Topic: Maritime
In A. D. 458, a Chinese adventurer named Hwui Shan crossed the Pacific to Mexico, and then followed the Japan current north to Alaska. Centuries later, in September 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa "discov...
The ferry Kalakala was launched from the Lake Washington Shipyards, in Kirkland, on July 2, 1935. Between 1935 and 1967, the streamlined ferry plied the waters of Puget Sound, carrying commuting worke...
As early as the 1920s, Filipinos from Seattle were contracted to work in Alaskan canneries. Later efforts at reform of contracting practices led to assassinations of Filipino union organizers in the 1...
In 1980, a year after graduating from the University of Washington, Kevin Catherine Castle was in the first group of women to join International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Seattle Local 19, ...
Fishermen's Terminal on Seattle's Salmon Bay has served as the home port for the Puget Sound-based fishing fleet since it opened in 1914. The Port of Seattle developed the site soon after King County ...
A rowboat rental service founded in Tacoma by Thea Foss in 1889 and developed by her husband and relatives over the next hundred years became Foss Maritime, the largest tug and towing operation on the...
The waterfront of Friday Harbor, now the county seat and only incorporated town in San Juan County, has served as a sheltered access to San Juan Island from the early days of human occupation of the a...
Leslie Edward "Ted" Geary was a naval architect who grew up in Seattle. He designed and raced numerous competitive sailing vessels, and also designed commuter yachts, fishing boats, tug boats, and woo...
The stretch of coast between Tillamook Bay in Oregon and Vancouver Island, encompassing the mouth of the Columbia River and the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, has claimed since 1800 more than...
The 107-foot Grays Harbor Lighthouse, dedicated in 1898, is the tallest lighthouse in Washington. It marks the entrance to Grays Harbor, the best of Washington's few outer-coast (on the Pacific Ocean)...
Joshua Green was a ship-owner during Puget Sound's Mosquito Fleet era. He and his partners made significant money during the gold rush to the Klondike (beginning in 1897) by transporting prospectors t...
Ivar Haglund, Seattle character, folksinger, and restaurateur was known as "King of the Waterfront," and also "Mayor" and "Patriarch" of the waterfront. He began as a folksinger, and in 1938 establish...
When Henry Yesler (1810?-1892) arrived in Seattle in October 1852, the tiny settlement had very little going for it other than the aspirations of the few men and women who had arrived about nine month...
Jacob Bruce, a 12-year-old student in the 7th Grade at Kingston Junior High School, won second place in the 2007 History Day competition with this essay on Native American fishing rights.
The Inchelium-Gifford Ferry -- also called the Gif -- is operated on Lake Roosevelt by the Colville Confederated Tribes on behalf of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The run connects Inchelium with State...
Located on the eastern shore of Tacoma's Thea Foss Waterway, the J. M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corporation built pleasure boats, fishing vessels, and an assortment of ships for the U.S. Navy and Coast G...
The first Japanese known to have visited what is now Washington arrived in a dismasted, rudderless ship that ran aground on the northernmost tip of the Olympic Peninsula sometime in January 1834. The ...
Jefferson County, located on the Olympic Peninsula in northwestern Washington, was created by the Oregon Territorial Legislature on December 22, 1852, from a portion of Lewis County. It was named in h...
George F. Kachlein Jr. was a Seattle attorney who volunteered tirelessly for many civic organizations. He was active in the Washington Good Roads Association, the Washington division of the American A...
Arvel and Helga Settles, with their five children, spent seven years (1935-1942) as keepers at the Lime Kiln Lighthouse on San Juan Island, in the Salish Sea between the Northwest Washington mainland ...
Address: 11312 SW 232nd Street, Burton, Vashon Island. Captain Phillips played an important role in the history of Puget Sound's "Mosquito Fleet" of steamboats (so called because they swarmed the inl...
Address: 25908 99th Avenue SW, Dockton, Maury Island. Located in the community of Dockton on the southwestern part of Maury Island, the general store and post office building is the only well preserve...
Address: 25134 Vashon Highway SW, Magnolia Beach, Vashon Island. Ira and Jessie Case began building the Marjesira Inn in 1906 on a steep bluff overlooking Quartermaster Harbor in the Vashon summer com...
On July 17, 1897, the steamship Portland arrived in Seattle from Alaska with 68 miners and a cargo of "more than a ton of solid gold" from the banks of the Klondike River in Canada's Yukon Territory. ...