We got to save the good stuff.
We've got to save Virginia five.
We brought the
Virginia Five into Pacific Fishermen Shipyard in Ballard, and we
thought the vessel just needed some areas of rot replaced,
and it turned out that we had a lot more water than we were expecting.
Essentially taking two of these planks off, it's a very small window to see what you're looking at.
So we thought, well, we'll take off a couple more and a couple more.
And we got to the point where
we realized the rot was in the bow stem.
So then we decided, well, we need to change that.
And then it just kept it just kept growing.
Almost the entire starboard side had a lot of fungus related rot.
That meant that we needed to replace frames and planks on most of the starboard side.
It's a historic ship, so we have to use the right wood.
It has to be old growth Douglas Fir, which tends to be more rot resistant.
we've had to source that from a couple of places on the Olympic Peninsula.
They're very small sawmills.
One plank
before we even do anything
is about $2,000.
The structural integrity of these comes from
long lengths of wood, and you can look and see how
all this how many we've done.
What I like about the Virginia is that it's
Douglas Fir on Douglas Fir frames, and
It's all Fir. It's a boat from here and it's and it's just big.
It's just a big, cool wooden boat, which
there's not a not a lot of these around.
Well, it's to keep the ship alive.
I think that and to give the past the future, I think is really important.
And in as much as out of thousands of ships like this over
a century and a half of American history, there are only two of are left.
The West Pass Transportation Company
was a small company that operated steamships on Puget Sound,
and those steam ships were part of what's known as the mosquito fleet.
The mosquito fleet was the informal name for steamers that served
the Puget Sound
communities, the peninsula communities, the island communities and the bigger cities.
The communities were established around their waterfront, and this was
their means of communication and travel and transportation of all kinds.
Carried there,
people carried their mail, carried their freight, carried their livestock, their produce.
So it was very much, I like to tell people.
A Metro bus and a UPS truck, all in one rig for those communities.
Virginia Five was actually built on the beach
in Maplewood, which is on the Kitsap Peninsula kind of across from Vashon Island.
Then it was launched in March of 22... 1922
and then brought over to downtown Seattle, where the engine was installed
and it had its maiden voyage in June of 22.
They weren't meant to last.
Some of them would break down or sink, so these ships would be beached
and just burned up when they were no longer serviceable.
As built,
Virginia Five's purpose was to provide work at a freight and pastor transportation for
the people along the West Pass, so it did that and into the late 1930s.
By that time, public road networks was getting much better.
The bridges were built and the highways were improved
and cars became the dominant way of getting around in the area.
The owners of the ship did what they could to make a living.
You know, for a while, the ship sailed on the Columbia River was the last
steam vessel to operate on the Columbia River and passenger service .
It was unsuccessful there.
It came back up into the Sound.
It served under contracts with the Army and then
went into the excursion boat business where people would spend a day on board,
going to a destination... its just a fun trip.
You can buy a ticket and ride with us on scheduled excursions.
We have a, you know, a seasonal schedule for it and we do private charters, so
weddings, family events, sometimes company events
and we do those both dockside and underway.
The ship can
pay it's routine consumable cost... rebuilding it like
this is not something you could do on a business model.
The process for the
steaming of the plank and the hanging of a steam plank is
we steam it for an hour, for each inch of thickness.
These planks are two and a half inches, so two and a half hours.
We take it out of the box and it's a big rush of excitement.
We get it to the boat and then we put one of these screw
jacks against the top edge of the plank.
Up there,
all the rest of them will go on the bottom edge
of the plank and they will twist it into place.
And then that's it.
Just like that.
In order to try and preserve the trade,
I have had people up and teach them, but
really it's hard because it's not like it used to be where there's
a bunch of this work to do.
If we weren't able to continue to
maintain it, preserve it and share it with the public,
it would be a real loss to this community and to the entire United States,
It's a really bold move to operate and not to just put it on a shelf and stuff it and mount it.
But to run it and keep it a living ship, and that's what makes
this ship so special is that it is still a living vessel.
The Virginia Five is the good stuff.
And we hope that Virginia Five will survive for another hundred years!