Saturday, January 27, 2018

1916 - Part 4: Down the Columbia River With a Ferro Outboard

This is the last installment of A. V. Comings report on their 1916 voyage down the Columbia River. 

DINNER on the night of our hard journey through the windswept water above Celilo, as related in the last chapter, was a real function. For, two days previously, a kindhearted rancher, who must have thought we looked “lean and hungry,” presented us with a fine mallard duck he had just killed. And this night Mr. M. Duck was served up to the two hungriest men on the Columbia river.

I made a reflector oven from a five-gallon Standard oil can, cutting it from top to bottom cornerwise, and the delicious, gamey duck, stuffed and spitted and roasted before an open fire in the improvised reflector, tasted better to us than any feast ever spread beneath the bright lights. We had the spice of real outdoor appetites, whetted on a keen
wind by strenuous exertion, and we ate—ate big, talked little, and were supremely happy.


Our flickering fire east deep shadows where Miller had laid the inviting bed, and the full rising moon found us dead asleep under our sheltering “tarp.”  

The wind blew itself out during the night, and morning dawned clear as crystal. I climbed the rocky shelves between our camp and the river soon after getting up, and as I topped the last one, I fairly gasped as Mt. Hood, glistening in the morning sun, burst upon my sight with startling unexpectedness. This was our first sight of the wonderful mountain, and its sharp ice cone, sparkling like a “blue” diamond, awed us into that silent admiration that is about the best tribute nature gets from man. 

From then on, we had Mt. Hood with us until we were below Portland, and saw it from many angles and in many moods, all of which were beautiful.



Just around the corner below our camp, when we got under way, we ran into Hell’s Gate rapids and were soon being swept along mercilessly between high, broken volcanic rocks. We steered into a small eddy near one, and landed to take pictures of the “Gate,” just below us. 



It looked like a blank wall, with no opening discernible to the eye. Perpendicular walls of dark brown volcanic rock, with the water swirling in giant eddies at their base, and no telling what was just around the corner. The whole Columbia compressed into a narrow, deep gorge, is Hell’s Gate, and, at high water, it lives up to its name.

We went through like a chip, however, with never a trouble from start to finish and headed straight across the river to the Oregon shore, where the new Celilo canal has its up-river terminal. The river is broad and calm from Hell’s Gate to the canal, though the roar of Tumwater Falls and the Celilo rapids is in one’s ears as a warning to proceed with care.




The Celilo canal, the real “reason” for our trip (as though two men who love the out-of-doors need have a “reason”), proved one of the most interesting spots on the river. The entrance is on the Oregon side, just above Tumwater Falls, which mark the up river limit of the famous Dalles of the Columbia. 


The roaring Dalles is the name given by early French voyageurs, who used to shoot the rapids in their big, able bateau, and it means literally “flat stones.” For ten miles the river, compressed into narrow channels between the lava rock, boils on at a terrific rate, and though steamers have negotiated the river through this treacherous part of the stream, it has been only at high water, and even then a tremendously hazardous trip. 


Upper Tumworth



Tumwater Falls, with a drop of twenty feet at low water, such as we experienced, has been crossed by steamers when the river is at its highest stage, and the walls of the canal, twenty-five feet high in places, is not high enough to retain the river when it is at its flood stage.

The government has spent many millions in building this canal, with its series of splendid locks that drop a boat gradually from the upper river to the lower, a difference in levels of 60 feet at high water, and of 80 feet at low water. The entire canal and locks extend over a
distance of ten miles, through solid rock which had to be blasted out for this purpose. 



While a portion of the canal is lined with concrete, much of it still presents its jagged walls to the passing boat and woe betide the steamer that is not protected on both sides by long logs, lashed in such a way that they act as fenders.

We locked through the canal with the steamer Twin Cities, the first craft through the canal in over two weeks, due to a shutdown caused by a break in one of the retaining walls.

(I have to add here that the steamer Twin Cities sunk on the night of March 25, 1916. )
Below the canal we entered the main river again, full of swirling Waters flowing on through a deep, narrow channel toward the city of The Dalles, on the Oregon side, a very attractive place, at which we spent the night. 

For several days we had seen, far to the eastward as we floated down the stream, the hazy outlines of the magnificent Cascades, and the next morning we soon found ourselves in the first foothills. The perpendicular basaltic cliffs were succeeded gradually by the sloping sides of miniature mountains, and by 9:15, when we passed the mouth of the Klickitat, we were in the midst of the softer scenery that makes the Cascades the most beautiful of all the American mountain ranges.

The autumn foliage was still beautiful, for the temperature was such that the reds and browns and yellows of autumn leaves still held their brilliant hues. And each turn revealed new vistas of gradually higher mountains, clothed with magnificent forests of pine and larch
and maple. Grants Castle we passed, a wonderful pile of columnar basalt, and the remains also of Louis Hill’s projected highway along the Washington side of the river, that was abandoned through lack of public spirit on the part of that great state. 


One after another we passed beautiful or historical spots, and at 10:30 landed on famous Memaloose Island, the “Island of the Dead,” which for centuries was used by the Indians along the Columbia as a burial place for their departed. Piles of human bones, Indian bones, it is true, yet the remains of beings having within them during life that same divine spark that is in you and me, were scattered everywhere, where they had been kicked and piled and probed by modern vandals seeking what they could find of ancient trinkets. Mayhap we looked into the vacant sockets where once flashed Kamiakin’s eyes, or pushed aside with our boots the mortal remains of hands that once signed friendship to Lewis and Clarke. One is
tempted to muse over the past on such a spot, but time forbade lengthy retrospect, and we were soon again on our way.


A few miles below we entered into a stretch of water that held us thoroughly entranced.  Ahead, and far up on the mountain side, we could make out the white houses, the church steeples, and the winding streets of White Salmon, nestled among the trees as snugly as a
robin’s nest.  “Lucky people, they,” thought I, for their view up and down the river is magnificent, and, straight across the Columbia, up the superb valley of Hood River, glistens the ice-coated crown of shimmering Mt. Hood; their’s to see in all its moods as long as time endures.




The Columbia was like a mirror on this gorgeous morning, and we floated on a veritable river of enchantment.  It is hard to give you a consistent idea of the beauty of this trip through the Cascades, this journey through the only gap in this grand chain of mountains where a river flows from its western side through to the sea. The mountains constantly grow in size, till your little craft is but a dot in the vast gorge. In many ways it reminded
me much of the wonderful inlets on the British Columbia coast, where the Pacific penetrates inland between mountain walls a mile high and over.


We caught today our first glimpse of the Columbia Highway, that superb automobile roadway built at a cost of millions, and which is the peer of any similar boulevard in the world. We saw it winding around mountain side, or crossing deep gorges on artistic bridges, or edging the river close to the shores, and always it was placed just so the autoist could enjoy to the utmost the wonderful scenery about him.  


We passed, too, today, the remains of the “sunken forest,” well preserved stumps of trees which were once above the level of the river, but which some convulsion placed below the surface except at lowest water. 

At four we camped in a rocky nook on the Washington shore, just a short distance above the Cascade Locks.  A thick fog covered everything the next morning, but it cleared soon and we were landed at Cascade Locks by 9 o’clock. These locks, in charge of Mr. Val Tompkins,
were opened to traffic in 1896, making possible the navigation of the river from the Pacific to The Dalles. Mr. Tompkins, to whom we had a letter of introduction, showed us every courtesy, and made our 24-hour stay at the locks extremely pleasant and profitable. In a recent letter, Mr. Tompkins says:


“I look for many motor boat devotees to make the trip down the Columbia now that The Dalles-Celilo canal has opened the upper river to navigation. Your description of the trip will be of great value and interest in this respect.  
If I may, I would like to suggest that the attention of motor boatmen be called to the fact thatpassage through the canal and locks, both at this place and The Dalles-Celilo locks, can be made free of charge at any time —night or day— without having to await the arrival of the larger boats passing through the locks.
Cascade Locks

Rain, which prevented photography, kept us at the locks till the following day, hoping against hope that the weather might clear so that we could take the pictures we wanted. We had no such luck, however, so early on the morning of October 22d we locked through
and were on our way. 


As one’s boat leaves the locks at this point, the full current of the Columbia, sweeping along at nine miles an hour, endeavors to set the boat upon a reef directly across the channel from the Oregon side, and only a little way down the stream. We fought our way across the stream, inch by inch, and cleared the reef with a fair margin, though what might have happened had our little Ferro stopped makes me shiver even yet. From there to Bonneville, a few miles down the river, is the last of the swift water, and we went whirling along so fast we hardly had time to watch the scenery we were passing. The beauties of the lower Columbia have so often been described and so often pictured, that I will not try to do them justice here. 
Near Bonneville

Castle Rock, Rooster Rock, the wonderfully graceful Multnomah, Bridal Veil and Horse Tail falls, all were passed in this day’s run, and they are in themselves sufficiently beautiful to make it worth any man’s time to take the river trip from Portland to the Cascade Locks, even though he goes no farther.


Broadening out into a dignified, sweeping river a mile in width, the Columbia carried us on and on that day till 4 in the afternoon, when I landed Miller and all his dunnage at the ferry wharf in Vancouver, business making it necessary for him to be in Seattle the next day.


That night I made camp alone two miles below that historic city, and though it rained during the night I slept snugly beneath that “tarp” that good George Broom had made me take.
To Portland the next day was an easy and thoroughly interesting trip, for the weather was clear and beautiful and the busy Willamette river, with its shipping, and its mills, and its pretty villages along the shores, is teeming with interest always.


At the Von der Werth boat house my dunnage was stored and my boat cared for, and Saturday afternoon and Sunday I spent in Portland, where Pacific Motor Boat is known to all devotees of the water, and where any member of its staff is always given a hearty and sincere welcome.


“From the head of navigation to the sea” I had promised myself when I planned this trip, and I had no intention of ending it at Portland. So, Monday morning, I again donned my cruising togs, took aboard a little more gas, and was early churning the waters of the Willamette on the last lap of our long journey.  Most of the day I had the distant company of three magnificent mountains, Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens, and I skimmed along the placid river in the full enjoyment of all that fell within my vision.





The shores of the Columbia below Portland are low and flat, and many beautiful ranches are on either hand.  That night I slept ashore at Kalama, my outfit being generously stored by Jack Reed, one of the best known motor boat men on the river. Mr. Reed runs the Kalama-
Goble ferry, motor boats of course, and gave me much interesting early history of Columbia river motor boating.


The next day took me along a constantly widening river, and, when the wind began to make things interesting for me in the afternoon, I headed toward the Oregon shore and entered one of that labyrinth of canals that network that side of the river. All afternoon I wound around and around through these canals, seeing only an occasional fisherman or a curious cow, or dense growths of small trees that almost arched their tops across the stream. And later in the afternoon, when I almost despaired of ever getting out into the open river again, I suddenly burst upon Westport, where a huge lumber mill and loading ocean-going vessels gave me an abrupt jar, so different was it from what I had seen all afternoon.


That night I swung to a peaceful mooring a hundred feet from the Oregon shore, and, save for the fact that I nearly stood on my head when the bar tug Walulla, steaming under forced draft to the rescue of a foundering windjammer of the jetty, went charging by, I spent a very pleasant night.


Before daylight the next day, the last of my trip, I was under way and, skirting the Oregon shore to avoid the bars of the five-mile wide river, I came by easy running almost to Tongue Point, the last barrier between the old Pacific and me.   A strong northeast wind had blown up during the morning, however, and I found it expedient to head into a little harbor on the east side of Tongue Point, exactly as Lewis and Clark had headed in for the same reason over a century before.

A
nd there, while the waves beat outside, I ate one of the finest breakfasts I ever ate anywhere, and it was in the dining room of a fisherman’s cabin. J. P. Jensen was the fisherman; he knew Pacific Motor Boat as an old friend, as do most of the fishermen along the Columbia, and his hospitality was thoroughly enjoyed, you may be sure.

The wind went down with the turn of the tide, and shortly after 10 I rounded Tongue Point, and, like thousands that have gone before, fur traders, up-river Indians, explorers, adventurers, rode in my little craft to the first swells of the good old Pacific, lying away off in the haze of the western distance.  A few minutes took me to the Tongue Point buoy station of the United States lighthouse department, where my little engine was shut off for the last time, and my journey was ended.

Three hundred and seventy-five miles through widely varying country, through calm and rapids, past sandy desert and populous cities, was this trip of ours, the first by motor boat from Priest Rapids to the sea.

Enjoy it?    

Every second, night and day. 
It’s a trip for any man who loves the great outdoors, and I can commend it particularly to that man who is seeking something out of the ordinary, who is tired of the old forms of amusement. He will get something quite different in this journey, and variety always.  

The wonderful, weird, enchanting Columbia, that has borne on its bosom the vanguard of mighty empire, whose shores have been transformed from the hunting grounds of the painted savage to the home of a happy, prosperous people, and that today bears giant ocean liners where only yesterday were dugout canoes, will be there waiting for him  
“Till time is old and hath forgot itself,And blind oblivion swallowed cities upAnd mighty states have gone to dusty nothing.”

(THE END)





DOWN THE COLUMBIA’S GATEWAY BY MOTOR BOAT

A Cruise to Demonstrate the Significance
of the Great New Waterway to the Ocean
By A. V. COMINGS
(Photos by the Author and by Curtis J Miller)

Thursday, January 25, 2018

1914 - "Waterman Invents Porto Motor"


This article introducing the Porto appeared in the April 1914 Power Boating magazine.

 A few pages before this was a two page ad by Waterman for the Porto (included below).


Waterman Invents Porto Motor

It is perhaps known to only a few people in the trade that C. B. Waterman, founder and head of the Waterman Marine Motor Co., of Detroit, is the inventor of the detachable marine engine or rowboat motor. This occurred in 1903, when Mr. Waterman was a post graduate student in the law department of Yale University. At that time he owned a motorcycle—one of the first in this country—and the power of the little engine and its light weight impressed him so much that he began working on the idea of a similar engine for small boats.

After being admitted to the bar and returning to his home in Detroit in 1904, he hunted up a friend who operated a machine shop and they built the first Porto motor using a second-hand motorcycle engine. In the winter of 1905-6 a most convincing test of the new machine was made on the Detroit river with the result that a company was organized and the engines built by the Caille Co. under Mr. Waterman's supervision. They were marketed in the spring of 1906 in all parts of the United States,
but being of the air cooled type, they had their limitations. The next year they were changed to water cooled, a new factory was built and equipped, and Mr. Waterman gave up the law to take charge of the present Waterman Marine Motor Co. From that time the business has grown until it is now known all over the world.

It is little wonder, then, that with this experience as a guide that the present Waterman Porto motor is almost a perfect machine. Every year it has been improved by improvements in construction and the addition of needed accessories such as float feed carburetor, magneto, efficient rudder, underwater exhaust, etc. The new Waterman Porto for 1914 develops 3 horsepower and weighs the same as last year's 2-horsepower model. Its many exclusive features will be gladly explained and an interesting circular mailed to POWER BOATING readers who write.



1915 - Jones & La Borde: Early Boats Designed for Outboard Motors

Jones & Laborde (J. H. Jones and George E. Laborde) manufactured both sailboats and power boats from 1903-1928. It sounds like Oshkosh Boat Works is their rowboat and canoe division.



The Jones & LaBorde Co., Oshkosh, Wis., designers and builders of racing sail boats, speed and pleasure launches, have selected Chief Oshkosh as the name for their new power row boats.
The Chief, who was born in 1795 at Menominee village, Green Bay, was very fond of the water (for boating purposes only, we assume). When he was alive, Oshkosh was only a small hamlet and was called Athens, but the settlers did not take kindly to this classic name, so they renamed their town Oshkosh in honor of the Chief.

The Chief Oshkosh model row boats equipped for detachable motors which Jones & LaBorde have produced are very handsome craft and carry in their design and construction the practical knowledge of the builders.
They are quite different from the average row boat, the stern being wide and deep so that they will properly support the weight of the motor in addition to that of the operator without leaving the bow far out of the water.

Power Boating, Volume 15, 1916


Wednesday, January 24, 2018

1918/19 - Evinrude Advertising Insight


We know the Evinrude Motor Co. was an excellent and aggressive advertiser in their early years.  Bess Evinrude is often given most of the credit.  The company also hired professional ad men, one of which I found, Frank Bowles, only lasted a year it seems.







Saturday, January 20, 2018

Friday, January 19, 2018

1916 - Part 2 - Down the Columbia River with a Ferro

Uh-oh! 
 I originally skipped over this installment.  
(I thought the story jumped around!)




WE were up with daylight the second day out, and while I cooked a breakfast of flapjacks, bacon and coffee, Miller got the boat ready for the day’s journey by stowing all bedding, etc., and arranging the dunnage in its proper place. Our night and morning routine was the same every day of the trip, making for speed and satisfaction all around. 


We were under way at 7:20 a. m., a fine, early start on a glorious day. Seven miles below camp we took the east channel along an island. and it seemed like a veritable" irrigation ditch, it was so quiet for a time. But suddenly it began to speed up, and worse than that, big boulders began t.o show their round tops above the water. And for every one that showed there were others that were just below the surface. Our course through this patch was a weird zig-zag, and I kept the little Ferro going only enough to keep us from swinging broadside to the current.

Shortly before 9 o’clock we sighted our first steamboat, several miles above Kennewick, and heading upstream. So we landed on the east bank and climbed to vantage points, where Miller, with his big 8x10-inch camera and Pathescope, and I with my trusty Graflex, made ready to shoot the steamer as she approached. And it might be mentioned that it made a very pretty picture.  






The steamer was the Twin Cities, a boat we were destined to see many times going and coming on our trip, and which went through the Celilo locks and canal with us later.

We were under way again a little after 9, and shortly ran into the Horn Rapids, above Richland. We shot through easily, and at 10:30 passed the mouth of the Yakima River, which flows in from the westward. 


This was the first tributary we had passed in the two days, and this absence of tributary streams impresses upon one the dryness of the country on both banks of the Columbia in this section of the state. Sagebrush and sand, rocks and rattlesnakes, are about all the land supports till water is poured upon it, and then it raises unbelievable crops.  In fact, the irrigated valley of the Yakima is one of the richest sections of the whole state of Washington.

Two miles above Kennewick we encountered swift, shoal water for some distance, but we managed it nicely, and went scooting down to Kennewick on a good five-mile current. The Kennewick landing is in a little bight on the west shore, and into this we turned, and pulled up beside the little steam ferryboat that serves as the only link in the highway between Kennewick and Pasco, a mile back from the east bank.

Miller stayed with the boat while I went up to the city, about a mile from the landing, to get
some gasoline and other supplies. Later, when I returned, Miller went to the city and reloaded his plate holders at a local photograph gallery, returning to the boat in company with A. R. Gardner, publisher of the Kennewick Courier and a very interesting chap.

Kennewick and her sister city, Pasco, are situated in the midst of a very prosperous ranching and apple raising district, and are attractive little cities in every way. 
When one considers that only a few years ago there was nothing but sage brush and sand hills where these towns now stand, one realizes what irrigation means to this vast section of Washington.

Swinging out from Kennewick at 2 p. m., we were soon shooting along under the Northern Pacific railroad bridge in swift and shallow water, and in half an hour we came to the mouth of the Snake, that tempestuous stream that is second only to the Columbia in size and volume in this great northwest land. A large island and bar obstruct the mouth of the Snake, but the main channel to the south of this island appeared deep, though swift. 

Even at this low stage, the Snake pours a great volume of water into the Columbia and its influence was very noticeable in the increased size and flow of the Columbia below the confluence of the two rivers.  We had hoped to get into the Snake, and possibly add the trip from Lewiston, Idaho, to its mouth, as part of our itinerary, but lack of time made this absolutely impossible.

It is interesting to note here that on January 8th of this year Senator Wesley L. Jones of Washington introduced a bill in the United States Senate to have the War Department survey the Columbia River from the mouth of the Snake to the foot of Priest Rapids, where
our trip started, with a view to the immediate improvement of the river for easy navigation. The War Department has already done this work for the Columbia from the mouth of the Snake to the sea, and much work is being done in the way of blasting out obstructions, dredging channels, etc.  That the cities along the Columbia are awakening to the value of the river as a real commercial highway is reflected in these efforts to remove every menace to navigation, making the river safe to all types of river craft, including the smallest motor boats.

Our arrival at the mouth of the Snake marked our entrance into a part of the river that is 
particularly rich in historic interest. For it was here that Lewis and Clark, those intrepid explorers sent out by President Thomas Jefferson to find the headwaters of the Missouri and the path to the Pacific Ocean through the Rocky Mountains.  




first entered the mighty Columbia in their canoes and periogues. They emerged from the
Snake into the Columbia on October 16, 1805; we came to the mouth of the Snake almost exactly 110 years later, for we were there October 15, 1915. The waters of both rivers were at an extremely low stage the year they came, as it was when we were there. According to their measurements the Columbia is 960 yards wide at the junction point and the Snake 575 yards wide.

Pursuing our way down the stream, we came in sight, shortly after 3, of badly breaking water toward the west shore, and though we tried to avoid it, found that the channel was there and it was up to us to “shoot the chutes.” We were in the thick of it in no time, and went tearing down what we afterward learned were the Homly Rapids. These were the worst rapids we had 
yet experienced, and one wave slapped a bucketful of water over on me as I sat astern, the first water we had thus far shipped. The current runs at the rate of about eight miles an hour through these rapids, so we evidently made about fourteen miles speed in running
More info
them. Which, with a small, heavily laden boat in shallow water, is some exciting.
About seven miles below the Homly Rapids we veered over to the east shore, and in the shadow of the Twin Sisters of the magnificent Wallula Gateway we camped for the night. 

We knew we were at the upper end of a long series of dangerous rapids, that on the morrow our little craft would really be tested to its capacity for the first time, and the dull roar of the Columbia over nearby shoals didn’t help any to reassure us during the long night. 
In spite of our apprehensions, however, we both slept soundly and awoke to a glorious day with weather conditions perfect.

The brilliant morning sun revealed to us a wonderful change in scenery that we only half appreciated the night before. It was the first real change encountered since leaving Priest Rapids. For two days we had floated down through the sand and sage brush country.
where occasional irrigation had spotted the banks with green, but now we entered into a weird land, where volcanic rock, brown and bleak and forbidding, was piled and pushed and hurled into a thousand fantastic shapes. 

And the transition was not gradual, there was no slow changing from the one to the other. At the Wallula Gateway the Columbia bids adieu to its sand and sage brush shores and, hurled abruptly to the westward by the barrier of the Umatilla Highlands goes leaping and foaming away to the sea between banks that are a perpetual delight to the enraptured voyageur.

To the tourist bent on best seeing America first, I can commend few sights more impressive than the Wallula Gateway of the Columbia River. Out of the gradually ascending plain, on the east bank, rise to a thousand
feet or more immense piles of basaltic rock, which wind
and weather have softened and worn into columns and
pillars and spires.


And on the very point of these,
standing like grim sentinels of eternity, are the Twin Sisters, immense brown columns, symmetrical as though shaped by the hand of a giant sculptor.


On the Washington shore this weird portal is guarded by columned rock even higher, and quite as impressive, and from the gateway westward the river rolls on between highlands of volcanic rock so forbidding, so awesome, and so barren of the mark of human habitation,
that one can not help feeling that the bawling rapids shouldering his craft along are carrying him for all time into the Never-Never land.


To me, this part of the river, from the magnificent Wallula Gateway to Bonneville, below the Cascade Locks, is in many ways the most interesting portion of the great waterway. I have taken the much advertised trip up the Hudson River from New York to Albany many times, and while it is a beautiful trip, why, the scenic features could be scattered along the Columbia from the Wallula Gateway to below Hood River and one would hardly notice them, they would be so overshadowed by the natural beauties and attractions along the route.

 This holds true ofthe much-touted “Palisades of the Hudson,” too, for those beautiful
palisades could be used as a side show for many a real piece of scenery on the Columbia. And once get the trip down the rapids of the Columbia as well known as that other famous trip, down the St. Lawrence, and many a new steamer will have to be built to accommodate the tourists who will yearly flock to this coast and make this journey. 




In many places the Columbia's banks are made up of these towering pocks of columnar basalt, which rival and often excel the famous highlands of the Hudson River. In fact, the Columbia scenery has no equal in either the Hudson or St. Lawrence.




As I remember the St. Lawrence trip, there is nothing in the whole river that compares in beauty of both river and surrounding scenery with the hundred and fifty miles of  Columbia from the Wallula  Gateway down.

And I know that the famous Lachine Rapids aren't half as thrilling as the roaring Umatillas, for I’ve run both of them.

On this gorgeous morning of our third day out Miller and I climbed the heights of the east portal of the gateway, and from vantage points took many pictures up and down the
river.  Not until nearly 11 o’clock did we get under way, and then we took a side sweep around the east shore of the river to avoid the shoals whose roar had worried us the night
before.

Several times we stopped to take pictures, and about noon headed into Bull Run Rapids, against which we had been warned. These were not bad however and we dashed through
them with little difficulty. Shortly afterward we negotiated Bull Run Shoal, also without any difficulty, though both were “bad water.”

All forenoon and well into the afternoon we were floating along between palisades of volcanic rock, every mile bringing into view new shapes and new scenes, each more
weird than had gone before. The river was wide and deep, save where there were well-marked rapids or sand bars. From the time we started we had been warned against the terrible Umatilla Rapids, and these we had in store for this day, so that the afternoon found us on the lookout for any sign that we were approaching the raging water. We had been told
that the main channel through the rapids was indicated by two range marks on the hills of the Oregon shore, so we scanned the hills for these marks as the afternoon wore on. We had no chart to go by, the distances and locations given us by well-meaning boatmen along the
river were never twice alike, so it was up to us to find our own way.

About 3 o’clock we came to what answered every description of the Umatillas save that there were no shore beacons. There was the reef almost straight across the channel, the water boiling into it, and the ragged rocks beyond.  
And, strapping on our life preservers, we headed into it, Miller picking the channel as usual.

We shot through like an express train, and were bumped good and plenty by the waves, but were soon on the calmer water below the rapids and congratulating ourselves on the ease with which we had conquered the terror of the river.

(To be Continued)


Castle Rock on the North Shore Between Cascades and Vancouver
Rising sheer from the low lying river bank, Castle Rock is a beautiful land mark and is
visible for miles both up and down the river.   Its sides are very steep and it has been
scaled but few times and then only with the utmost difficulty by the hardiest of climbers.









Wednesday, January 17, 2018

1915 - Mullins: Early Boats Designed for Outboard Motors

 

This is the steel bodied Mullins I mentioned yesterday.
Wooden ribs and gunwales.

The Outboard Special was their model designed for detachable motors.

If you want to hear the history of the boat industry tersely and interestingly told, make it a point to run across C. C. Gibson of the W. H. Mullins Co., some day and get him to talk.

Gibson's pet hobby is “specialization in boatbuilding". He believes that it is all right for some builders to build boats to order of any size and at any price, but he will tell you that for 20 odd years the Mullins company have confined their operations to the building of power boats ranging in size from 16 to 26 feet and they have left the “big work" to the other fellows.

“Specialization has a double-edged advantage" says Mr. Gibson. “It helps the builder because he can bring all his ingenuity to bear on a few sizes. It helps the boat buyer be

to the details. He has already disposed of nearly all the space allotted to exhibitors and has many applicants for the little space left. This winter the show will be larger and better than ever. More space has already been engaged by manufacturers than at any previous show in the history of the association and consequently things look very good.

(1916 Power Boating, Volume 15)


Remember, you can click on the image to see it full sized. 


Cailles were sold with Mullin