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.

The Geo. H. Jones

The Geo. H. Jones was constructed for the Standard Oil Company and designed to haul crude oil.  Launched in 1919 it enjoyed a non-descript career until the Second World War when it was outfitted with a couple of deck guns for protection from marauding Nazi Wolfpacks. For all the good they would do I imagine that those guns made the crew feel like a mouse crawling up an elephant’s leg with rape on his mind.

n.d. – Auke Visser – Geo. H. Jones

  

The U-455 

On June 11, 1942 the Geo. H. Jones was bound for England with a full load of fuel oil.  Traveling in a convoy but with a working speed of just 10 knots it was struggling to keep up and, consequently, had dropped off the back of the convoy.  Like a lost calf separated from the herd and mewing for its Mom it all seemed too good to be true for the relatively novice crew of the U-455. This was their third patrol in their shiny new U-boat and just a month prior they had notched their first kill in similar circumstances.  The tanker British Workman had suffered mechanical failure and been dropped from its convoy.  The U-455 was the newest boat in the Wolfpack and was assigned to bring up the rear to kill the crippled and infirmed.  Firing their first two torpedoes with extreme prejudice they sent the British ship down. As submariners, though, they really hadn’t made their bones.  The U-455 was the laughingstock of the wolfpacks.  Nobody wanted to be them but it looked like their luck might be changing.  Here was another oil tanker gimping along without cover and sitting low in the water.  A duck ready to die.  Both torpedoes struck the ship and eventually the Geo. H. Jones went down but not before all, but two souls escaped by lifeboats.  The crew was starting to warm to the feel of killing and starting to get cocky but the wolfpack knew the truth and truth was that sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut.  The British Workman and Geo. H. Jones were viewed by the hard core as unskilled and lucky kills.

Next, the U-455 was sent out for more than two months to patrol the coast of Georgia.  Sounds important but watching the distant glow of the lights of the Brunswick Shipyards SE of Savannah through a periscope wasn’t gaining them respect.  While the more successful crews were going on patrols where real killing was going on the U-455 sulked offshore of America’s southeastern Atlantic coastline.  The fact of the matter is that is the U-455 recorded only three total kills in its ten patrols.  While successful subs were notching 3 -4 kills per patrol the U-455 just couldn’t seem to get it right and the only blood they drew after that third kill came when one of their crewmen was wounded by the sub’s own anti-aircraft gun.  They were on their 10^th patrol when sent to Genoa.  For whatever reason German Command neglected to supply them with the latest chart of the minefields set to protect against Allied approach from the Ligurian Sea.  Traveling at periscope depth it struck a German mine and sunk with all hands.  In 2005 divers found the U-455 sticking up from the seabed at a 45-degree angle, its bow reaching for light and life sustaining oxygen. 

U-455

The Equator

The Equator that pulled the Geo. H. Jones through the ship canal in 1934 had a surprising history.  As a fixture on the Seattle Waterfront most folks didn’t think beyond what they saw as a hard-working purpose-built vessel but it had a past.  

1889 - San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park

Originally designed and launched in 1888 as a two masted schooner it served its  California owner well.  In 1889 author Robert Lewis Stevenson was in declining health and he hired the boat to take him from Hawaii to the Gilbert Islands.  His writing reflects the experiences gained in the South Pacific aboard the Equator.  Before his death in 1894 Stevenson brought us such works as Treasure Island, The Wrecker, The Master of Ballantrae, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped and others.  

1885 - Wikimedia Commons - Robert Lewis Stevenson

Later the Equator would be stripped of its masts, given an engine, and completely refitted to begin its transformation from a sailing schooner to a Samoan copra trading vessel, to an Alaskan canary tender to a survey vessel to the working tugboat that hauled the Geo. H. Jones through the Montlake Cut.  Disrespectful of the Equator’s heritage and place in literary history it would find its way to being abandoned on Everett’s Jetty Island to reinforce the Port Gardner breakwater.    In 1967 a local citizen recognized the history of the Equator and had it pulled off the jetty with the intention of restoring it but by that time the hull was too far gone. 

1962 – Everett Daily Herald

Today, the Equator is still with us and recognized as a National Historic Place.  It can be visited on the Everett waterfront near the 10^th Street Boat Ramp.