Volunteer co-ordinator Mary Heath and the Virginia V, July 1978. Photo, Bob Miller.
RESTORATION OF THE STEAMER VIRGINIA V Last of the Mosquito Fleet By Mary Heath and Roland Carey
Once a veritable swarm of steamboats carried mail, freight, and passengers into every bay and inlet of the inland sea that comprises Puget Sound and adjacent waters, in the northwest corner of the United States. So numerous were these craft during the late 19th and early 20th century, that mariners entering Seattle harbor dubbed them the "Mosquito Fleet." The SS Virginia V, last surviving member of the famous Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet, is now undergoing reconstruction at her pier in Seattle, Washington, as a living, operating exhibit of that era, when the waters of Puget Sound provided a system of aqua-freeways, and transportation from point to point was by steamboat. From Olympia, Washington to the Canadian border and beyond, the shores are rich in reminiscences of that bygone era. The first steamboat ever to appear on Puget Sound was the side-wheeler Beaver, brought from England by the Hudson's Bay Company to serve in the fur trade. Launched at Blackwall on the Thames in 1835, she arrived on the Pacific Coast in 1836, and was used thereafter in the freighting of company supplies. The first attempt to provide passenger service on Puget Sound came in 1853, the year Washington became a territory of the United States. Captain Warren Gove, a former windjammer master from Edgecomb, Maine, purchased the small sidewheeler Fairy in San Francisco, and his brother, Captain David J. Gove, brought her north on the deck of the bark Sarah Warren. The little steamer proved to be unseaworthy, however, and after a few trips between Olympia and Seattle, she was withdrawn. Once more the settlers were traveling in sloops and canoes. A more substantial vessel, the propeller-driven Major Tompkins, steamed into Puget Sound in 1854 to become the first mail steamer. Running once a week from Olympia, at the head of Puget Sound, to 40
the town of Victoria, just across the Canadian border, she called at all of the sawmill ports along the way, pioneering on a route that lasted more than half a century. The Puget Sound mail route served as a trunk line. From points upon it, as population grew, new routes branched out to serve distant bays, islands, and river settlements. One of the islands along this route was Vashon, a body of land 14 miles long and seven miles wide. Approaching it, mariners were offered a choice. They could pass along either its east or west side. Thus, the two passages came to be known as the East and West Pass. Nels G. Christensen moved out on the West Pass in 1908, and built a home at Lisabeula, the town named for two employees of the United States Post Office Department. For the next two years, "Chris," a Seattle grocer, commuted between his island home and the store. A local steamer ran through the passage daily, but the service was leisurely, intended to serve farmers rather than commuters. When he learned that others, beside himself, were interested in more rapid service, Chris bought a 60' gasolinepowered launch called the Virginia Merrill, and organized the West Pass Transportation Company. He and his partner, John Holm, made the first trip from Lisabeula to Seattle on September 10, 1910. They carried eight passengers. The name Merrill had been dropped upon change of ownership, so the vessel was known simply as Virginia. Thus, the Virginia series was born. Captai n Christensen preferred to change numbers rather than names. Holm stayed in the business only one year, but Captain Christensen was launched into the transportation business for good. In 1912, he replaced the Virginia with the Virginia II, an 87' vessel that had been launched at Lisabeula in March, of that year. She, too, was powered by a gasoline engine, but in
1914, he purchased his first steamer, a 100' vessel that had been launched at Tacoma in 19 10 as the Typhoon. Captain Christensen was now making a round trip a day between Seatt le and Tacoma, calling each way at a dozen communi ties along the West Pass. The Typhoon went on this route in May as the Virginia III. In 19 18, he purchased the 108' Tyrus, a steamer that had been lau nched at Tacoma in 1904. The captain renamed her Virginia IV and with two vessels, he was able to operate on both the East and West Pass. After the IV was badly damaged at a Tacoma dock on December 28, 1921, a new steamer, the 120' Virginia V, was launched on March 9, 1922 at Maplewood, across the West Pass from Lisabeula. The engine and boiler from the IV were then installed in the V, and this is the machinery that powers the vessel today. The trip le-expansion, 500-horsepower steam engine was a product of the' Heffernan Engine Works, in Seattle. It had been installed in the Tyrus in 1906, after that vessel had operated for two years as a wood-burner. With the new engine the Tyrus became an oil-burner, as is the Virginia V today. The engine was far too powerful for the earlier vessel, but it has driven the Vat an easy 12 knots, for the last 56 years. Reconditioned during the spring of 1978, it is ready for another 56 years. The water tube boiler, assemb led by the H. S. Studdert Company of Seattle in 1920, was installed in the Virginia IV the same year. Now in the Virginia Vin 1978, Coast Guard Inspection finds it still in first class condition. Somehow, the condition of the machinery seems to be a tribute to Stanley Craig, long-time engineer of the West Pass Transportation Company, and to those engineers who have succeeded him. During her first nine years of operation the Virgini(JI V made one round trip a day between Seattle and Tacoma via the West Pass calling at each of the villages along the route. During those years she averagSEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1979