2024 Bell Harbor Rendezvous

The Steamer Virginia V

On June 11, 1922, Virginia V made her maiden voyage from Elliott Bay in Seattle to Tacoma down the West Pass. She continued to make this voyage nearly every day until 1938.

The Teal

Originally a U.S. government fisheries enforcement vessel, the TEAL was built at Kruse and Banks Shipbuilding in North Bend, Oregon, (on Coos Bay) in 1927.

The Sea Witch

Owl

Halcyon

Sea Witch was originally built in 1906 from British lifeboat plans. She was the first motor powered lifeboat in San Francisco in 1907. She was retired from the Coast Guard in 1913, and the house was added in 1937.

Owl was named the "Louise Idaho" when she was originally launched by the McKenzie Barge and Derrick Company in North Vancouver, BC in 1942. She worked as an inland tug until 1964. 

Halcyon was purpose designed as a working salmon troller by Naval Architect Bill Garden and built for a member of the Prothero family in 1948. She fished the Northwest coast from Alaska to Oregon for over 20 years.

Gyrfalcon

Messenger III

Although the Gyrfalcon was launched in 1941, her history began long before that.

In 1918, E. Lester Jones, Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey (C&GS), wrote a treatise that included an impassioned plea for small boats to make better harbor surveys in Alaskan waters.

In 1919, Lee & Brinton, Seattle naval architects, drew plans for two 88 ft gas-powered Coast Survey Vessels. With the end of WWI, these boats were never built, and the plans were relegated to a shelf somewhere in Washington, DC. 

By the mid-1930s, experts in the War Deartment became convinced that a war with Japan was inevitable. The need for accurate charting of the coast of Alaska once again became important.

This time, the government funded the building of both ships. One, the E. Lester Jones, was built in Astoria, OR, while our ship, the Patton (named for Raymond Stanton Patton, the recently deceased Superindent of the C&GS) was built by Sagstad Marine of Ballard. The winning bid was $149,995. 

From 1947 to 1968, Messenger III served as a missionary vessel for the Shantymens Christian Association, a non-denominational Christian society, bringing medical and spiritual comfort to the British Columbia coast.