (Typical oars these days are more slender and tapered.) The leather on the oar relieves wear on it where it rides in the tholes, the slots you see above the sides (gunn’ls) of the boat. The tholes here are notable as this was the way oars were applied before the typical oar locks you see today. There. Now go out and impress someone with your extensive knowledge of oars!

Dorjun revisited

I originally posted a photo of Dorjun, a beautiful boat built in 1905 here. I wasn’t totally happy with the shot because I wasn’t able to do her justice. But I found her in the water in Port Townsend a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t resist trying again.

After her service with the U.S. Livesaving Service, Dorjun was sailed through the Strait of Magellan.

She’s 26 feet long and has been beautifully restored.

Boat lovers like to see a boat out of water, all the better to see what’s under the waterline. But I rather like seeing this beautiful boat launched and ready for another adventure.