Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: John Anderson’s Quickstep, 1897

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THEN: At Newcastle Landing, John Anderson’s first boat, the Quickstep, from 1897, meets a stagecoach to Newcastle and Issaquah. John and Emilie stand together outside the wheelhouse. Over the next decades, Anderson ferries served not only Lake Washington but also Puget Sound. (Courtesy MOHAI)
NOW: Gathering on waterfront docks 100 yards south of Newcastle Landing is a mix of Newcastle Historical Society members and neighbors. On the dock, from left: Bret Fergen, Harry Dursch, Steve Smolinske, Steve Williams and Bob Boyd. On the prow of the Blue Leader, John Anderson’s great-grandnephew, Brett Anderson, poses with his wife, Bridgette. (Jean Sherrard)

Published in The Seattle Times on-line on August 15, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on August 18, 2024

Lake Washington buoyed a 19th-century ferry-tale romance

By Jean Sherrard

When Capt. John L. Anderson went a-courtin’ at the age of 24, he had a sure advantage. His sleek Lake Washington steam ferry, the Quickstep, gave the ambitious young boat owner a leg up when it came to romance, suggests Matthew McCauley, marine historian and diver.

Historian and diver Matthew McCauley, an authority on John Anderson, searches for sunken treasures in Lake Washington. In 1981, a teenaged McCauley found Anderson’s iron-hulled Mercer in the waters off Mercer Island’s Roanoke Landing. “To this day,” says McCauley, “it’s always a thrill to explore the remains of one of Anderson’s boats on the lake bottom.” (Courtesy Matthew McCauley)

Born in 1868 near Goteborg, Sweden, 14-year-old Anderson enlisted as cabin boy on his uncle’s freighter. In a 1990 article in ‘The Sea Chest’ – a journal of northwest maritime history – his nephew Capt. Robert Matson relates what happened next. After six years as a deckhand, Anderson arrived in Quebec, finding work on the cross-Canadian rails. In 1888, at the age of 20, Anderson registered at the Yesler Hotel in Seattle.

It wasn’t long before he joined the crew of the 78-foot CC Calkins, a Lake Washington passenger steamboat commissioned by real-estate speculator Charles C. Calkins. His luxurious, 24-room Calkins Hotel on Mercer Island, built long before today’s connecting bridges, drew eager visitors from Seattle but was accessible only by water.

Anderson, with his years of ocean-going experience, quickly advanced. By 1890, after acquiring his master’s license, he was appointed captain of the new vessel, which offered regular passage to and from the mostly forested eastern shores of the lake.

A milestone for the 23-year-old immigrant came when visiting President Benjamin Harrison toured Lake Washington in 1891. Anderson welcomed him to the Leschi docks with bouquets of roses — and music. The CC Calkins fired up its onboard calliope for renditions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Home Sweet Home.”

Leschi Landing included a ferry dock and dance pavilion in 1911. Hordes of Seattleites in search of summer fun gathered here. Anderson Steamboat Co. offices can be found dead center.

Soon the young Swede trimmed his sails and invested wages in buying and refurbishing another lake steamer, the Winifred. Within hours of its relaunch, however, after a successful moonlight cruise and dance at popular Leschi Pavilion, the boat burned to the waterline. His insurance paid off handsomely.

To replace it, Anderson snapped up the aptly named 80-foot Quickstep, built in Astoria in 1877, and founded the Anderson Steamboat Co., transporting customers to ferry landings around the lake.

On its shipshape decks love blossomed. The dapper mariner caught the eye of passenger Emilie Madsen, whose Danish family had arrived in the booming lakeside coal town of Newcastle in 1887. Her regular ferry rides from Newcastle Landing to Seattle to give piano lessons provided the pair with trysting opportunities. Cabin boy Hugh Martin took the helm, discreetly averting his gaze while the couple “went behind the stack or in the stern … and held hands.”

Circa 1911, John and Emilie Anderson pose next to their beloved Studebaker. By this time, the Anderson empire had expanded to include the family’s own shipyard at Houghton and dance pavilions around Lake Washington. (Courtesy Kirkland Heritage Society)

In April 1895, they married, which must have broken the hearts of hundreds of lonely bachelor miners.

The first in a long flotilla of family boats, the Quickstep itself burned in 1898, but not before stoking flames of Anderson ardor.

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