The Cyrus Walker Returns to Service
After two and a half years of neglect and decay, the steamer Cyrus Walker has been completely rebuilt from the hull up.
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.
The steamer Cyrus Walker made her first run yesterday in two years and a half. She had got pretty well out of kilter and was taken out of service in 1879 and laid up. Last spring she was brought here, hauled out on the ways, and thoroughly repaired in hull. She was then towed back to Ludlow, where the work of renewal was continued. Three new steel boilers were put in her, three donkey engines, a condenser, etc., she being changed from high to low pressure. She has a new deck and new beams, and is substantially a new boat. The run was made yesterday from Port Ludlow under a light head of steam in 1 hour and 40 minutes. Captain Will Gove is again her master, a position he has filled for eighteen years.
“She has a new deck and new beams, and is substantially a new boat.”
The industrial repurposing of old vessels was vital to the Puget Sound economy of the 1880s, highlighting a time when local shipyards were essential hubs of technological labor and mechanical repair.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.