This Gig Harbor fishing vessel is almost 100. Here’s the latest on its next life
The 65-foot Shenandoah was in rough shape when Riley Hall canoed past the fishing vessel a couple decades ago as a kid in Gig Harbor.
“I remember the boat when I was little,” he said. “… It’s really neat to be part of bringing it back to life.”
The wooden vessel, built in 1925, is looking better today. Now at the Harbor History Museum, it’s taking shape as a permanent exhibit that will tell the story of the boat and also the history of Gig Harbor’s commercial waterfront.
Hall, now 30, is the lead shipwright.
Layers upon layers of rotting wood have been removed as the boat has been restored. An engine went in recently, they’re putting finishing touches on the pilot house, and they’re just starting to rebuild the foredeck.
“I think there’s a shock value to just walking in the door and seeing it,” Hall said.
The Shenandoah was built in the Skansie Shipyard. The Janovich family started fishing the boat in about 1967, and owner Tony Janovich donated it to the museum in 2000. Their largest catch was about 8,600 sockeye.
The purse seiner was hauled out of the water in 2003, and crews have been restoring it since.
Andy Ruotsala, a woodworker who is part of the group of volunteers working on the restoration, said parts of the boat that were in salt water were pretty well preserved, but it needed a great deal of work.
They’ve gotten help from unexpected places along the way.
“We’ve had a lot of special people wander in,” Ruotsala said.
There was a guy who was a chief engineer on large cargo ships who saw the engine outside the boat and offered to restore it.
The team installed it in October. It’s a 65 horsepower, three cylinder Atlas imperial diesel engine, from the era when the boat was built.
There was also a guy who pulled up in his pickup and asked if they needed wood for the project.
It turned out he had a shed full of Douglas fir planking that they used for the back deck.
The boat has come with “lots of surprises” of its own through the years, too, Ruotsala said.
They found 6-foot fungal tendrils at one point.
A plywood campaign sign for Janovich’s brother, a former Pierce County sheriff, was used as part of the deck.
At one point they found a beehive in the bulwarks.
The boat’s new life at the museum means it won’t ever go back on the water, but visitors can step aboard. Much of the structural work is done, and visitors can tour the vessel when the crew is there.
The restoration team says it’s a lofty goal, but they’re aiming to have the whole thing done by April 2025, which would be the 100th anniversary of the vessel.
The final product will include an enclosure around the vessel and exhibits about its history.
The starboard side of the vessel will be restored as if it’s in the midst of fishing in the ‘70s or so, nets and all.
The portside will be restored to what it would have looked like when it launched in 1925.
They refer to historic photographs along the way and other boats from the era, said Stephanie Lile, head of the museum. For instance, they salvaged portholes from a historic vessel in Port Townsend that was going to be demolished.
Their charge, she said, is to retain as much of the original wood as possible.
“We wouldn’t necessarily take any old boat,” Lile said. The fact that this one was built in Gig Harbor and fished here makes it special, she said.
Lile gave the Gig Harbor City Council a presentation about the project last month.
“We call this boat the one boat with three lives, tender, seiner and teacher,” she told the council.
It was recently listed on the Washington State Historic Register.
“They’re making amazing progress on the restoration of the boat, but the project is actually a three-part project,” Lile said. “It is the boat, it is the gallery, and it is the exhibition.”
She told the council they’ve raised $2,072,348, leaving $427,652 left to go.
The city has pledged $450,000, and the Washington State Heritage Capital Project Fund, Save America’s Treasures Grant, McEachern Trust, Pierce County Historic Preservation Fund, Port of Tacoma and RPM Foundation have also supported the project.
“It really is iconic of our whole region,” she said. “Our boat building history, our fishing history.”
Mayor Tracie Markley told Lile the pictures in the presentation looked different than when she visited the boat a few months ago.
“I can’t believe how good it looks now in these pictures compared to just even then when I was there,” she said.
This story was originally published February 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
