It’s funny how things circle around this world of ours. At times we decide to make a run for it, thinking that better times lie somewhere else, only to snap back like a rubber band and find that something was wrong with you, not the location.
In many respects my life has been a Dorothy Gale experience, thinking that no one understands me at home and that there is a better place somewhere out there, just beyond the rainbow. The only difference is that I tried to escape the Emerald City, landing in Melbourning, Florida instead of realizing that just perhaps, I had been home all along.
When I was in Florida I used to brag about how this was a place where pirates really lived. I can’t argue that one, but it certainly doesn’t mean that it beats any other state with a coast in maritime history. Sure, there weren’t too many pirates in Washington State. I’m sure one or two stopped by the coast now and again for fresh water, but I can never make the claim that Blackbeard walked among the natives here at one time.
But no matter. Somewhere in the annals of our own history there are plenty of surprises in store, even ones that do connect us to pirates. In fact, our history perhaps connects us more directly to our idea of what a pirate is and isn’t than most places here on this big blue marble we spin around on.
For it is here that a two-masted schooner resides that once carried Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife on a voyage in 1889. Yes, that Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. It seems that his ship, the Equator, is just a couple miles north of me, waiting for someone to lovingly restore her back to her glory days.
It was aboard the Equator that Robert and Fanny traveled to the Gilbert Islands. On the deck he began to write the short story of the “Wreckers” in his book, Tales of the South Seas. It was the Equator that took him away from our shores forever, never to return. On this journey he found the paradise he was looking for, settling in Samoa where he was buried five years later.
Like most ships of the era, the Equator was kept quite busy. She was built in 1888 in San Francisco as a copra trader. For a time she worked the south seas trade routes, hauling copra, bully beef and chickens. There was a rumor that she had been a slaver at one time and upon her decks King Kalakaua of Hawaii sipped delightful pink champagne. After the Stevenson journey, she was refitted with steam and served as a tender in the arctic whaling fleet, then converted to diesel and put into service as a towing vessel. In her later years the Equator was part of the Puget Sound Tug and Barge fleet. Finally, she was abandoned, left to rot on the Everett Jetty.
Today, the Equator lies about a thousand yards from the jetty. In the mid 1960s bold plans were made to renovate and restore her back to her original beauty. The local Kiwanis club bragged that “if anyone can save the ship, we can.”
Obviously, they couldn’t. She still awaits someone to lovingly tackle the huge job of bringing her back to life. Thankfully, the Port of Everett has put the historic ship under cover, her remains protected from the elements. The Equator has seen her better days and it’s unlikely that she can be saved.
Sad, since the Equator is the last of her kind, a true survivor of time and the elements. She was one of only two ships to survive the great hurricane of 1889 and was tested again in 1923 when the Equator ran aground on the shoals of the Quillayute River. She was unceremoniously relegated to hauling garbage scows and gravel barges in her final days, before being left on the jetty for 11 years to serve as a breakwater.
It’s a sad end to a historic ship. Listed on the state and national historic registers, there remains faint hopes that she will still be rebuilt. Back in the 1960s the Kiwanis estimated it would take about $100,000 to restore her. Today you could add several more zeros to the end of that figure. Even the wood on her hull is fading fast in the protected elements of the Pacific Northwest.
Still, I doubt Robert Louis Stevenson would have thought ill of her fate. She has managed to outlive most of her contemporaries and even those who came after her. The Equator has managed to best the elements and time for a very long time. True, she isn’t the magnificent ship we’d love to see her be. The Equator was a working ship from the very start, reworked and reconfigured to meet the needs of her day in a career that spanned some 70 years.
The beauty of a ship should never be measured by her present, but by her past. And while her peers have slipped their cables long ago and we’re increasingly left to read about sailing vessels in history books, the Equator lived history. Upon her decks not only strode the likes of Stevenson and the king of Hawaii, but hundreds of sailors from all walks of life who called her home, whether trading copra in the south seas or hauling fish in the arctic.
Robert Louis Stevenson captured only one story of the many she could tell. We can only imagine what the Equator was like in her glory days, but that is all we are left to do. The Equator knows the score. She was built as a sturdy two-master, destined for a hard life at sea. She lived that life and like a fine old, and largely forgotten gal, she is living out her last days in relative calm; reliving in her own mind the countless adventures she and her crew had; a proud past and a respectful, peaceful present, still holding out hope that someone will rediscover her graceful lines and restore her beauty once again.
In the Emerald City, wishing I had won Powerball so I could have sailed on the Equator once again,
– Robb