Foreword

On either side of the 49th parallel two relatively young cities, each unique in character but similar in style, provide portals to the Pacific Ocean for the great countries they represent. Both are major seaports and maritime commerce has been the common factor in their development from settlement to metropolis in just over a century. Seattle has long been the frontier of the American development of Alaska and Asian trade while Vancouver became the anchor point of Canada's rail lines tying a long skinny country together and connecting it to the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Together they created a magnetic synergy that has attracted many talented people to settle in the shadow of the surrounding mountains.

This story you are about to read has its origins in the heady days of the Klondike Gold Rush when James Venn Paterson, a Scottish born naturalized American naval architect first saw Seattle. Paterson was one of those talents attracted to the Northwest and destined to make a life west of the mountains. Within a decade he had made Seattle his home and for the next 20 years his footprints could be seen on both sides of the border pursuing his passion as a shipbuilder while profiting from his acumen as a business man.

Paterson's pursuit of work for his Seattle shipyard led him to compete for and win contracts from Electric Boat Company to build some of the earliest submarines delivered to the US Navy for use in the Pacific Fleet. Submarines of this era were at best "coastal boats" and in the days before the Panama Canal delivery from the established East Coast builders was not a practical alternative.

Paterson's success set off a decade of submarine construction in the Pacific Northwest. While the shipbuilding story is notable in its own right; the far greater, all enveloping, political story turns technical accomplishment into historical intrigue. The advent of the First War gave Paterson a unique opportunity to reserve a place in the maritime history of the Pacific Northwest and that is exactly what he did.

The story follows two threads, one dealing with Paterson's efforts to win contracts and to learn how to build this new style of warship, his perfect sense of timing in the sale of rejected Chilean submarines to the British Columbia Government and his clandestine construction of submarines for Czarist Russia in a quiet backwater of British Columbia. Just as important is the thread about the submarines themselves and the people who sailed them. Primitive by today's standards these "deathtraps" were state of the art for their time. That state however was fraught with challenge, risk, injury and death.

The corporations and government agencies involved in this tale continue in one form or another almost 100 years later. Electric Boat Company is still the prime contractor for all US Navy submarines and continues to design and build submarines as a division of General Dynamics Corporation. The Seattle shipyard of Moran Company, later Seattle Construction & Drydock Co. continues today as Todd Pacific Shipyards Corporation and is still working with Electric Boat and the USN modifying and repairing submarines. Yarrows Ltd. of Esquimalt who maintained the first Canadian submarines is gone but its heritage continues in Victoria Shipyards Ltd., part of the Washington Marine Group. The Canadian Navy continues to operate submarines and still buys second hand vessels with mixed results. Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton and HMC Dockyard at Esquimalt are still critical parts of the defense capability of both nations.

This is a great story, the telling of which is long past due. Purely by chance I had the good fortune of meeting Bill Lightfoot a number of years ago, a meeting that led directly to the publication of this book. At that time, employed as President of Todd Pacific Shipyards I was embarking on an initiative to win contracts for work on submarines for the USN. As I write this foreword from my home in Canada, as President of the Washington Marine Group of Shipyards, we are embarked on the pursuit of submarine work with the Canadian Navy. What goes around, comes around!

Enjoy this thoroughly researched and well written treatise and marvel at the impact of one man, James Paterson on the maritime history of the Pacific Northwest. It will be time well spent.

Roland H. Webb
White Rock B.C.