A Journey to the Timber Powerhouse of Port Blakely
An eye-witness account of the massive industrial machinery and global trade routes operating just nine miles from Seattle in 1883.
We boarded the Maude on Monday and glided away over the glinting waters of Elliott Bay toward Port Blakely. While we have read of its mammoth sawmill and its prominence as a shipping point for lumber to South America, Australia, China, Japan, and the Indies, we had never visited it. Upon arrival, we found a busy little world unto itself, well-sheltered and obscured from outside view. We visited the mill, established 28 years ago, where Superintendent John Campbell showed us the massive machinery. We counted 14 2-inch boards coming from a single log in one pass. The engine room aggregates upwards of 2,000 horsepower. We also observed several vessels loading cargo, including the old packet ship Mercury, the brigantine Tanner, and the British bark Campbell. The shipyard of the Hall Bros, which has built 43 vessels, was also noteworthy, with a new three-masted schooner currently on the ways.
“Port Blakely with its puffing mills, lumber fleet and rows of cottages are suddenly brought in view at its apex, well sheltered and obscured from outside view, a busy littly world by itself.”
Port Blakely was once the industrial heartbeat of the Puget Sound, exporting timber to the corners of the globe. Today, it is a quiet, upscale residential community on Bainbridge Island, with little left of the mammoth industrial empire that once defined the region's economy.
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