The Steamboating Forum

So I was able to exchange some emails with Jack Thompson the other day who was very generous with his time and knowledge. Here are some more details about Fire Canoe:

FIRECANOE's hull was purchase from war surplus in 1947. They operated it the first two years with the 4 cylinder Buda gas engine. Then Thomas wanted to put his steam engine in a boat. Accordingly, the boat was turned over to him.
His engine was a home built engine done by a professional machinist that copied much of it from a commercial engine. It was about 3"x 6"x 3 1/2"stroke. Thomas installed it and had the boat in operation for spring 1949 and operated it every year until 1999. He had around 12,000 miles of steaming during those years.

Thomas went thru about 6 boilers during the life of the boat. The reason was because he burned wood recovered from the salt water. One of the boilers had been swamped after 4 years when the FIRECANOE was left on the beach. The salt water penetrated into the kaowool(sp) insulation and rusted the tubes quite badly during the winter lay-up. All his boilers were made using black iron pipe except for the main steam drum that was made from seamless steel tubing he scrounged from the scrap pile at the Shell Refinery where he worked. At first he built the drum cross ways to the back of the boiler, but changed this and ended up with the 10 inch drum vertical. The boiler design is more or less a "Roberts Boiler". Thomas made his boiler about 70 square feet of heating surface plus an economizer of 4 sq. ft. The majority of the heating surface is 3/4"schedule 40 pipe with three passes in the boiler with the tubes entering the headers. The mud ring was schedule 80 3" pipe. He had about 15 inches of firebox space between the grates and the overhead tubes.

(I thought this story was particularly interesting) The Indian style bird painted on the bow of the FIRECANOE evolved over a number of years. First, it was only to be an eye similar to what the Greeks placed on their boats. The he decided to make a raven head of it and since the eye was too close to the bow, he had to turn the bird beak down and made it an eagle head. Then he expanded and drew up the rest of the eagle body by referencing some Indian art.

-Mike

An update as of this spring. I happened to be sailing past McConnell Island, the last resting place of the Fire Canoe, and can verify that it is still resting there in the trees well above high water and slowly returning to its element.

This is all about fifteen water miles from my current house. I rode back and forth many times from the Orcas Island ferry dock to McConnell Island where Tommy's summer cabin and 9" gauge railroad were located. All when I was a high school kid. Then returned for yearly visits when sailing the area around twenty to thirty years ago.

For those interested, McConnell Island is in the Wasp Island chain of the San Juans.
Latitude: 48.59667 : Longitude: -123.02111

The island is privately owned so please seek prior permission to land.

Mike

Thanks to Google Earth the Fire Canoe is roughly centered in this image:
http://maps.google.com/?ll=48.598457,-1 ... 1&t=h&z=19

This is rather addictive!

Here is about a one year old shot of my place with Folly, under a plastic tarp, near the center just North (above) my house.
http://maps.google.com/?ll=48.434105,-1 ... 1&t=h&z=20

Anyone else have such images of their boats to share?

Mike

Hi Mike

That is a nice idea, but one might be providing those with a less than lawful intent with a nice little bundle of data about the location of valuable metal, etc. However, it is fun and particularly addictive.

The other problem, at least for where I live, is that the Google imaging is from 2005. So it does not show the boat as it was only bought in 2008...

Regards

Pete

I hear you. Fortunately I live on a small island with only two meth heads. The sheriff knows who they are and they know that the sheriff knows who they are.

I leave my keys in my truck at the market in the village. Who would steal such a thing! Also, If anyone else showed up at the ferry dock driving my truck the ferry attendant would start asking gentle but pointed questions.

Life in the slow lane.

Hi Mike

That sounds wonderful! We have had the odd spectacular theft in our road since we are not too far from the M6 motorway, the main north-south route on the west side of England. Our neighbour opposite had some fancy Subaroo (?) saloon with spoiler and such like, as well as a conventional car. The thieves apparently came one night with a fishing rod and retrieved the car keys for both vehicles by fishing through the letter box in the front door. The keys had apparently been left on the hall table. Sadly for him, neither were ever recoverd by the police. Of course, we were sound asleep across the road and knew nothing about it until several days later...

Perhaps a moat is called for!

Regards

Pete

Pete, it seems Mike already has one! Hence the need for a ferry.

Mike- although we live on different islands I never looked at it as being surrounded by a moat [Maybe we are British after all!! ] And if I took the keys from my pickup I would never find them again! Den

With my last truck I never left the keys in it as anyone who tried to drive it without a quick primer on it's failings would likely be rapidly out of control and be injured! Without certain incantations and ceremonies it was very difficult to steer or stop.

Mike