In the sea of history some stories are lost forever. We do not always have an answer for whom the sea claims. Some are lost forever under a far off wave. Moons rise and turn. People pass. Boats sink and are forgotten.
But sometimes the jetsam of the past floats to the surface and bobs in the dim morning light long after the crest of an era has gone. Some people search for those pieces – the stuff lingering like tiny glinting beacons in a still and hazy darkness. These people collect what’s left, and put the sodden pieces together. In the right kind of light they see a story ever telling across an ocean of wonder. Some stories are simply for record, others the meandering of history buffs, but sometimes the stories -- complete and brilliant as a hook amid the murk of uncertainty -- mean a lot more, and bring closure to families after such a long time waiting for a fisherman lost at sea.
Last Sunday, May 3, Seattle Fishermen's Memorial honored 2014 with no fishermen lost at sea. This is the first time there has been a year with no loss of life since 1900. There is one name that was added to the memorial monument this year: Carl Anton Olsen, who was lost in 1922. His memorial and story were preserved thanks the efforts of Thomas Samuelsen of Deep Sea Fishermen's Union of the Pacific and relatives of Olsen’s.
Thomas Samuelsen, 67, has spent most of his life at sea and is a third generation fisherman of Norwegian ancestry. An historian at heart, he regularly steeps himself in research and has worked with the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, and the Whatcom County Museum of History and Art in Bellingham. He is a lifetime member of the Deep Sea Fishermen's Union of the Pacific.
The Deep Sea Fishermen's Union of the Pacific was formed in 1912. To honor their centennial the union worked on a book capturing the history of the union called “One Hook At A Time,” written by Jeff Kahrs. In their research they found 307 of their union members had perished while working over the ocean. There have been over 5000 members since they started. Carl Olsen was one of those men.
While digging into the old newspaper microfilm and following dried-up leads, Samuelsen was contacted by a pair of bothers in Beaver Bay of Northern Minnesota. They asked Samuelsen about their uncle, Carl, whom they knew had gone missing while fishing for halibut in 1922.
“It was after a lot of work that I was able to identify the boat, the name of his wife and the year of the loss,” said Samuelsen.
Wayne Johnson, 94, of Beaver Bay, Minn., contacted the union looking for more information about Carl. Johnson had been putting together his family genealogy, and after finding some of his mother’s postcards from her brother Carl, he was interested in finding out more about his uncle.
“All I knew about him was that he immigrated to the U.S. about the same time my mother did in 1907. I knew he had gone to Seattle because a lot of the Norwegian fishermen went there because fishing was good. We knew he was lost at sea, so I contacted the union to see if they had any details and was referred to Samuelsen,” said Johnson.
Johnson said that from his own research he thinks his uncle came to the U.S. byway of Montreal from Tromso, Norway, and then visited the Johnson family farm near Appleton, Minn., en route to Seattle via train. Johnson said he did meet Carl but he was six or seven at the time. His uncle already had friends from Norway in the fishing industry in Seattle, and he was an experienced fishermen.
Carl Anton Olsen in 1922. Image courtesy of Wayne Johnson, nephew to Olsen.
Tragically, the day before Olsen left on his final fishing voyage, he married Margot Johanne at the Immanuel Lutheran Church, which still remains in South Lake Union.Rev. H.A. Stub, a well known Norwegian pastor, married the couple. Margot had also traveled from Tromso, Norway, and came to Seattle to marry Olsen.
“We did know that he had drown and he had gotten married the very day or day before he went out to sea. My mother got a card from his wife that told us he had drowned,” said Johnson.
Johnson’s brother, Edgar Carl, was born in 1922 and was named after his uncle.
Hearing all this, Samuelsen starting looking for Olsen and as he found weathered threads of the man’s life in old newspapers, a much bigger story surfaced.
At age 31, Carl Anton Olsen was a crewmember of the halibut schooner, Convention. The boat was built in Poulsbo, Wash. in 1917. It measured 23 tons, 45 feet in length, a beam of 13 feet and a depth of five feet. In 1922 its homeport was Seattle. There is a report from the August 22, 1922 edition of the Seattle Daily Times that says the Convention was in port and had just delivered 6000 pounds of halibut from the Goose Island banks in the Hecate Straight, between Haida Gwaii Islands (formerly Queen Charlotte Islands) and the British Columbia mainland. The schooners used sails up until that time but the Convention had just been outfitted with a new engine before its final expedition. The crew included, Capt. Anton Johan Peter Ulla, Bert Glomseth, Gus Doving, Ole Rasmussen and Carl Anton Olsen.
The Convention and its crew went missing during a big blow late in 1922. The vessel and crew were last seen November 1 in Hecate Strait of British Columbia. A November report from the Oregonian said that the winds of the gale blew in the Gulf of Alaska for over three weeks.
“This was a whopper of a storm; a bunch folks had trouble,” said Samuelsen.
Samuelsen’s own grandfather, Adolf “Strongback Alec” Samuelson was fishing in the midst of the storm on his schooner, Lister, and was drove ashore by the strong winds. Indeed, the Petersburg Weekly Report wrote on Dec. 1, 1922, “Halibut men who were out in the blow claim it was the worst storm in the history of the Yakutat Banks and claim that for a time all of them gave up hope of reaching harbor safely.”
The Tordenskjold, which was moored at Fishermen’s Terminal during the memorial ceremony, was in the same storm and two men were swept off the deck, but the crew recovered the men after great difficulty.
Thomas Samuelsen (left), Gail and Dan Stromstad with DSFU Vice President, Jan Standaert. Gail is the great niece to Carl Anton Olsen. The four are aboard the Tordenskjold, a halibut schooner that was in the same storm that claimed Olsen. The storm blew two men off the deck of the Tordenskjold, but the crew managed to recover them.
After the Convention and other schooners, the Morengen, Washington and Pelican, didn’t report back to port by December 1, the search began. The Ketchikan office of the Deep Sea Fishermen’s Union of the Pacific paid much of cost needed for the search because the Coast Guard was only in its fledgling state and only able to send the cutters, Smith and Unalga, for the search. The Malaspina, a Canadian patrol vessel, also helped in the search. Records state that more union men volunteered for the search than the boats could hold.
Finally in early December the fishing vessel, Iris, was near Banks Island and found an unpainted buoy keg bearing Convention crew member Ole Rasmussen’s name written in blue pencil. The Iris crew also found a double hatch from the Convention. Fishermen speculated that the Convention was smashed on the rocks and reefs near Bonilla Island and Halibut Rock, an area deemed dangerous but good for fishing.
The Pelican turned up safely in Alaskan ports after being in the gulf for 43 day. The Washington was run ashore on Yakutat Bay for a total loss. The crew of six were exhausted but survived after being marooned for 22 days. The Morengen and its crew of five were never found.
The storm had left so many boats damaged and men missing that halibut fishing was down and created a spike in the market price of the fish. The Seattle Daily Times reported on December 5, about a week before the Convention debris was found, halibut prices jumped to 20 cents a pound.
In total the storm claimed at least 10 American fishermen from the Convention and the Morengen.
Samuelsen worked with DSFU Vice President, Jan Standaert, Billy Lang of Seattle Fishermen’s Memorial and Johnson to make sure Olsen’s name appeared on the memorial. Now Samuelsen says there are still 80 union fishermen he would like to see up there and that means more searching, sifting through pieces of history, connecting the dots and contacting family members for approval.
