Once upon a 90-year distant time, the M\/V Westward carried cruise ships passengers hunting humpback whales, mountain goats and brown bears through Alaska\u2019s waters.<\/p>\n
Almost 100 years later, the 86\u2019 vessel is captained by owner Bill Bailey, and it no longer has harpoon mounts \u2014 but the yacht, with only four guest rooms, a guest roster of between eight and 12, a fire crackling in its living room fireplace, and an original diesel engine from 1923, retains an old-world feel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a neat, deep connection that goes back a long time,\u201d Bailey said.<\/p>\n
In the years it hasn\u2019t visited Alaska, the boat has crossed the Pacific Ocean. It was requisitioned for military use in World War II. It\u2019s spent time at a maritime museum.<\/p>\n
In recent years, however, it has returned to Alaska during the summer.<\/p>\n
The Westward was built in Washington state on Maury Island at John Martinolich\u2019s shipyard; it was designed by Ted Geary. It was launched in January 1924 and was the first boat \u201cbuilt specifically to convey charter guests in Alaskan waters,\u201d according to the company\u2019s website. It cruised to Alaska that same summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis boat was the missing link in Geary\u2019s power boat designs,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cAfter this boat, he went on and designed these beautiful, famous fantail yachts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campbell Church, who owned and commissioned the Westward, made a lot of promotional films even back in the 1920s \u2014 and a video compilation of some of them, created by John Sabella, is available on YouTube.<\/p>\n
\u201cCruising was different in the old days. Church\u2019s clientele was a who\u2019s who of the rich and famous,\u201d a video voiceover says, showing clips of a dressed-up guest lighting a pipe.<\/p>\n
Allen Hasselborg, the \u201cBear Man of Admiralty Island,\u201d strides nonchalantly across the black and white screen, perhaps working as a guide. A man in an old-fashioned bathing suit clambers from the sea onto floating ice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe real lure of an Alaskan excursion to the consciousness of 1920s America was blood sport,\u201d adds the voiceover.<\/p>\n
Two men hold a dead mountain goat up to the Westward\u2019s rail.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother thrilling sport is made possible by the whaling outfit installed aboard the Westward,\u201d says a voice that appears to be from the original film. \u201cThar she blows! And keen excitement follows. The chase! The intense moments just before the shot! The harpoon hitting true! Splashing and boiling water!\u201d On screen, a man shoots a humpback with a harpoon. \u201cThe tackle includes a Norwegian whale gun shooting harpoons fitted with time-fused bombs! \u2026and all of the accessories for scrapping it out with 50-ton whales, any one of which can furnish a week\u2019s excitement between sunrise and sunset,\u201d the announcer finishes.<\/p>\n
How passengers now interact with humpback whales may be strikingly different from those scenes 90 years ago, but the boat is still powered the exact same way \u2014 by its 110-horsepower 1923 Atlas Imperial diesel engine. Someone has to hand-apply oil to 118 spots on the engine every three hours, Bailey said. The boat\u2019s cruising speed is around eight knots.<\/p>\n
Bailey has two boats in Pacific Catalyst II, Inc., his charter company. They are the Westward and the M\/V Catalyst, which is another interesting piece of Pacific Northwest history \u2014 it was the University of Washington\u2019s first research vessel, Bailey said.<\/p>\n
When the Capital City Weekly interviewed Bailey, the Westward was crewed by incoming naturalist Caroline Olson, cook Tracie Triolo, and departing naturalist Sarah Drummond, an artist. Shane Blair, the Catalyst\u2019s engineer, and engineer and master woodworker Randy Good are also Alaska crew members.<\/p>\n
Bailey and team recently refurbished the Westward with Good\u2019s help, replacing new planking in the keel (the old planking was fine, but the new had rotted), plumbing and electricity, and better fitting the architecture of the staterooms to the design of the time period (over the boat\u2019s long history, they\u2019d been altered) \u2014 while on the way to Baja, where the boat, which is based in Washington, spends its winters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was nothing short of miraculous,\u201d Triolo said of the timing of the refurbishment.<\/p>\n
Sitka is the company\u2019s hub for its adventures in Southeast Alaska. Right now, they offer two Southeast trips \u2014 one between Sitka and Juneau and back, and one between Sitka and Petersburg and back, each about eight days.<\/p>\n
As a clearly historical vessel \u2014 it\u2019s listed with the National Register of Historical Places \u2014 \u201cthe boat\u2019s kind of a skeleton key to \u2026 be welcomed in some places,\u201d Bailey said. A passenger load of fewer than 12 can help with that, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to meet real people and hear their real stories,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pacific Catalyst\u2019s website is http:\/\/www.pacificcatalyst.com\/. To watch the YouTube video, go to https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uZVGjZ4jYl4.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly managing editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once upon a 90-year distant time, the M\/V Westward carried cruise ships passengers hunting humpback whales, mountain goats and brown bears through Alaska\u2019s waters. Almost 100 years later, the 86\u2019 vessel is captained by owner Bill Bailey, and it no longer has harpoon mounts \u2014 but the yacht, with only four guest rooms, a guest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":28815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-28814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28814"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=28814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}