Book research uncovers unique drawing of pioneer blockhouse

LORRAINE MCCONAGHY, historian at Seattle's Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI), spent the summer of 2005 in "the other Washington" hoping to find treasures in the Navy's archives. The object of this ardor was the 117-foot Navy sloop-of-war, the USS Decatur, which 150 years earlier visited Seattle and stayed for nine months defending the village during the Treaty War.

The result is adventures all around — aboard the Decatur, inside the blockhouse, which the sailors helped the settlers complete, and in the village and woods behind it. All are wonderfully recounted in McConaghy's "Warship Under Sail, The USS Decatur in the Pacific West," a new book from the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest in association with the University of Washington Press.

John Y. Taylor, a Navy doctor on board, drew this detailed likeness of the blockhouse Fort Decatur, named for the warship. Until the historian uncovered it, the drawing was buried in the archives. One of the two oldest renderings of any part of Seattle, this sketch is totally new to us. The other, also drawn from the Decatur's deck, is by Thomas Phelps, Taylor's friend and shipmate.

When the heavy boxes of microfilm, copied for her from Taylor's journals, first arrived in Seattle from Yale's Beinecke Library, McConaghy recalls, "I raced to the MOHAI library and my hands were shaking with such excitement that I could hardly thread the reader. But there were Taylor's drawings, right up on the screen, of Seattle (and much else). I laid my head in my hands and wept."

McConaghy says her book "allows us to see (pioneer) Seattle with completely new eyes." She is right.

Check out Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard's blog at www.pauldorpat.com.