Maritime Heritage Stories

The maritime heritage of the Pacific Northwest brims over with fascinating stories of native traditions, intrepid explorers, pioneer sea captains and vessels, industrialists, and ordinary working people. We’ve selected a brief list of those stories, generously supplied by HistoryLink, the first and largest encyclopedia of community history created expressly for the Internet.

Native Peoples

Salmon stories of Puget Sound Lushootseed-speaking peoples
Learn about the place of salmon in Puget Sound native culture, spirituality, and story.

Treaty of Neah Bay, 1855
Read the complete text of an early treaty between American settlers and local native peoples.

Treaty of Point No Point, 1855
The treaty transferred much native lands on the Olympic Peninsula to American settlers.

US Judge George Boldt affirms native peoples’ fishing rights
The "Boldt Decision" allocated 50 percent of the annual catch to treaty tribes, which enrages other fishermen.

Makah Tribe whaling off Cape Flattery
The Makah Tribe resumed traditional whaling in 1999 after nearly a century.

Pacific Northwest explorations before American expansion
The coast and inland waters were explored by the Spanish in the 16th century and the British in 18th century.

American explorer Charles Wilkes
US Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes explored the Columbia River, Grays Harbor, and Puget Sound in the early 1840s.

Peterson's Point Lifeboat Station opens at Grays Harbor in 1897
The station provided rescue service for mariners wrecked while passing by or entering Grays Harbor on Washington’s Pacific coast.

The SS Clallam founders in the Strait of Juan de Fuca on January 8, 1904
Heavy seas forced the captain to launch lifeboats, which capsized and drowned 56 people.

The SS Dix collides and sinks off Alki Point on November 18, 1906
Thirty-nine passengers died when the steamer collided with a cargo vessel.

Japanese submarine sinks the SS Coast Trader on June 7, 1942
The Japanese submarine I-26 torpedoed the freighter 35 miles southwest of Cape Flattery near the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

Lightships on Washington’s outer coast
Lightships, such as the Relief and Swiftsure, warned sailors of dangerous shoals and harbor entrances.

Puget Sound's Mosquito Fleet
Before the advent of modern roads, a swarm of small steamers carried passengers and cargo up and down Puget Sound.

Ferry Kalakala
Dubbed the first streamlined ferry, the silver-painted Kalakala was a symbol of Seattle after she was launched in 1935.

Birth of Washington State Ferries
With its ancestry in the Mosquito Fleet, the Washington State Ferry system grew into one of the most extensive in the world.

Logs are King County’s first export in 1851
Settlers began loading logs on the ship Leonesa on December 9, 1851.

Whatcom Mill established on Bellingham Bay in December 1852
Pioneers opened one of the first sawmills on Puget Sound near the Canadian border.

Captain William Talbot establishes a steam sawmill at Port Gamble in July 1853
The Pope and Talbot facility became one of the most important sawmills on the west coast, operating more than a century.

Thea Foss starts her tugboat firm on the Tacoma waterfront in 1889.
The Foss Tug & Barge Company’s vessel Arthur Foss starred in a 1930s film, “Tugboat Annie.”

Japanese shipping firm begins regular run to Seattle in 1896
The arrival of the Miike Maru inaugurated trade with Asia that is a lynchpin to the Puget Sound economy.

Klondike Gold Rush
Thousands of miners departed Seattle’s waterfront to hunt for gold in the most famous gold rush of its time.

Founding of the Port of Seattle
Seattle citizens consolidated a fragmented harbor system into a publicly-owned entity in 1911.

Pierce County voters create Port of Tacoma
Tacoma voters followed Seattle’s lead by created a publicly-owned port facility.

Wawona: Seattle's Tall Ship (Broadband video)
The Seattle Channel's Kelly Guenther tells the story of the Wawona, an 1897 three-masted schooner that carried lumber and fished in the Bering Sea.

Salmon gutter named “Iron Chink” developed in Seattle in 1903
Mechanized salmon production started with a machine that gutted and sliced salmon in preparation for canning.

Filipino cannery workers
Filipino immigrants arrived by the thousands in the 1920s to work in salmon canneries in Washington and Alaska.

Puget Sound's cod schooners
A small but active fleet of sail-only schooners caught cod in Alaska waters from the 1890s to 1950.

Native Americans attack Seattle on January 26, 1856
The warship USS Decatur, anchored in Elliott Bay, fired on native warriors attacking Seattle during the Indian Wars of 1855-56.

San Juan Island Pig War -- Parts 1 and 2
The British Royal Navy and the US Army faced each other during a boundary dispute between Britain and the U.S. in 1859.

Great White Fleet visits Seattle on May 23, 1908
Sixteen battleships and 14,000 sailors of the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet visited Puget Sound in an unprecedented show of naval power.

Moran shipyard in Seattle launches battleship Nebraska on October 7, 1904
Fifty-five thousand people watched the launching of the only battleship built on Puget Sound.

Puget Sound Naval Shipyard
The sprawling facility, located next to the city of Bremerton on Sinclair Inlet, was established in 1891, and it continues to serve the US Navy today.

WAVES hit Seattle at Sand Point on January 21, 1943
Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), members of the women's branch of the U.S. Navy, assume duties in communications, the control tower, and ship's services.

USS Nautilus visits Seattle on a secret mission
The crew of nation’s first nuclear submarine’s secretly bought Stop Leak on June 3, 1958 to fix a leaky condenser.

Seattle Central Waterfront Tour, Parts 1-10
Take a comprehensive tour of Seattle’s “front porch.”

Alaskan Way Viaduct completed in Seattle on April 4, 1953
The freeway between the waterfront and downtown Seattle was severely damaged by an earthquake in 2001.

Captive killer whale Namu arrives on July 27, 1965
Namu became a national celebrity and sparked early environmental protests.

Seattle Waterfront Streetcar inaugurates service on May 29, 1982
The waterfront trolley connects the waterfront with historic Pioneer Square and the Chinatown/International District.

West coast waterfront strike of 1934
Puget Sound sailors and longshoremen joined tens of thousands of other maritime workers in a coastwide strike for better pay and working conditions.

Longshoremen vote to strike west coast ports on July 1, 1971
President Nixon intervened to stop the work stoppage, which resumed when his order expired.

Henry Yesler arrives in Seattle on October 20, 1852
Yesler established the first sawmill and wharf on Elliott Bay, establishing Seattle’s maritime industry.

Captain William Renton
In 1863, Renton started the successful Port Blakely Mill Company on Bainbridge Island, and later had the town of Renton named after him.

Riverfront Shangri-La: The Barrows Family 1890-1917
A descendant of a King County pioneer recalled life on one of the county’s rivers.

Joshua Green
Green was a sternwheeler captain, an innovative leader in the Puget Sound shipping and ferries industries, and a leading banker.

H.W. McCurdy
McCurdy was a shipbuilder, bridge builder, civic leader, native Washingtonian, and a supporter of maritime research and maritime collecting in the Pacific Northwest.

R.H. Thomson
As Seattle’s city engineer in the early 20th century, he leveled hills, straightened and dredged waterways, reclaimed tide flats, built sewers, sidewalks, tunnels, and bridges, and paved roads, giving the city its current shape.

African-American Seaborn J. Collins elected to office in 1892
Seaborn was elected wreckmaster, responsible for the removal and disposal of all timber on the waterfront.

Ivar Haglund
Haglund was a folk singer who started a chain of seafood restaurants under the slogan “Keep Clam.”