AHS Blog

STARR in the wake of DORA: Mail Ships of the Aleutians

by J. Pennelope Goforth

 

Back in the day, in Alaska anyway, mail ships had personalities that summoned devoted fans who enthusiastically met each arrival at the dock. The mail boat brought not only first and second class mail, but current newspapers, fresh foodstuffs, cargo and most importantly, people. Teachers, doctors, priests, and loved ones returning home. These ships of yore spawned legends and myths along Alaska’s thousands of miles of coastline and river fairways for their bravery and courage in bucking impossible storms and treacherous waters to deliver the goods. Their stories live on in the many children named after them and as research favorites for many historians: Nathaniel Philbrick obsessed about the ESSEX, Patrick O’Brian had the SURPRISE, and Michael Burwell is devoted to the POLITKOFSKY. I’m enamored of the DORA. It must be a sign of modern times that these days we don’t even know the name of our mail man or woman, much less the make or model of the mail truck or even whether our precious letters arrived by cargo container ship or airplane! But this story is about the mail ship who took on the Westward run−Seward to Adak and Bristol Bay−following the DORA’s demise in 1920.

 

Out of the blue one day I received a message from a woman who said she had been aboard the last Aleutian mail boat on its final voyage south out of Seward bound for Seattle in the summer of 1938. She said her father, Capt. Percy Roy Selig had served as an officer on the ship and that his nick name was Blacky. That got my attention. I told her my father also served on Alaskan vessels and that his nickname was Whitey. Joy McNulty and I have become friends through our seafaring fathers and the ships they sailed on through Alaskan waters. Just recently she sent me the narrative her father wrote in 1935 and her memoirs of that 1938 voyage about the mail ship SS STARR.

 

The steel-hulled steamer STARR was designed and constructed in Seattle in 1912, at the massive shipyard on the East Waterway of the Duwamish River by the J.F. Duthie Company. J.F. hailed from the famous shipbuilding family of Aberdeen, Scotland. A top of the line trawler with a gross tonnage of 525, overall length about 132 feet, a beam of 26 feet and depth of 20 feet, the STARR boasted a 650 horsepower steam engine and a covered deck, called a ‘tween deck, where fishermen could process their catch sheltered from the weather. This was innovative for its time as was the installation of a wireless radio. The vessel was commissioned by the San Juan Packing Company of Seattle, a large outfit that dispatched fishing craft up and down the Gulf of Alaska.

 

“She built to fish halibut and carried either 12 or 14 dories. Halibut was caught from the dories at the time and was the last word in halibut vessels,” wrote Capt. Selig. “She was a fishing vessel from 1912 to 1922.”

 

Her career as the beloved mail ship revived the postal service in Alaska which had fallen into disarray after the DORA had been removed from service and purchased by Lars Mikkelson and the Bering Sea Fishing Company of Seattle in 1918. It’s not beyond belief that the DORA and the STARR crossed wakes on their journeys between Seattle and Alaska, perhaps even within hailing distance, during those years. Tragically, the DORA sunk off Port Hardy in the winter of 1920. The mails were shipped erratically to a grumbling Alaska for nearly four years until 1922.

 

The ninth territorial governor, Thomas J. Riggs, Jr., happily wrote in his 1921 annual report to the Secretary of the Interior:

 

“During the last three of four years mails between Seattle and Alaskan ports have been carried by freight and express, but under the present administration postal-clerk service on these boats has been restored…under the merchant marine act with the San Juan Fishing & Packing Co.. who now operate the steamer Starr from Seward via Seldovia and intermediate points to Unalaska, and to Nushagak and Dillingham during the season of navigation in Bering Sea. This boat operates on a regular schedule, leaving Seward about the 10th of each month in close connection with the steamers of the Alaska Steamship Co. The steamer Starr is equipped to handle a considerable number of passengers, has a wireless telegraph apparatus, etc., and is giving the Alaska Peninsula excellent service.”

 

“The San Juan people had her built up on the end where the dories were nested. This created rooms for 27 first class passengers, if you could call it ‘first class’,” explained Capt. Selig. “There were 3 high bunks in a room about eight feet long and maybe 4.5 feet wide which included the 2ft wide bunk. There was a little washbasin with a cold water faucet. The head was down the alleyway and shared. There was also the former fisherman’s forecastle in the bow which was used for ‘steerage’ passengers. There were either 16 or 19 bunks. There were also ‘standee’ bunks that could be set-up in the ‘tween’ deck on the area aft of the hatch. The STARR was certified for 56 passengers. She carried nearly 309 tons of mail and cargo. She often carried more passengers as she was the only ship going to the islands.”

 

 

His description of the crew quarters aboard the 132 foot vessel wasn’t much better. “The skipper’s room aft of the wheelhouse was only fair. It had a decent single bunk and a desk plus a small settee. No head. The chief engineer, 1^st officer and purser also had small rooms on the mail deck. The rooms were probably 4.5 feet by 8 feet with the bunk taking up 2 feet of the width. The 1^st and 2^nd engineer had only ship bunks in their room. The room was only 6×8 feet with the bunks taking up 2 feet of the width. She also carried a mail clerk who handled all the mail was begin delivered.”

 

The mail clerk of those years was one A. B. Hicks who may have been one of the most popular men in the Aleutians as he personally sorted and delivered the mail by hand, after many a treacherous trip in the ship’s dinghy to gravelly shores like Nikolski and other dockless villages. The headline of a 1936 feature story that made the rounds on the West Coast Marine Intelligence route said it all:

 

When Alaskan Mail Must Go−We Take It In!

Worst Run In Northern Waters Made Monthly

By 138-Foot Alaskan Mail Ship To 50 Ports Of Call

 

The steamer STARR was also fortunate in her roster of officers. Capt. Selig, himself descended from a long line of ship’s masters and commanders from the famed shipping port of Lunenburg, just south of Halifax in Nova Scotia, was born in that port in 1902, and came of age amidst the bustle of shipbuilding and sailing on the eastern seaboard. His career as an officer spanned the transition of sail to steam, the opening of the newly dug Panama Canal, and the explosion of shipping as the Pacific ports expanded and grew during WWI. The Alaska Steamship Company was a major player in that era. They bought the STARR in 1935 from San Juan Packing Co. but kept the vessel on the Westward mail route. And they signed on Capt. Selig as her 2^nd mate.

 

“There was a bout a foot of cement the full length of the vessel bottom except under the engine room,” Selig wrote, “Over the years this cement served in good standing as the STARR scraped her bottom over a few rocks in her day.” Beachings and groundings were common occurrences in the days when navigation charts were still made by hand. Most men who became masters and captains carried their own marked-up charts with them from berth to berth. Of course it was always best for a ship when her officers knew not only the coastline but also the whims of the vessel. Working his way up to the bridge was Captain E. Christian Trondsen, who had sailed on the STARR in various capacities, the last as 1^st mate for  eight years before commanding the ship. Another long-time mariner was Chief Engineer Arthur Sheridan who’d been aboard for six years.

 

“Her last Captain was Christian Trondsen who took command in the spring of 1935 and remained until they took her off the run July 1938,” Selig wrote proudly. “During those years there never was an accident.”

 

In 1938 the Alaska Steamship Company was in financial straits and began culling their fleet. The STARR was sold in 1938 to the United States Army. Her small crew quarters and cramped staterooms were sloughed off as she served her country as a working barge for the next few years. It was on her final voyage south, across the Gulf of Alaska and through the incomparable Inside Passage that became the trip of a lifetime for Capt. Selig’s daughter Joy.

 

“The Alaska Steamship Company had a rule that families could not travel on the same ship with any family member who was a member of the crew. However they made the exception in this case,” Joy explained. “Since the ship was not carrying any paying passengers or cargo they allowed the families of the men to travel on the ship and the family possessions were carried as cargo. This saved the company considerable money.” Here she is referring to the employees and families of the company who likely lived in Seward if not year round to service the company ships, then at least seasonally. The weeklong voyage in the peak of summer weather through the most exquisite coastal region of the Pacific has stayed alive in Joy’s memory all these years.

 

“The trip was really great as the weather was perfect and the stop in Ketchikan was special because it was the 4^th of July. With all the adults and children on board it was like a family cruise from Seward to Seattle. The water was calm and with sunshine everyday during the long trip no one got seasick and the crew played with the children on deck like a big family event,” she said.

 

Epilogue: The STARR’s story ends here as her history is subsumed amongst the papers of the army maritime transport division. It is said she was used hard as a barge and eventually scrapped of her usable parts then sent to the breakers yard in 1940.

 

Joy Selig McNulty lives happily in retirement in Mesa, Arizona.

 

I am diligently working on chapter 3 of the biography of the DORA. — the author

 

Sources:

Private Papers Joy Selig McNulty, 072010

Correspondence Joy Selig McNulty and author, 022015.

Alaska Governor’s Annual Report to the Secretary of the Interior, 1922.

Selig Family Heritage website: http://laurenandtristan.net/datafolder/p554.htm

LAC 022815.

Santa Cruz Evening News June 6, 1936 page 15.

55^th Annual List of Merchant Vessels of the United States, 1923/1935.

The Marine Journal, Vol 44. #18, page 22.

International Marine Engineering, Volume 25. Jan-Dec 1920, page 462.

Wide Open on Top: Alaska and the Cold War

By John Haile Cloe

 

Shortly after the end of World War II, James Pitt wrote an unpublished book, “Wide Open on Top,” warning of Soviet bomber attacks over the Polar Region and the vulnerability of Alaska to air attacks.

 

At the time, America had developed the nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it. The Soviet Union lacked both. The Soviets, however, quickly moved to catch up by exploiting American technology through espionage and old fashioned luck. In August 1949, they tested their first nuclear bomb, the RDS-1, a plutonium core bomb closely modeled after one used on Nagasaki four years prior.

 

Russian aircraft aeronautical engineers were able to reverse engineer three Boeing B-29 Superfortresses that forced landed at Vladivostok during the strategic bombing campaign against Japan. They developed the Tupolev Tu-4 “Bull,” a carbon copy of the Boeing four-engine, long-range heavy bomber. The Tu-4 became operational in 1949, giving the Soviets its first strategic bomber capability.

 

At the same time, the Soviets began developing forward bomber bases on the Chukotski Peninsula adjacent to Alaska. From those bases, the Tu-4 could deliver a nuclear bomb to targets in Alaska on round-trip flights and to West Coast targets on one way flights. Suddenly, Alaska was on the front line of the Cold War.

 

Elsewhere, the Cold War had rapidly heated up in a series of cascading events going back to the American and British 1918 intervention on the side of the White Russians, to the uneasy alliance of convenience during World War II, and the sour legacy of the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences.

 

Stalin announced in early 1946 that the western nations were now the primary threat and the Soviets moved to create a buffer zone of eastern European client nations. George Kennan sent his long telegraph from Moscow shortly afterwards, warning of the Soviet threat, and Churchill gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in March 1946. Truman announced his doctrine of containment the next year. The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949, informed all that America would stand by its commitments.

 

American civilian and military leaders and thinkers of the time realized the U.S. could not match the Russians in conventional forces. Instead, it would have to greatly expand its nuclear forces as deterrence against Soviet aggression.

 

To pay for the force, American defense spending spiraled upwards from $14.2 billion in 1950 to $50.3 billion in 1953. The major share went to the newly-created United States Air Force with its offensive nuclear capabilities. By 1953, the Air Force possessed 760 long-range strategic bombers and 1,350 nuclear bombs. The Soviets possessed less than a dozen nuclear bombs and lagged the U.S. quantitatively and qualitatively in bombers.

 

Alaska benefited from the increase spending because of its strategic polar location that provided for forward basing of bombers and the countering the threat posed by the forward based Russian bombers on the Chukotski Peninsula. At the time, the only Russian bomber route to western United States targets was across Alaska.

 

Military spending pumped some $1.2 billion ($10.4 billion in today’s dollars) into military construction projects during the 1950s while contributing $350 million to the $500 million annual Alaska economy by the mid-1950s. Alaska’s civilian population climbed from 128,643 in 1950 to 226,165 in 1960. Historian and economist George Rogers noted that “without the influx of new population and prosperity brought in by the Military Alaska, it is doubtful that Alaska would today be a state.”

 

Construction money went to the building of two new bases and the expansion of others. Other funds went to the construction of a massive air defensive system to protect Alaska and the rest of America against a Soviet bomber attack.

 

Work began in 1950 on the air defense system, consisting of aircraft control and warning radar sites along coastal and interior Alaska to provide warning and direction to fighter interceptors on a 24/7 fifteen-minute air defense alert at forward operating bases. The Distant Early Warning Line, stretching from the Aleutians to Greenland, was later added as the Soviets developed long-range jet and turbo-prop bombers capable of flying over the Polar Regions to American targets. The system was tied together by a communications system of tropospheric scatter radio and microwave radio relay sites, commonly referred to as White Alice. The complex system provided “Top Cover for America,” a term developed by the Air Force to describe its mission.

 

By the mid-1950s there were over 150 Cold War installations in Alaska ranging from small communications sites to large bases, stretching from Point Barrow in the north to Ketchikan in the south, Tok in the east and Attu Island in the west.

 

Command and control for the Alaskan portion of the air defense system centered on Elmendorf AFB and to a lesser extent Ladd AFB near Fairbanks. The Commander-in-Chief, Alaskan Command (ALCOM), a three-star Air Force general, also served as the air defense commander. He exercised operational control over all air defense forces in Alaska, including the Nike Hercules batteries defending the major military bases and population centers in Alaska. Both Elmendorf and Eielson Air Force Bases also hosted forward-deployed Strategic Air Command bombers on nuclear alert.

 

The ALCOM commander also exercised operational control over Army and Navy forces in Alaska. The Army, during World War II, had established garrisons near all the large population centers in Alaska. Because of Cold War manpower constraints, it could only defend the Anchorage and Fairbanks areas. It did, however, have plans for deploying troops to rural areas in the event of a Soviet lodgment.

 

The military divided Alaska into two defense regions. The first was centered along the rail belt and included Kodiak. The second consisted of the western and northern rural areas. A National Defense Line separated the two. The military relied on Alaska National Guard Scouts located in urban villages and a ground observer corps to provide early warning. It also developed plans for a stay behind force, code named Washtub, modeled after the World War II partisan force where a cadre of trained locals organized and trained others in guerrilla warfare.

 

Initially, the Army air defense of the main bases consisted of World War II vintage anti-aircraft guns. The Soviet development of long-range jet and turbo prop bombers soon made them obsolete. In 1954, ALCOM developed a plan to replace guns with ground to surface guided missiles. The three Nike Hercules batteries defending Anchorage and the nearby bases became operational in 1959 followed by the five batteries in the Fairbanks area.

 

Technology continued its inevitable advance with the Soviet Union and the U.S. capitalizing on advances made by German rocket scientists during World War II. Both began developing intercontinental ballistic missiles.

 

Sputnik came as a shock in 1957. The Russians, in their search for an ICBM, had cobbled together a massive missile, the R-7, consisting of a central rocket with five smaller rockets strapped on providing enough lift for the large nuclear warheads available to them at the time. It also allowed the Soviets to place a satellite into orbit. The liquid- fueled missile took days to launch. That and its unreliable guidance system made the use of the R-7 as an ICBM problematic.

 

Despite U.S. political protestations of a missile gap, the U.S. was far ahead of the Soviet Union in ICBM development and the miniaturization of nuclear warheads. It placed its first missile, the Atlas, into operation in 1959. It took the Soviet Union until 1962 to field their first successful ICBMs, the R-9 and R-16.

 

The introduction of ICBMs relegated the bomber force to secondary importance. As a result, beginning in 1957, the Air Force began reducing its air defense forces. In Alaska it meant the closing of Ladd AFB, the deactivation of its two air divisions, reducing the number of aircraft control and warning sites from 23 to 13, the number of fighter interceptors from 200 to around 15 during the late 1950s and 1960s, and the closure of the Nike sites during the 1970s.

 

To provide early warning of an ICBM attack, the Air Force built three ballistic early warning systems sites, one in Alaska and the others in Greenland and England. Similar sites were built along the U.S. coasts to provide early warning of submarine-launched missile attacks.

 

Humiliated by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets launched a program to achieve parity and surpass the U.S. in strategic nuclear strike capability. Both sides developed a triad system of ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles and bombers. America, distracted by Vietnam and social turmoil at home, began falling behind. Alaska became a military backwater, providing support to others that included serving as a refueling stop for air transports on the Great Circle Route to Southeast Asia.

 

The United States responded to Soviet nuclear advances with the doctrine of massive assured destruction, or MAD. It essentially informed the Soviets that the U.S. could survive a first strike through early warning and strike back. The U.S. calibrated its nuclear response through the Single Integrated Operational Plan which listed the targets and the types of warheads needed to destroy them. No one would be the winner and all would suffer nuclear devastation.

 

When President Reagan came to office, he vowed to end the possibility of nuclear war and embarked on a plan to expand and modernize the nuclear forces. Part of his plan included the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, which would destroy incoming missiles, thereby rendering the Soviet nuclear missiles useless. Alaska played an important role that remains classified today.

 

Reagan’s efforts contributed to the collapse of the Soviet’s Communist centrally controlled economic system and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today, we are experiencing a possible return of autocratic governance to Russian, which has a long history of dictatorial rule going back to the czars. The Russians are now engaged in an expansion and modernization of their military forces and Russian bombers have resumed flying off Alaska’s coast after a long absence following the end of the Cold War.

Another Look at Buck

by Rebecca Poulson

 

I’ve been volunteering at the middle school to lead a Literature Circle with a small group of 7^th graders. Back in December, we read Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. Of course, right? It was even on a list of books for a contest this spring, one reason I chose it.

 

If you haven’t read it, it’s about a dog that’s stolen from a ranch in California, and sold as a sled dog on the trails to the Klondike during the Gold Rush. It is told from the dog’s point of view.

The first thing that I noticed, and that the students picked up, is that the book is extremely violent. When you look at accounts of the Gold Rush, particularly the Canadian dogsled mail service at the time, it becomes clear that London has created his own, ultra-violent world that bears little similarity to the actual Gold Rush.

 

Not that the Gold Rush wasn’t violent, but it was much sorrier and diffuse than what he depicts. I also brought in a book, The Call of the Klondike, by David Meissner and Kim Richardson, that I’d reviewed for the Alaska History journal. It is a true-life account of two young men, who at one point hosted Jack London in Dawson. Their dog was the model for Buck, the hero of The Call of the Wild.

 

The violence is just one of the departures from realism: at one point Buck finds a dozen wolverines feeding on a bear he’s killed. First of all, wolverines are solitary. Then he chases them off, killing two. Right! Then there is all the dogs-tearing-out-the-throats-of-other-dogs, which the humans seem to find amusing. And, the real Canadian mail was run in stages, so one team of dogs would not be running thousands of miles without a break, as Buck does. And, why do they keep selling Buck, when he’s “one in a t’ousand?”

 

The students enjoyed the story, in spite of the exaggeration, or more likely, because of the exaggeration. His descriptions of the violence are dramatic, and the relationship between Thornton (the man who saves Buck) and Buck is also well done, and is actually believable.

 

But, when you get to themes, it gets problematic.  Throughout the book he is setting up a relationship between civilization and the wild.

 

As far as “the Wild,” the struggle for survival seems to have two ways it can influence a person, or dog. The first is a brutal, thoughtless savagery, displayed by many characters, human and animal, and especially the Indians at the end. But, for a superior being, such as Buck, the Wild can actually improve a person or dog, by carving away all the softening effects of civilization, while leaving his moral nature intact, even purified.

 

This gets to the idea of Wilderness as a means of uplifting the (superior) soul to God.

 

Unfortunately, inborn superiority seems to be the core theme of the book. Buck, the dog, the main character, is a super dog, just as John Thornton, his human friend, is a superman. Buck is constantly fighting off much larger and more numerous foes, which gives the story a bit of a comic book quality.

 

Early on in the book London makes a reference to the “cold-tubbing races,” and he seems to have been a racist at heart. Some races, as well as some individuals, are superior to others.

 

He uses terms like half-breed and squaw, which are unacceptable today. This could perhaps be excused as simply the language of the times; but, unfortunately, in this book, it is part of a racism that is on the uglier end of the spectrum, even for his day.

 

At the end of the book, inexplicably, Indians passing through murder all the dogs and men in the camp, shooting them full of arrows. Then Buck arrives, and goes for the Indians, who are dancing, of course, in the wreckage of the camp. He kills some, and causes others to panic and shoot arrows and spears into each other, killing more. They then flee the “ghost dog” and avoid that valley ever after and the ghost dog enters into their superstition.

 

I’m guessing that London had to have brutal Indians murder his hero, John Thornton, because having him die due to an accident would make him less than super competent to survive in the wilderness. But he could just as easily have had a freak accident befall him, or even, had him go back to civilization, forcing Buck to choose between his friend and the Wild.

 

This kind of stereotype of the stupid, brutal, unpredictable, superstitious, and cowardly Indian is the epitome of racist depiction. To me it cheapens the whole book, and honestly, the way Buck kept fighting off bigger and more numerous enemies, it was already more like a magazine story than quality fiction.

 

Obviously I have problems with this book! But what was just as surprising is that I seem to be the only one, as far as Google knows, who had any objection to this scene. I’m surprised that it is given to kids without at least pointing out the racist depiction of Indians, and how, unfortunately, that was part of how people viewed Natives at the time – and how some people still do.

 

We have to do better than overlooking stereotypes of the Indians as in harmony with nature (Colors of the Wind, anyone?), or cruel, unpredictable, stupid savages, and view Native people, past and present, as fully human, complex as anyone else.

Canned Salmon Exports to Britain

by Ross Coen

From the very start of the salmon packing industry in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska in the nineteenth century, Great Britain was by far the largest importer of canned salmon, in some years accounting for up to 95% of the total export market. The packers accordingly designed their labels to appeal to British customers. Some labels featured portraits of Queen Victoria, while others played upon Anglo-American loyalties. The label shown below, Electric (circa 1880s), is an example of the latter. Note the American and British women each holding one end of a trans-Atlantic cable. (click on the image to see a larger version)

And yes, I’m aware the above label is from a Columbia River cannery, not one in Alaska. I’ll continue to feature historic labels in future posts, and I encourage label collectors and enthusiasts to contact me at: rcoen (at) uw.edu

Being a “Politically Correct” Historian while Being an Honest Historian, or Going For Middle Ground

by Lael Morgan

 

Editor’s note: It probably goes without saying, and yet I’m going to say it anyway, that readers should be forewarned the post below on the use of coarse racial language in historical accounts contains coarse racial language. The editor hopes Lael’s piece will open a dialogue on this important historiographical issue. Readers may send comments—either for publication on this blog or not, please specify—to rcoen (at) uw.edu.

 

Last week I got a query from a fellow publisher wondering whether we should modify ethnic names in older published books when issuing a new edition. He was talking about language in common usage at the time which might be offensive to today’s readers, like changing the terms from Indians to Native Americans and Chinamen to Chinese. In this particular case, he noted, the book was non-fiction and without dialogue.

 

Were he to alter it in the name of political correctness, he was then considering a statement on the copyright page to the effect that the estate of the author had approved the modification of certain terms “used by the author, which were common language at the time but may be offensive to readers today.” He also suggested adding, “These changes do not alter the meaning of the original text.”

 

However my question is, “Will they?”

 

And the problem becomes even broader in the case of historians employing actual dialogue from non-fiction books from the past that are well-documented. No problem with “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” But what about something like “I love those niggers. And I love their music.” Or, worse yet, the diary record of an explorer mired in marshy tundra country described on his map (and all the maps by USGS I used the first half of my life in Alaska) as “nigger heads” but currently dubbed “tundra tussocks.” There is something melodic about “tundra tussocks.” Somehow, “Damn the tundra tussocks! Full speed ahead!” does not work for me.

 

Most news reporters have help with modern-day political correctness. Once a year the Associated Press issues a style book with the terms considered politically correct that we can all use with impunity for the year ahead. It also issues interim statements of same. Having had a long career in journalism, I’ve watched the term “Negro” changed to “African American” and now to “black” without a capital “N” due mostly to the lobbying of strong ethic politicians. There are Eskimos who are demanding that word be stricken because it means “eaters of raw fish.” (I suspect 1.2 million sushi eaters may stop that movement cold). But that does not solve the historian’s dilemma.

 

What are you thinking?