Robert Lewis Stevenson ~ Nazi Wolfpacks & the Montlake Cut

 

1934 - SMA - 9239 

On October 17, 1934 an Engineering Department photographer captured this image of the Puget Sound tug boat Equator towing the oil tanker Geo. H. Jones through the Montlake Cut and into Lake Washington.   At 429 feet in length and 59 feet wide the G.H. Jones filled The Cut on its way to the Lake Washington Shipyards for repairs and refitting.  The bustling shipyards at Houghton ensured that large oceangoing ships were not an uncommon sight in the Montlake neighborhood.  Both the Equator and the Geo. H. Jones had interesting histories and met, equally, interesting ends.  Not present that day in The Cut but part of the story was the Nazi submarine U-455 that would put one of them on the bottom of the ocean.

Jumping From the Montlake Bridge

 

1975 – SMA – 179771

Sometime around the 3^rd or 4^th grade I made one of my life’s ambitions to jump off the Montlake Bridge.  I would walk out to the middle of the span and pull myself up on the railing far enough so that I could look straight down and revel in the butterflies that rose in my stomach, the patterns on the water, the toy boats passing below, the sound of the car tires rolling over the metal deck grating.  It seemed impossibly high but doable.  I may have been dumb and reckless, but I knew that swimming would be involved and since that was something I didn’t know how to do I got signed up to take lessons at the YMCA in downtown Seattle.