My first reblog ever goes to mpdrolet, for posting this photo of Wawona. My primary project over the past year (as you may have noticed) has been distributing the remains of this very ship to museums, artists, and craftsmen for display and re-use. It was finally broken up in Seattle in 2009. 

This is one of my favorite pictures of the ship. It appears as a two-page spread in “The Schooner Wawona” (1985) by Harriet Tracy DeLong. It was taken by John N. Cobb, a famous advocate for the Pacific fisheries and founder of the fisheries program at UW. 1915 was the first year the ship was used for fishing, after serving 17 years as a lumber schooner on the coastal trade. Based out of Anacortes, it fished in the dory-and-mothership cod fishery in Alaska. Fishermen would fish from dories launched over the side, and the ship would carry the cod back to Anacortes. Those white rows on the pier are North Pacific cod drying in the sun. Thats a lot of fish for one boat, and between 1915 and WWII Wawona brought in more fish than any other ship in the fishery.

mpdrolet:

Flake yard and schooner Wawona of Robinson Fisheries Co. at dock, Anacortes, Washington, September, 1915, via University of Washington Archives