Nicknames and Popular Verse
Steamboats attracted a lot of nicknames, not all of them complimentary. There was as mentioned the Pumpkins. The Greyhound was called the Hound, the Pup and the Dog. Wealleale was known to all as Weary Willie. The Robert Duinsmere, originally as a sidewheel steamer in Canada for the Vancouver-Nanaimo route, was later rebuilt as propeller collier, thereby suffering the misfortune of becoming known as the Dirty Bob. The City of Shelton, lacking a spray guard over her paddlewheel, was called Old Wet-Butt by crew of the propeller Marian, her competitor on the Olympia-Shelton route. And in the 1920s, Barely-Gets-There was the appellation for the once-sleek Bailey Gatzert sponsoned-out as she to carry as many autos as could be loaded on her, and made more ugly yet with the addition of a loading elevator on her foredeck.
The sidewheeler George E. Starr lasted from 1879 to 1911, and slowed down to the point where a song was composed about her:
| “ | Paddle, paddle, George E. Starr, How we wonder where you are.
Leaves Seattle at half past ten. Gets to Bellingham, God knows when! |
” |
It is said that William J. Fitzgerald, who later became Seattle's fire chief, at age 8 composed a little tribute to two Seattle pioneers and two famous steamboats as follows:
| “ | Ezra Meeker, just before he died Said there's just one steamboat I'd like to ride;
Joshua Green said what will it be ... The George E. Starr or the Rosalie? |
” |
Read more about this topic: Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or verse:
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Luxury has been railed at for two thousand years, in verse and in prose, and it has always been loved.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)