Restoration A Seaworthy Cause $3 Million Effort Aims To Erase 75 Years Of Hard Marine Use From The Last Of The Wooden Steamships Sailing The Sound

There she sits, beached in dry dock with a team of craftsmen swarming over her inside and out, wood shavings tangled in their hair.

The Virginia V is the sole surviving wooden steamship from the Mosquito Fleet that crisscrossed the waters of Puget Sound. She’s undergoing extensive repairs, financed by contributors around the state who want to see her back in service.

The ship is too historically important to let her rot, says Andrew Price of Seattle, who’s heading up a $3 million fund-raising campaign for the boat’s restoration.

Millions of people have ridden the Virginia V all around Puget Sound since she was launched in 1922, Price said. The Northwest, he figures, wouldn’t be the same without this fine old ship.

“You couldn’t just let it be burned, and put the engine in a museum. You have to walk the deck. Watch the steam engine run. Look out over the rail at the wake. There’s a magic to it.”

The Mosquito Fleet was an integral part of Puget Sound life, with hundreds of boats stitching communities together across the cold, deep sound from 1870 into the 1930s.

The Virginia V was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992, and listed on the United States National Register of Historic Sites in 1973. She has been a Seattle City Landmark since 1974.

Her passengers over the years have included everyone from Camp Fire girls traveling to Camp Sealth on Vashon Island to University of Washington football fans.

The ship has been owned since 1976 by the Virginia V Foundation, a nonprofit organization that operated the boat as a charter vessel. Proceeds from the trips paid for the boat’s upkeep, operational costs and for a small, salaried crew.

But 75 years of hard marine use took a toll. Patching and making do didn’t cut it by 1995, when the Coast Guard ordered a total overhaul to retain the ship’s certification as a working passenger vessel.

The crew was laid off, the ship put in dry dock, and her devoted fans began raising money to overhaul the boat from pilot house to propeller.

Backers of the ship’s restoration obtained $500,000 from the Washington State Heritage Fund; $300,000 in federal transportation money; and $140,000 from the King County Heritage Commission. Another $525,000 has been raised from more than 920 businesses, individuals and foundations around the state.

Another $1.5 million is needed to complete repairs that will make the ship sound for at least another 25 years, Price says.

Putting her back in order is no routine job. It’s a labor of love, carried out at Lake Union Dry Dock, a venerable, scabrous boat yard that’s home to a cat named Cat, a family of geese, and a crew of shipwrights enamored with old wooden boats.

Inside their wood shop, the sweet smell of fir shavings piled in drifts on the wood floor perfumes the air. Cast-iron shop tools, some dating to the turn of the century, are still in use.

The wood used to repair the Virginia V is something the average carpenter has never seen: giant slabs of old growth fir and yellow cedar, packed with more than 20 tight lines of grain to the inch.

The planks are without knots or defects, and air-dried for five to seven years to attain just the right moisture content.

Much of the wood is salvaged from old warehouses, or purchased new, usually from Canada. A single fragrant plank can cost nearly $200.

A team of about 20 has been at work on the green and white vessel for five months.

The hull is being rebuilt with fresh new planks, a precise business on a vessel where nothing is square and all work has to be performed with historically accurate materials, and built to last.

“Mistakes matter. You have to do it right, or do it all over again. You can’t take any shortcuts,” says Rodger Morris, manager of the restoration project.

Much of the work on wooden boats, especially historic ones, is slow, patient craftsmanship. Hand tools have their place on this job, a rarity in a world of power nailers and air compressors.

To seal the hull, John English swings a metal chisel over his head to stuff cotton wading and oakum, a kind of hemp twine, between the planks. The slats are later sealed with cement.

Shipwright Angela Van Ecken uses a hand chisel to peel fresh curls of sweet fir from planks, to get their shape just so. Planks are also curved in a steam box that cooks them one hour per inch of thickness.

Looking at the ship today, gutted and with so much work yet to go, it takes faith to believe she’ll sail again. But no one doubts it.

“We’re not afraid of anything,” Morris says. “We’ve got the tools. We know where to get the materials. And we have a job that’s easy to love.”

The Five, as she’s affectionately known, should be ready to go back in the water in another month, and be in service again by next summer, Price said.

She’ll serve Puget Sound as a living history museum, available for charter. Money raised from charter bookings will pay for the ship’s maintenance, operation and crew. Her captain can’t wait.

Laid off in 1995 when the boat was taken out of service, Don Moss still comes by every week to check on his beloved, and volunteer for the dirtiest jobs such as scraping her bottom by hand.

He lovingly points out her gigantic steam engine; the fire boxes big enough to hold a picnic in; stained glass windows in the passenger lounge, and wood-paneled pilot house.

“She goes so easy in the water,” Moss says, his hands on the wheel.

A fifth-generation Seattle native, Moss has been going to sea for more than 50 years. He even looks the part of the barnacled sea captain, with his shaggy white brows and beard and weather-lined face.

He steps into the sleeping cabin of the ship and pulls down the chart shelf, just to feel the hinge work.

“I’ve always been happiest with a boat deck under my feet.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS