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Our Ships Come In

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COURTESY OF PAUL DORPAT Then: This view was photographed in 1896 from the north side of the old Arlington Pier at the foot of University Street. It looks through the space where, six years later, Pier 57 was built. PAUL DORPAT Now: It was from the north side of Pier 57 that this photo was recorded, looking in the same direction as the “then.” Nothing, however, has survived from that original view.

HERE IS A section of waterfront that has been peculiarly noted for great arrivals, and one of these is recorded here. The steamer moored between the two sloops, the Clark and Bartette boathouse (the fanciful structure on the far right) and Schwabacher Wharf is the Miike Maru. A very big deal was made of her arrival here on Aug. 31, 1896 — a likely date for the photograph as well.

This beginning of regularly scheduled steamer service between Seattle and the Orient was celebrated citywide with two days of parades, speeches and banquets. Years later, Capt. James Griffith, who helped arrange the service, reflected that while this first visit was grand, what the steamer delivered was "a very modest cargo of tea, curios, bamboo blinds and a few crates of bananas from Honolulu. On the return voyage she carried a good cargo of flour, lumber, nails, hoofs and horns, car wheels, electric light supplies and five tons of bicycles."

A few weeks less than one year after the Miike Maru's visit, the "ton of gold ship," Portland, arrived on the other side of Schwabacher Wharf, and in that instant started the gold rush that kept Seattle busy for years outfitting the miners.

The last Schwabacher remnant was a tuning-fork-shaped dock that the Port of Seattle, at the urging of small-boat owners, developed into a recreational moorage called the New Boat Haven in the early 1950s. Little used, it was soon closed. Thereafter, tugs tied up there; and, for a few months during the 1962 World's Fair, the popular Catala "boatel" admitted its guests there as well.

What was left of the pier was torn down in 1967; eight years later, work began on the Waterfront Park shown, in part, in the "now" scene.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.