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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARCH 3, 2017
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Celebrate the pragmatic
elegance of gasoline marine engines
By MATT WINTERS
EO Media Group
G
asoline marine engines revolutionized
working life on the Columbia River
estuary the way cotton gins did in the
South, but they don’t get much respect.
In the course of a half a tide, the river
can go from mirror-like lake to something
resembling a Michael Bay disaster movie.
It’s a deceptive monster, one which gener-
ations of native and white fi shermen were
obliged to ride in little wooden boats. Until
around 1900, the river’s sailing gillnet boats
were at the whim of the wind, relying on
canvas and oars to navigate the wild waters
of the estuary and ocean plume in pursuit of
salmon.
W riter’s
N otebook
Brave and courageous as they were, there
wasn’t much they could do when a typhoon
blew itself out on this fatal shore, driving
boats onto the rocks like jellyfi sh drifted up
on the beach.
“On May 4, 1880, several dozen com-
mercial fi shermen, between 200 and 350 by
some accounts, drown in a gale off the mouth
of the Columbia River. The small boats are
from the Columbia River and Shoalwater
(Willapa) Bay and are surprised by winds
from the southwest,” David Wilma wrote in
a 2006 HistoryLink.org essay.
According to newspaper accounts at the
time, this particular disaster wasn’t directly
storm-related, but arose from a massive
snow melt swelling the river and shotgun-
ning the fi shing fl eet into the breakers above
the Columbia River bar.
“To pull their heavy 24-foot boats against
such a current was a feat few of them were
capable of, and the only course open to the
majority was to face death with fortitude,”
the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The death toll was always only a rough
guess — most of the victims’ names were
known only to their bereaved families and
few bodies washed ashore — but it seems
likely that at least dozens died. Even the lofty
New York Times considered it signifi cant, at
a time when the outside nation ignored the
Pacifi c Northwest even more than now.
Putting yourself in harm’s way to feed
your kids: What a genuinely noble thing it
was for these men to do night after night and
year after year. Many of them fi rst-genera-
tion Americans, they deserve to be honored
and respected to this day.
Some of the
Columbia River’s
motorized gillnet
fleet was pho-
tographed off
Astoria in 1946.
I
t would be a gross understatement to say
mine is not a boating family, so I tread on
slippery ground knowledge-wise whenever
writing about maritime subjects so close to
experienced local hearts.
The fi rst “boat” I was ever on was my
older brother Greg’s infl atable yellow rubber
dingy. No more than a high school freshman
or sophomore, he sent much of one summer
up in the mountains planting trees. I recall
our parents being mystifi ed about why he’d
want to spend part of the proceeds from this
sweaty toil on a little blow-up vessel, but
I’m sure it sounded literally cool to him to
be able to row out into Louis Lake and cast
a fi shing line. Or maybe Greg just felt the
legendary lure of the water: He went onto a
career in the U.S. Navy.
In contrast to the USS John F. Kennedy
that he later sailed into New York Harbor,
Greg’s fi rst vessel wasn’t so much subject
to the vagaries of the wind as to gravity: it
wallowed in the lake with all the grace of
defl ated parachute.
Years later, my wife Donna and I spent a
day in my rowboat on Grays River. Swept
upriver by the tide at a fast walking pace, we
foolishly decided not to wait for it to reverse
Six horsepower one-cylinder Skipper Marine Engines like this one cost
$105.50 with salt water equipment in about 1905, weighing in at 145 pounds
without accessories. They operated at 150 to 1,400 revolutions per minute.
course and fl ush us back out. Flailing away
at the water with heavy wooden oars, I got a
taste of the galley slave’s life.
Critically, neither Greg’s boat nor mine
had an engine.
I
magine what it would have been like to
learn in 1903 or 1910 or so that you no
longer had to fi ght the water on your own?
Instead, the advanced technology of a rela-
tively portable gas engine could free you of
drudgery and the life-endangering perils of
a lee shore, driven by the wind into breakers
or rocks. It would be like handing a rifl e to a
spear-carrying lion hunter.
This Feb. 10, 1910 letter to the Columbia
River Packers Association is one of many
examples how this technology transfi xed the
fi shing community:
Dear Sir.
Will you please send me a 6 to 8 ( horse-
power) 2 cylinder outfi t? If you are satisfy,
I will installed this engine on one of your
Sailing gillnet boats like these relies on canvas sails and wooden oars,
leaving fishermen at the mercy of winds and rough waters.
boats for fi shing the coming season. By hav-
ing the gasoline motor, I could catch more
fi sh. I got this book [a Fairbanks-Morse
engine brochure] to buy the engine good
and cheap, that’s why I want you to look at
it. If you will send for it, let me know. And I
will come ashore and talk to you personally.
I was for the last 3 or 4 years trying get one.
But Willie Tallant was very hard to do any-
thing for his fi sherman. Now if you will make
up you mind to get one please let me know.
I remain yours truly, G. Marcelli, SS Rose
City, Astoria, Ore.
Mr. Marcelli’s grammar might be a lit-
tle rough, but lots of us today can easily
empathize with his sentiments. I mean, who
wouldn’t love to have a shiny new marine
motor? I dearly hope he got his wish.
Called hit-and-miss engines — Wikipe-
dia has a good explanation at tinyurl.com/
zqgvkw8 — this invention spread faster
than an oil slick through the U.S. economy,
being adapted to countless uses besides boat
Fairbanks-Morse gas motors were a
fantasy for Astoria fisherman G. Marcel-
li in 1910.
motors. They made a “POP whoosh whoosh
whoosh whoosh POP” noise that is slightly
crazy-making after 10 minutes or so.
Less of a maintenance chore than older
steam engines, they’re fairly easy to under-
stand and fi x. This is in shark contrast to
modern auto engines that scare all but sea-
soned professionals like my brother, Maybe
it is a prototypical rural thing, but it’d be fun
to know that you had the ability to repair a
tool so essential to your life. Combining log-
ical design with almost-sculptural curves,
gasoline marine engines are elegant solu-
tions to real needs.
I wonder if my wife would let me keep
one in the living room.
— M.S.W.
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of
the Chinook Observer and Coast River Busi-
ness Journal. He lives in the beautiful fi shing
village of Ilwaco, Washington.