R.I.P.

Today, March 4, 2009,

Wawona was hooked up to tugs and hauled to Puget Sound Shipyard to be ripped apart and thrown into the landfill.

We are all poorer for her loss.

Wawona
1897 Pacific Schooner

Length: 165’
Beam: 35’
Draft: 11.5’

Wawona

When she was built in 1897, the sailing schooner Wawona was the largest three-masted schooner built in North America. She was one of two survivors of the once immense commercial sailing fleet in the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds more large commercial sailing ships were built in other West Coast shipyards; they are now all gone. Only the C.A. Thayer in San Francisco remains. The Wawona became a National Historic Site in 1970, the first ship in the nation to be listed on the National Register, but in the end, even that couldn't save her.

Lumber hauler, cod fisher and military barge in WWII, her career has been long and varied. As a fishing schooner, her lifetime catch of 7.2 million cod far surpassed the career catch of any other Pacific schooner. During World War II the Wawona was drafted as a military barge , hauling military supplies to Alaska and returning to Washington with wood for the aircraft industry

Built at the end of the great age of sail, the Wawona stands as a living monument to the skilled craftsmen who built her, the industries that supported her, and the fortunate crewmen who sailed her.