The Steel Leviathan of Everett
A revolutionary whaleback steamer, built in the Evergreen State, promises to transform maritime freight with its unique design.
The great whaleback steamer City of Everett, now ready for her first trial trip at the barge works at Everett, has astonished many. She has been under construction for two years, and is now complete, the entire cost of her construction being about $250,000. In a few days the whaleback will proceed to Comox and load coal for San Francisco. Capt. Alex MacDougall, the designer and builder of the whaleback barge, has personally supervised the work on the City of Everett for the past year. He said recently that of the thirty-five whaleback steamers built under his supervision, the City of Everett is the most complete and successful, in that she will be able to carry a cargo of 4,500 tons. The new whaleback is 363 feet long, almost 100 feet longer than the ill-fated Wetmore, now being slowly covered by sand where she lies sunk at Coos Bay. The Everett is splendidly finished, and though built for a freight boat, she has accommodations for thirty passengers. All the work on the immense steamer has been done by labor hired on the Coast, and all the material used in her construction has as far as possible been taken from the products of the Evergreen state.
“The immense cones of the white man was a mass of steel plates riveted together, and had splendid engines beautifully finished.”
The 'whaleback' design was a short-lived but fascinating experiment in maritime engineering that briefly defined the industrial ambitions of the Pacific Northwest. Today, the site of these historic barge works in Everett is part of a vastly different waterfront, though the city remains a hub for aerospace and maritime manufacturing.
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