Lighthouse Park, Warrenton

March 21, 2010

Lighthouse Park, at the main crossroads in Warrenton near the Skipanon River, consists of a small museum and maritime memorial (the gazebo on the left), a bell, a bench (not shown here), and a harpoon gun with harpoons. I showed the gun an harpoons in an earlier post where we ended up talking a lot about whaling, ships, and local history. There were many wonderful comments from those who knew the people, and you might want to revisit the post. You can barely make out the harpoon gun in the picture above as a black spot to the left of the charming white lighthouse building. I called that post, "History in Hammond." Hammond was once an incorporated town, but is now part of Warrenton. I've never been sure where one ends and the other begins.

I'm guessing the lighthouse was moved here, as it wouldn't do ships any good at this location. The Skipanon is very small, and the Columbia is a few blocks away.

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History in Hammond

The last thing I expected to see when I went to the laundromat in Hammond was a harpoon gun. And the last thing I expected when I researched it for this post was that there would be any history connected with my family. The history connection is not to this area, but to the ship that carried the harpoon gun. I'll show you at the end of the post.

At the main intersection in Hammond (diagonally across from the mini-mart and laundromat) is the Lighthouse Museum, and on its west side is this harpoon gun with two heavy metal harpoons. I truly feel sorry for the whales on the end of that thing, but history and culture are always interesting to me.

Just as I got this far with the photos, the sun went behind a cloud and stayed there, so the colors became a bit dull and muddy. Sorry about that.

The harpoon gun and harpoons in situ at the small museum. On the left is a plaque giving a brief history:

I didn't know there was whaling in this area. Usually, our local connection to whales is watching them from the headlands along the coast. It seems the whaling years were very short.

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I looked up the ship Tom & Al online and found that it was a beautiful ship fitted for both sailing and power, and it had an unusually interesting and varied history. It was built in 1900 or 1914 (depending on the source) as a fishing schooner for halibut and given the name King and Winge, which was later changed to Tom & Al. During its life it made a famous rescue in Alaska, was present at a maritime tragedy, served as a rum-runner, a whaling and dragging ship, and as a Columbia River bar pilot boat before it sank in the Bering sea in 1994.

The connection to my family is that during the rescue in Alaska, the King and Winge struggled with packed ice and bad weather along with the Revenue Cutter (later Coast Guard Cutter) Bear to effect a rescue of survivors of the then-famous Stafansson expedition. This took place in 1914, two years before grandfather, Clement Joseph Todd, was assigned as Executive Officer to the Bear in 1916 for two trips to Alaska and Siberia. The link to his name gives a taste of his experience, which was posted by The Bancroft Library from a booklet my grandmother typed up from letters and photos that he sent home. Just because I was on the track and doing research, I thought I'd post several pictures of the Bear that I found online.

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The Bear was also a majestic ship when under sail, and I grew up with a painting of it in my grandmother's house. The Bear had three masts and the King and Winge had two, but they must have looked somewhat similar in their heyday.

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Here is the U.S.R.C. Bear in the ice. There's an even nicer photo here.

More links:

Midnight Mike found some fantastic links which he posted in the comments. I've re-posted them below:

. The King & Winge in the 1940s as the bar pilot boat, Columbia

. Bar pilot boat, Columbia

. Bar pilot boat, Columbia

. Tom & Al, whaling

. The harpoon gun and gunners on the Tom & Al

Mike's comments:

Sheryl,

I knew Eban Parker from the Triangle Tavern back in the late 70's. Oregon Fur Producers were located right behind Cascade Natural Gas and were the one's that promoted the whaling. Marv Hille was the manager of the Fur Producers and was my stepdad's father. The idea was to get whale meat for mink food. The whales were flensed (stripped of the blubber or skin) out in Hammond at Bioproducts. I remember my grandfather Cass bringing home whale burger in the mid 60's from Bioproducts. It tasted just like hamburger. Here [above] are some pictures of the King & Winge when it was the bar pilots vessel named the Columbia and one of the Tom & Al and one the partners in the enterprise. I think the guy they brought into flense the whales was Marquette Dozier. I guess you don't just find a whale flenser off the street!

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