Center for Wooden Boats and Northwest Seaport

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Seattle's hands-on maritime museum was founded as a non-profit educational organization in 1978 and opened on Waterway 4 at South Lake Union in 1983. The Center for Wooden Boats provides workshops on boatbuilding, sailing, and woodworking, and hosts a popular annual wooden boat festival. The museum is free, and vintage vessels are available by the hour for a modest fee. Heritage vessels at the Center for Wooden Boats include the National Register of Historic Places-listed 1926 racing sloop Pirate; the 1914 cruiser GloryBe; and the 1905 steam launch Puffin. The Center for Wooden Boat's artist in residence, a Haida Master Carver, carves traditional cedar dugout canoes and teaches boat carving on Sunday afternoons.

The Northwest Seaport's historic fleet includes the 1889 tugboat Arthur Foss (star of the 1933 movie Tugboat Annie, a designated National Historic Landmark, and one of the oldest tugboats in existence); the 1904 lightship Swiftsure (formerly known as Relief), also a National Historic Landmark; the 1933 salmon troller Twilight; the halibut schooner Yakutat. Until March 2009, the 1897 Pacific schooner Wawona, one of the largest three-masted schooners built in North America and in 1970 the first ship ever to be listed on the National Register of Historic places, was berthed at Northwest Seaport. The Wawona was one of only two survivors of the once enormous sailing fleet of the Pacific Northwest. Faced with an estimated $15 million bill to repair her severe decay, Northwest Seaport made the difficult decision to demolish the Wawona. Portions of the ship, including the captain's cabin, were salvaged for planned display at the Museum of History & Industry when that organization relocates to the Naval Reserve Building (Armory)

Other historic vessels in South Lake Union: the 1909 fireboat Duwamish, listed on the National Register of Historic places and owned by the Puget Sound Fireboat Foundation; the 1922 steamer Virginia V, the last remaining wooden-hulled, steam-powered passenger vessel on the West Coast and the last of the once-ubiquitous "Mosquito Fleet" steamers that flitted across Puget Sound waters, a National Historic Landmark, owned by the Virginia V Foundation; and the 1924 schooner Zodiac, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and owned by the Schooner Zodiac Corporation.

By Paula Becker, September 25, 2012

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Center for Wooden Boats, Seattle, ca. 1995
Photo by Paul Dorpat, courtesy Paul Dorpat