The Struggle for a Seattle Shipyard
As railroad expansion swallows the waterfront, local mariners argue the city's future depends on building a floating dry dock to survive.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It is an old saying that when you appeal to a man's pocket you get very close to his soul, and if that be the case with individuals it should likewise be the case with communities. It can be clearly shown by actual facts that the business community of Seattle is losing thousands of dollars every month by the closing up of our shipyards and the driving away of the vast revenue which has for so many years past been derived from the building and repairing of steam and sail vessels in this port. Yesterday a dispatch was received from the Treasury Department by Captain Bryant, asking him to make arrangements for the hauling out of the Revenue Cutter Wolcott at Seattle, as several thousands of dollars are to be expended on her. Captain Bryant visited the various yards and found them all closed by reason of the railroad trestle, and will probably be compelled to have the steamer hauled out elsewhere. A reporter called on Alexander Allen, who has a yard in the northern part of town, to get his views. Mr. Allen said: 'The business of building and repairing vessels had grown to such large proportions here that I realized that the sooner the old yards were done away with and a floating dry dock constructed the better we would be off. And so when the railroad company came along and wanted to drive piles in front of my yard I told them to go ahead without money or without price, as I believed in the end it would be for the public good, and so it will be if we get the dock.' Captain K. L. Marshall added: 'What we want and what we must have is a floating dry dock, like the San Francisco dock. Such a structure as we want can be built and equipped for $75,000, so that we will be able to take out anything from a row boat to a 600-foot ship. We must keep this thing before the people until something is done, as I see John Holland, of Port Blakely, is trying to gain use of a street in Tacoma for a ship yard, and the people there are ready to give him anything he asks, as they know that at present Seattle is unprovided with a ship yard and that Tacoma may get some of the crumbs which fall from our table.'
“We must keep this thing before the people until something is done, as I see John Holland, of Port Blakely, is trying to gain use of a street in Tacoma for a ship yard... and that Tacoma may get some of the crumbs which fall from our table.”
This 1887 report captures the exact tension point of Seattle's early maritime industry: the conflict between land-based rail infrastructure and the working waterfront. Just as mid-nineteenth-century captains worried about losing business to Tacoma due to lack of dry docks, modern Seattle continues to grapple with the shrinking of industrial maritime space in the face of urban development and transit projects.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.