Once-elegant Wawona to sail on last voyage
Feeble schooner to be dismantled
By DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL
P-I REPORTER
The once-elegant schooner Wawona will embark on its last voyage Monday, leaving its South Lake Union moorage for a nearby dry dock to be dismantled.
"It's the end of an era," said Joe Shickich, president of Northwest Seaport, a private nonprofit organization that owns the 112-year-old vessel.
A badly deteriorated Wawona, once powered by four huge sails in Pacific coastal waters, has been moored for nearly 30 years near the Armory, awaiting a financial rescue that never came.
An agreement signed last year between Seattle and Northwest Seaport paved the way for the ship's move. City officials have long pushed for removal of the deteriorating vessel, saying it must make way for further development of Lake Union Park.
They also have considered it an eyesore in an urban center neighborhood that is being rapidly developed and gentrified.
Two years ago, the ship's 110-foot-tall masts were removed for safety reasons, and the vessel, which once carried cod fishermen, timber, passengers or war materials, and more recently hosted student groups and sea-shanty singers, was closed to the public.
About 160,000 people have taken walk-on tours, and 20,000 more have attended programs and cultural events on board while the ship was open.
But Shickich and others said the 165-foot ship will receive a new -- albeit much different -- life. It will be towed to Lake Union Drydock and taken apart, with the intent of saving as many artifacts and materials as possible.
Some, such as the ship's cabin, already have been surgically dismantled, Shickich said, its parts carefully identified for eventual reassembly and display.
The long-term plan, Shickich said, is to raise about $2 million to develop a land display and tribute to the Wawona, using as many parts as can be artfully reused.
The display would be created at Lake Union Park, near the Armory, which will be the new home of the Museum of History and Industry.
Shickich said MOHAI plans to incorporate some elements of the Wawona into the design of the museum, possibly using the ship's timbers for a grand staircase and its rudder as a sculptural entry point.
Public-private fundraising efforts have been ongoing for decades in hopes of saving one of the largest three-masted schooners ever built on the West Coast.
The Wawona once caught more cod than any other member of a 400-member Pacific schooner fleet -- and is now one of only two surviving fleet members.
The Wawona's sister ship, the C.A. Thayer in San Francisco, years ago received federal, local and nonprofit support to undergo a historic renovation estimated to cost $13 million.
But such funding did not come the Wawona's way, in some ways hurt by the federally funded effort in San Francisco.
Northwest Seaport convened the Wawona Summit several years ago, inviting naval architects, shipbuilders, historians, parks officials and others from all over the country to help brainstorm a solution to saving the Wawona.
Experts agreed that the Wawona was significantly deteriorated, but could not agree on what to do about it. Many in the maritime heritage community still wish the ship could be saved, perhaps someday as a seaworthy vessel.
Shickich said, however, that a true historical renovation would require rebuilding with the same materials -- most of which are too far gone.
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Originally Posted by TimH
