Comet (sternwheeler)

Career
Name:	Comet
Route:	Puget Sound, White, Black, and Nooksack rivers
Completed:	1871
Out of service:	1900[1] or early 1880s.[2]
Identification:	US registry #5973[1]
Fate:	abandoned[1]
General characteristics
Type:	inland steamboat
Tonnage:	56.83 regist.[1]
Length:	65 ft (19.81 m)
Installed power:	two steam engines, horizontally mounted
Propulsion:	sternwheel

Comet was a sternwheel steamboat that ran from 1871 to 1900 on Puget Sound and rivers flowing into it, including the White and Nooksack rivers.

Construction

The steamboat Comet, whose name was said to have been “misleading”, was built in Seattle in 1871 by Capt. Simon F. Randolph (d.1909). Comet was constructed in an unusual fashion. Randolph built the vessel upside down by picking a flat area of ground, marking out the shape of the boat on the ground, and driving in posts at regular intervals to act as ribs. He then connected the ribs with crossbeams, bent planks around the posts and over the crossbeams, and had the hull complete, although upside down.

With the posts still affixed in the ground, the vessel looked like a potlatch house. Randolph then sawed off the posts, and pushed the hull out into the water. He then flipped the hull over using rocks piled on one side as an assist. The resulting hull was right-side up, but full of water. Randolph then beached the hull, pumped out the water with a home-made wooden pump, and the hull was complete. The steam engines Randolph installed were described as "non-descript and mismatching" and the upper works were said to have been tall and barn-like.^[3]

Career

Comet was placed on the White River route under Capt. Curtis D. Brownfield (b.1850) until 1876 or later, and was the first steamer to be successful on that route, which included service to farmlands on the Black River.^[4] Comet then was shifted to run almost every route out of Seattle. Under Captain Brownfield, Comet was a pioneer vessel on the Nooksack River.^[4] Capt. George A. Cushman (d.1891), who built the steamer Snohomish, La Conner, Whidbey Island, Fidalgo, Bellingham Bay, Semiahmoo Bay, and Lopez, Orcas and San Juan islands.^[2]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Affleck, ed. Century of Paddlewheelers, at 94.
2. ^ ^{a b c} Wright, ed., Lewis and Dryden Marine History, at 161, 182, 193, 244, 253, 395 .
3. ^ Newell, Ships of the Inland Sea, at 69-71, and 82.
4. ^ ^{a b c} Newell, ed., H.W. McCurdy Marine History, at 170, 442, and 477.

References

• Affleck, Edward L., A Century of Paddlewheelers in the Pacific Northwest, the Yukon, and Alaska, Alexander Nicolls Press, Vancouver, BC 2000 ISBN 0-920034-08-X
• Newell, Gordon R., ed., H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, Superior Publishing Co., Seattle, WA (1966)
• Newell, Gordon R., Ships of the Inland Sea, Superior Publishing Co., Seattle, WA (2nd Ed. 1960)
• Wright, E.W., Lewis & Dryden's Marine history of the Pacific Northwest, Lewis & Dryden Printing Co., Portland, OR (1895)

related topic: Washington State Ferries