(click to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on May 1, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on May 4, 2025

Before its fiery demise, the Alida sidewheeler briefly served 1870 elites

By Jean Sherrard

Some might call it a one-hit wonder, but for a few months in 1870, the Alida, the sidewheeler steamer in our main “Then” photo, reigned on Puget Sound. Uncrowded Seattle, fewer than 20 years old, had barely topped 1,100 in population. Ambitious, rough-hewn residents focused on laying foundations for the future.

In one of the earliest extant photos of the waterfront, snapped from the west end of Henry Yesler’s wharf, a log boom from Yesler’s mill seems dense enough almost to be walkable.

Just above the Alida’s sidewheel can be made out the dirt intersection of Marion Street and Front Street (now First Avenue). Center left, the steeple of Rev. Daniel Bagley’s five-year-old Methodist Protestant Church (popularly called “the Brown Church”) points heavenward.

Bagley was a prime mover behind the construction of the Territorial University (today’s University of Washington) whose dome-shaped cupola graces the center horizon.

Keen eyes also will make out, at upper right, the original bell-towered Central School, Seattle’s first public schoolhouse nearing completion.

The Alida, commissioned by the entrepreneurial Starr brothers, eager to obtain a federal subsidy to deliver mail between Olympia and Victoria, was constructed in two locations. Its 115-foot hull was laid in Olympia in 1869, while its upper decks, luxuriously appointed with a dozen comfortable staterooms, were installed the following June at Hammond’s Boatyard near the foot of Columbia Street.

Capt. E.A. Starr, jockeying for influence, invited Seattle’s “it” crowd for an inaugural voyage on June 29, 1870, and it seems likely that the prominent citizens are those seen assembled on the upper deck for a round-trip trial run to Port Townsend. By all accounts, the four-hour, eight-minute trip delighted the passengers.

Reported the July 4 Daily Intelligencer, “During the passage down, the beautiful weather, the delightful scenery, the rapid and easy progress made, and, last though not least, the excellent instrumental and vocal music which was furnished by the ladies, all contributed to the enjoyment of the occasion.”

Within weeks, however, the Alida, intended to supplant older, slower steamers, proved too unstable for the daunting passage across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Starrs soon replaced it with the 168-foot North Pacific, a heavier, more powerful vessel that bested all comers.

The Alida was consigned to calmer waters, steaming among Olympia, Seattle and other Puget Sound ports until 1890 when the sidewheeler met a fiery end. Moored at Gig Harbor, the elegant flash in the pan burned to the waterline, set alight by embers from a raging brush fire.

WEB EXTRAS

As promised, here’s the oldest known photo of the waterfront, taken in 1869, one year before our “then”.

Most definitely click to enlarge for full effect. Maybe click again!

Also, for our usual narrated 360-degree video, captured on the waterfront from the Marion Street overpass, click here!

Every column featuring maritime topics enlists the finest historians who help ensure we use only the choicest ingredients! Michael Mjelde (former editor of ‘The Sea Chest’) and Stephen Edwin Lundgren are always fit for purpose.

Lundgren adds a few notes to the mix, starting with a fascinating reflection on the 1869 photo just above:

About the Robinson photograph of Seward sailing away to Alaska in July 1869. It’s the sidewheeler Wilson C. Hunt, identifiable by the unique steeple housing for the vertical piston engine.

Accounts of Seward’s trip say he arrived in Sitka on the steamer Active. Prior to that he arrived from SF in Victoria July 20.

“The next morning he left for a tour of Puget Sound on the steamer Wilson G. Hunt, accompanied by a party of more than a dozen men and women that included Thomas Somerville (d. 1915), a Scottish Presbyterian minister. Somerville later wrote a vivid narrative of the trip titled ‘The Mediterranean of the Pacific’ that appeared in the September 1870 edition of Harper’s magazine.”

… First stop Port Townsend, then Port Ludlow. Port Gamble, Port Madison, then Port Seattle (just kidding) for an evening visit, thence same evening past Tacoma to Steilacoom overnight, next day to Olympia. Returned “reaching Seattle about 9 p.m., where it was greeted with a 13-gun salute. After a brief stop at Yesler’s Wharf, the Hunt continued north, passing Whidbey Island the next day.”  where he transferred to the Active. (https://www.historylink.org/File/9969)

So this Seattle photo – July 22, 1869 – shows the sidewheeler “Hunt” heading north to Nanaimo enroute to Alaska via a larger ship, the Active. (Wilson G. Hunt was larger than the Alida? 185.5×25.8×6.75  461 g.t. versus Alida’s 115 feet)

The Active was also a sidewheeler, 173 feet length, in commercial service 1849-1852 as the Gold Hunter (original name), then 1852-62 as the Coast Survey shp USSCS Active, including Puget Sound service in 1856 during the Indian war. One of few Union ships on West Coast during Civil Way (1861 US Navy service). Returned to commercial service, 7 years later in the summer of 1869 to Alaska with a government survey scientific team to observe a solar eclipse, with Seward aboard.  Damaged, beached and wrecked near Humboldt,  California  June 6, 1870.

The Isabel seems to have been mostly in Canadian service until it got damaged and repaired, at which time Ed Starr bought it probably on the cheap for the Straits of Juan de Fuca leg, which as those who read the sad tale of the Clallam know are very dangerous waters.

Michael Mjelde chimes in:

I got out my copy of Roland Carey’s The Steamboat Landing on Elliott Bay, published by the author in 1962, this evening and note how he specified the Alida being originally  ‘partially’ built in Olympia as the Tacoma in 1869, and being completed at the Hammond yard in 1870.

The Alida eventually went beyond Port Townsend to Victoria as indicated by brief article in the Victoria Colonist in which they mention that they “sponsoned” her out  in a Victoria shipyard  because she tended to roll. I don’t know how long she was a ‘mail’ boat but she did serve in that capacity.

For your information, I have a copy of the index of certificates (NARA-Seattle) issued to vessels licensed to carry passengers  by the Steamboat Inspection Service.which, at that time was in Port Townsend.   Alidais listed twice in that volume.  Unfortunately, the page showing how many passengers she was licensed to carry is missing but the reference to Alida starts in 1875.

You may recall she was quite narrow at 18 feet plus paddle boxes; by comparison, Virginia V was eight feet wider;  whereas there was only a difference of six feet in their registered length.

Note that she didn’t ‘officially’ become Alida until she was issued that first register by US Customs.  Although her initial construction was in Olympia in 1869,  the incomplete hull was towed to Seattle (according to Carey, she received her engines in Seattle) and officially became Alida in Seattle.