The Japanese steamer Tacoma Maru is tied to the Gaffney Dock (now the big wooden pier at the foot of Virginia Street where Summer Night at the Pier once held forth). The view looks north from the Pike Street Terminal ca. 1910. Built in 1909 for the Osaka Steamshipcompany, the Tacoma Maru managed inits 35 years afloat to get around. In 1910 it delivered English missionaries to Tristan du Cunha, the “most remote settlement on earth,” and in 1942 it carried 1,600 prisoners – most of them English – north form Java to work on the Thai/Burma railway. In 1944, the Tacoma Maru met up with the USSHake. The submarine came upon three Japanese vessels on the first of February. A recounting reads, “Wtih the three targets in a line of bearing after a perfectd approach, the submarine launched a spread of six torpedoes, sinking two fo the three, Tacoma Maru andNanka Maru. The attack achieved complete surprise and the Hake was not attacked by the screening vessels.”