Echoes of Puget Sound: Fifty Years of Logging and Steamboating

By Torger Birkeland and Joshua Green

In the early days of the twentieth century, the Mosquito Fleet played a colorful and important part in the life and economic development of the Puget Sound country. The fleet was composed of a myriad of steamboats of all sizes—each with a personality of its own. Many of these vessels have become legendary. Scurrying around the Sound in every sort of weather, the only links between many towns and settlements, these craft formed the largest and most picturesque fleet of its kind the world has known. They wrote an important chapter in Pacific Northwest history. This is their story, told by one who helped to bring the Mosquito Fleet to its golden age and then watched it wane.

ECHOES OF PUGET SOUND is also the story of Torger Birkeland, who came to America as a young lad with his family and started working as a whistle punk in loggings at the age of eleven. At twenty he finally turned to sea, and in this book, he gives a vivid account of his experiences of life on Puget Sound in those early 1900s.

Richly illustrated throughout with black & white photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Jul 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789126747

Torger Birkeland

Torger Birkeland was born on July 29, 1893 on a farm near the little town of Sauda, at the head of the Ryfylke Fjord near Stavanger, Norway. He emigrated to the United States in 1903 with his mother and siblings, where his father had built a modest home at Vinland, near Hood Canal, in preparation for his family’s arrival. At the age of eleven Torger was initiated into the rough-and-tumble life of a logger. Tom, as he was nicknamed, covered the Puget Sound country with his blanket bundle slung over his shoulder, working from logging camp to logging camp. He started as a whistle punk and learned the techniques of steam-donkey logging. Ambitious, and knowing there was little prospect for advancement as a logger, Tom felt the lure of salt water, and at the age of sixteen shipped a cook and deck hand on the cannery tender Nebraska. His seafaring career began in earnest in 1913 on the famous Sound steamer Hyak as cabin boy. He soon realised that he had found his calling and, after serving the required time on deck, he obtained his papers as male and second-class pilot, and later his unlimited master’s and pilot’s licenses for the waters. Cpt. Birkeland saw the Mosquito Fleet wane and the new fleets develop. During a career spanning almost fifty years, he slowly but steadily advanced from the bottom positions in the logging and the steamboat world to Senior Master of the M.S. Evergreen State, having been master of the state of Washington’s finest steam vessels and ferryboats. He died in Seattle, Washington on March 15, 1990, aged 96. Joshua Green (1869-1975) was an American sternwheeler captain, businessman, and banker. He rose from being a seaman to being the dominant figure of the Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet, before becoming a banker. Living to the age of 105 and active in business almost to the end of his life, he became an invaluable source of information about the history of Seattle and the Puget Sound region.

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Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

ECHOES OF PUGET SOUND

Fifty Years of Logging and Steamboating

BY

CAPTAIN TORGER BIRKELAND

With a Foreword by Joshua Green

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

FOREWORD 6

PREFACE 8

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 9

CHAPTER I—THE WHISTLE PUNK 10

CHAPTER II—THE LITTLE SKOOKUM 17

CHAPTER III—IN THE FOOTHILLS OF THE OLYMPICS 23

CHAPTER IV—DOG FISH BAY 31

CHAPTER V—SHELTON TO LA CONNER 41

CHAPTER VI—MY LOGGING DAYS ENDED 50

CHAPTER VII—STEAMBOATING 60

CHAPTER VIII—THE QUARTERMASTER 69

CHAPTER IX—MID THE SAN JUAN ISLES 96

CHAPTER X—THE SOL DUC & THE COMANCHE 106

CHAPTER XI—THE STEAMBOAT FIGHT 114

CHAPTER XII—THE ATHLON’S LAST RUN 122

CHAPTER XIII—BACK HOME ON THE HYAK 130

CHAPTER XIV—THE FERRYBOATS 135

POSTSCRIPT 139

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 141

DEDICATION

Lovingly dedicated to

My Wife

FOREWORD

CAPTAIN Torger Birkeland, who has written this book and has asked me to write the Foreword, was born near Stavanger, Norway, and is a typical, wholesome, honorable, frugal, industrious, God-fearing Scandinavian, which type has played a very, very prominent part indeed in the upbuilding of our Northwest and our merchant marine. His forefathers, unlike the people in the tropics, could not sit in the shade of a tree and watch wild tropical vegetables, fruits, and animals grow—and live on them and loaf. Scandinavians had a root, hog or die climate and, like the squirrel and the ants, had to plan ahead, work hard to provide and put up enough to carry them through their severe winters. Mindful of Aesop’s fable of the bundle of fagots, they tied themselves closely together, helped each other, lent their strength to each other, so that the weather, natural enemies, and neighbors could not destroy or break them. Together they stand, divided they fall.

It was my good luck in my early steamboat life to have a Scandinavian partner, Peter Falk, whose honest, frugal, indefatigable hard work set me a useful example indeed. Peter Falk and his wife practiced and preached: Dum vivimus vivamus (While we live, let us live), and I want to be happy, but I can’t be happy ‘til I make you happy too. So did Captain Birkeland’s mother and father, and so did most of my other Scandinavian friends whom I have known intimately and well.

The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. History says Nancy Hanks handed her strong, noble Christian character down to her son, Abraham Lincoln. Captain Birkeland had a fine Christian mother. She handed character to her son who, through good times and bad, slowly but steadily advanced from the bottom positions in the logging and the steamboat world to Senior Master of the M.S. Evergreen State, and has been master of our state of Washington’s finest steam vessels and ferryboats; always meeting his fellow man a little more than halfway as he climbed up life’s business ladder.

Captain Birkeland’s homespun and pilothouse-spun story and biography is a strenuous, clear, clean example of what unselfish hard work, morality, and a wild desire to please can accomplish, and it can put a man safely in the path of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Captain Birkeland’s teen-age efforts, ambition, and ultimate success are an example and shining mark for all young men leaning towards a steamboat profession to shoot at.

This verse from W. S. Gilbert’s poem The Yarn of the Nancy Bell

Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,

And the mate of the Nancy brig,

And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,

And the crew of the captain’s gig.

reminds me of Captain Birkeland’s and of my early business and steamboat life, beginning just as we entered our teens; the crew of the Nancy Bell was shipwrecked, plenty of water but no food. They had to draw straws to see who was first to be eaten and eat each other, until this old sailor was the only one left when a ship sailed in sight and saved him. He had inside him the whole crew and claimed to be them. Captain Birkeland and I never had a whole crew served to us, but we have certainly served in every job of the whole crew—deck boy, cabin boy, deck hand, mess boy, fireman, quartermaster, purser, cook, master mate and pilot, and occasionally stood a watch for the engineer. We didn’t eat the whole crew, but we were rarin’-to-go in doing and eating up the whole crew’s work. We found that hard work was healthy and that sailors and steamboatmen who behaved themselves lived to a ripe old age, and that it was not the long hours, hard work, and outdoor air that shortened the lives and bank accounts of sailors and steamboatmen, but the long hours, hard drink, and indoor air of the old-fashioned, long since closed water-front saloons.

Captain Birkeland and I certainly had many blessings. Our greatest blessing was having wholesome, ambitious, God-fearing mothers and fathers with happy homes where we could go on our occasional days ashore for advice, comfort, and discussions of our many problems, friends, and shipmates. There are many temptations presented on all water fronts and everywhere else; too much liquor, tobacco, gambling, etc., etc., and it was a blessing indeed to have a good home and parents to guide, advise, and set an example, especially for children in their teens, working away from home. We reap what we sow, however, and for Torger Birkeland and his kindly, gracious helpmate and wife, after his having retired from steady steamboating, it is gratifying indeed, I know, to look back on the fine footprints he and his family have made through life.

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, may take heart again.

Enough said about backsights. Now, let’s look ahead. Where do we go from here? Let’s look into the future far as human eye can see. Most of our old shipmates and friends have answered ad sum to the last roll call, and oh! how we would love to see them again, slap them on the backs, squeeze their hands, and talk over the joys, pleasures, accomplishments, and sometimes disappointments, of our younger days.

Can we so strengthen our religion and faith to feel sure we will again meet our dear relatives, shipmates, and friends that have gone? Let us try so to do. Try to believe and know that we will gather forever and forever together with them again in the realms of God, the Happy Hunting Grounds Hereafter, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.

PREFACE

WERE it not for my wife’s encouragement, plus a great desire within my heart to leave some account of our way of life for future generations, this story of an immigrant boy arriving at Poulsbo, direct from Norway at the age of ten, might not have been written.

In our homespun way we have endeavored to give a rough outline of prevailing conditions in logging camps, pioneer life in the forest, steamboating, and life in general in our wonderful Puget Sound country as I was privileged to have a share in it from the early part of the century.

Volumes, no doubt, could be added, but inasmuch as the same conditions prevailed in nearly every home and hamlet, our own experiences will give a fairly clear picture of this period of our history. The account of the early days before the 1900’s on Dog Fish (Liberty) Bay is by courtesy of an esteemed friend and pioneer steamboatman, Captain J. C. Moe, who arrived here with his parents in 1883 at the age of five. Other early-day accounts are by courtesy of Mr. Joshua Green, Sr., who himself rose from the ranks and contributed so much to the building of the Pacific Northwest.

Now, then, if you’ll be my companion on this journey over hill and dale, and if I, in a small measure, can succeed in making the picture sufficiently clear so that we may walk the winding road together, then will the objective for which I have striven have been attained.

I can recall as a boy using the expression kvardags kler og Sondags kler, meaning everyday clothes and Sunday clothes, so we’ll just call this an everyday story minus the fancy frills and phrases, as lived by an everyday boy and written by a man whose education was gathered along the way. If read in that spirit, with those thoughts in mind, you and I will both enjoy this lad’s pilgrimage over the Puget Sound country.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Evergreen State at Oreas Island in the San Juans

Pacific Northwest Logging, 1907

Moe Brothers’ Logging Operations near Poulsbo,

Washington, 1909

Camp Crew at Thorndyke Bay on Hood Canal

Seattle Water Front in Sailing-Ship Days

Seattle Water Front before 1900

The Joint Owners and Operators of the Stern-Wheel

Steamer Fanny Lake, 1889

Joshua Green

The Steamer Bellingham on the Straits Run

The Steamer Reliance on the Poulsbo Run, 1902

The Steamer Quickstep, Serving Liberty Bay

The Steamer Athlon, on the Bremerton Run

The Steamer State of Washington on Hood Canal

The Rosalie at Friday Harbor, San Juan Islands

The Steamer Whatcom on Puget Sound

The Steamer Sol Duc Landing at Port Angeles

Captain Carl H. Stevens, of the Sol Duc, 1918

Torger Birkeland, when he was mate of the Sol Duc,

1918

The Steamer Verona Waiting for Leaving Time at

Pier 3, Seattle

The Steamer Hyak Racing the Verona in Seattle

Harbor

Officers of the Hyak about the Year 1911

Torger Birkeland, when he was Captain of the

Verona

Bert Birkeland, Mate of the Comanche

The Athlon’s Last Resting Place on Snake Rock

The Steamer Comanche at Metlakatla, Alaska

The Steamer City of Angeles Unloading Excursionists at Union City, Washington, 1917

Captain Torger Birkeland at the Controls of the Evergreen State While Approaching Colman Dock, Seattle

CHAPTER I—THE WHISTLE PUNK

A TYPICAL Puget Sound logging camp was that of Storseth and Garthe, near Bangor on Hood Canal.

This was where a husky lad of eleven years obtained his first job. With great enthusiasm and in anticipation of the money he was to earn by way of pay, ten dollars per month and board, and the last words of admonishment from his mother and the shouting of the smaller kids still ringing in his ears, the young logger, with the blanket roll strapped to his back, trudged his way over the narrow, winding path through the thick woods to Tomlin’s Landing where the camp was located.

On arrival, my first concern was to find a bunk in which to deposit my heavy burden. The bunkhouse, with sixteen bunks, had two empties, one upper and one lower. When I was all settled in the lower, an old-timer arrived who quickly sized up the situation and, with a few words, I was given to understand that he would take the lower bunk and I, the kid, could have the upper. From then on the kid knew where he belonged.

The small amount of hay remaining in the bunk had been kicked into the corners. Spreading the powdery stubbles out on the one-by-twelve boards was a dusty undertaking, and with the fleas hopping around like they did it was an especially disagreeable job and a relief to get the whole thing covered with a blanket so I wouldn’t have to look at it any more or inhale all the dust.

After my bunk was made ready for the night, through much stretching, kicking, and hanging on by the skin of my teeth, the supper bell rang. Holding back somewhat, I lined up behind the gang and, single file, we marched over the rough plank walk to the cookhouse, which was also on a float as was the bunkhouse, and my place was assigned me at the table. In wonderment my eyes roamed from one end of the board to the other. Never had I sat down to a feast like this.

One of the last to leave, I made my way back over the swaying planks spanning the distance between the two buildings. I saw kelp and seaweed below me and the large road donkey sitting on the ten-foot-high grassy bank above.

The most interesting place this first evening was in the bunkhouse listening to the conversation of the men I would be with for the next five or six months.

At nine o’clock the coal-oil lamp on the table in the back end near the only window was blown out. The wooden bar was set in place to hold the door shut when the tide, at some hour of the night, would go out far enough so that the entire float of cedar logs on which the house was sitting would go dry and list over some degrees. However, there was no lack of fresh air. The hand-split cedar shakes on the roof were laid in such a way that one could lie in the top bunk and count the stars. Strange as it may seem, such a roof rarely ever leaked.

The first night’s sleep was not too good. The fleas, having found their way out, were having a grand time, jumping around and feeding on brand-new, tender skin. Sleep came after my little friends had all been fed and had crawled back under the bottom blanket again. All too soon the cook was pounding on the triangle. Six o’clock, a quick cold-water wash, and when the second bell sounded, all hands marched for the cookhouse. There the long table, again loaded with meat, spuds, oatmeal, hot cakes, and other food, met my gaze as I entered this typical logging-camp dining room. It was of the same rough construction as the other camp buildings, with the large wood range and cook’s bunk room partitioned off in back. From behind that one-by-twelve board wall came some of the world’s finest foods. The loaded dishes were quickly cleaned by the hungry loggers, and more food was brought in by the flunkey as fast as it could be eaten. I felt that if I could down just one more of those hot cakes I could hold out till noon. So, with my stomach near the bursting point, I hurriedly left the cookhouse to catch up with the gang for the hike up the dusty skid road to the woods where the day’s work would commence at seven.

Paul, the hook tender, led the way, following the whistle wire through the dense undergrowth for two or three hundred yards. There he climbed on top of a huge stump and commanded me to follow. This was where I took my first lesson as a whistle punk.

One sharp yank on the wire to go ahead, says Paul. Two to come back, and one to stop. And be sure you make no mistakes, for someone may get killed if you do. With this word of admonishment I faithfully and conscientiously take over and commence my first logging job.

Soon the rigging slinger yells to go ahead. The 1 ¹/8-inch diameter steel cable is hooked onto a log, the powerful donkey surges up on the cable, and everything in the woods seems to move—windfalls and saplings flying in all directions. If one comes my way I just have to scramble through the brush for life or else try and duck in behind a large tree. I soon discover there is no lack for excitement around this rigging crew, but, nevertheless, when standing on top of a stump and just listening, time seems to drag, and after five solid hours I think most any eleven-or twelve-year-old boy would welcome the noon whistle. Needless to say, there was no grass growing under my feet when I tore out of the woods and down the skid road to be first in line waiting for the dinner bell.

Midsummer came along and the sun was hot this afternoon as I stood on a sandy hillside with my whistle wire. My glance went downward to my feet partly buried in the hot sand, and there, to my amazement, were literally hundreds of my pet fleas frolicking around me. Feeling completely deserted, I moved over a few steps to make sure they would stay in their new home. Right away my thoughts went to Jens, the rigging slinger, who was having such a time. I felt sure that by spending a little while here in this hot sand, he, too, could get rid of his fleas with much less effort than his scheme of converting his blankets into a hammock suspended under the rafters. He admitted climbing in and out was a tough job, but at least he got some sleep that way, he said. As far as I was concerned, I soon learned to sleep with them, and the little fellows were accepted as part of camp life.

One day in late August, shortly after my twelfth birthday, on our return to the woods after lunch, we found the hillsides around the donkey afire. A spark from the smokestack must have come to life after everybody had gone to camp. The fire, already out of control, covered a large area, the woods being tinder dry after a long period with no rain.

All logging operations temporarily ceased, and all hands were put to work fighting fire. I nearly always managed to be out there in the front lines where the fire was raging the most so as not to miss anything. When the men staggered in at night, they could all have passed for colored people. After supper the cold, invigorating waters of Hood Canal were our bath, with the log boom handy to walk out on and dive off.

Ah, those stimulating waters of the canal, a godsend for the grimy logger after a day of toil in the soot and dust of the burned-over hillsides. With no other bathing facilities, these summer evening dips were looked forward to, for even a lumberjack appreciates a bath once in a while. The winter months, too cold for outdoor bathing, were another story. There just weren’t any baths, but, with perspiration keeping the pores open and with a good thorough soaking two or three times a week out there in the brush, I believe the logger to be as clean as most anyone, and certainly the healthiest, with regular meals and regular sleeping hours. Plenty of griping and groaning, but the men were nevertheless proud of their profession. The fleas, so common in all the camps, were not due to uncleanliness, but rather to the straw in the bunks which formed a natural breeding place for these little hoppers.

Getting back to the fire. It destroyed all the underbrush as well as some beautiful stands of green timber. Anyone having worked in burned-over country will understand what devastation a forest fire leaves behind. After much toil and sweat the fire was brought