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Anchor’s Way:
A lifetime of Boat Building
Knock on wood, the
master
will weather age and change
By Carole Smith
1997 courtesy of the Seattle-Post
Intelligencer
Master boat builder Anchor
Jensen has survived plenty of storms at
his location on the north side of Portage Bay.
But the storm he’s
facing now has come in from the leeward side.
It’s age and change that concern him now.
Jensen, 78 (now 82) has
been at the helm of Jensen Motor Boat Company,
which was founded by his father, Antonius , since he was
19 years old.
He has been working there since was 9.
"I had the best
training in the world," said Jensen, his watch cap
pulled low
over his eyes the color of lake water. "My dad gave
me a broom and said,
"Sweep." I knew how to move piles of lumber in
a hurry."
The piles of lumber are
still there, leaning up against the sides of the shop
air drying. There is mahogany from Honduras and the
Philippines,
old growth Douglas fir, Thai teak.
" A lot of people,
even in the boat business, don’t know the difference
between kiln and air-dried wood," he said. "We
get wood ahead and air dry it for a few years." The
air-dried is more rot resistant and more pliable.
Jensen speaks of the wood
with the reverence of a musician crafting
the sounding board of an instrument.
It was Anchor’s
father, Antonius, a professional musician,who first
came to Seattle from Denmark,by way of Victoria, B.C. in
the early part
of the century. A violinist and concert master, the
senior Jensen made
music, but also made boats. And it is boats that have
been his legacy
to his son and grandson Dewitt Jensen, who helps his dad
out at the
shop when needed.
Indeed, boat building runs
deep in the Jensen family, extending
back uninterrupted some 180 years.
Jensen’s company was
one of a fleet of boat building Shops that
flourished through the decades on Portage Bay and Lake
Union.
In the 1920s, they built
wooden yachts and runabouts for rich people.
During Prohibition, they
built boats for people who paid with money in
brown paper sacks, and they built the boats to catch
them. During
World War II, they built boats for the military. And in
the 1950s they
launched hydro racing in Seattle.
Time and technology have
washed away many of Seattle’s boat yards.
One burned down. Others just disappeared when their
owners got too
old to work the wood.
In the late 1950s there
were about two dozen boat yards in Seattle.
Five years later it was down to a dozen.
He doesn’t believe in
compromise.
"If you turn out a lemon,
you’ve
got a lemon for the rest of your life,"
he said. "You’ve got to
do it right, do it once and that’s it."
He entertains questions in
a room strung with laundry- the various layers
of undergarments that keep him warm in the boat shop. It
is also the
gathering place for the assortment of workers, boat
owners and boat
lovers who stop in to talk boats and soak up
Jensen’s knowledge. It is
a working man’s quarters. The smell of cedar sawdust
hangs in the damp air.
Although he lives
upstairs, he spends most of his time in the
Cathedral-like shop,
beneath a vaulted ceiling he (helped) build by hand. As a
young man he
(helped) raise the trusses with a block and tackle,
walking the planks between
them "fore and aft" 60 feet in the air to check
their placement.
A bank of high windows
made of crystal throws glittering light when the
sun hits it. Somebody made a mistake ordering the
crystal, so Jensen salvaged
the windows for a song. "In the sun,it’s
unbelievably beautiful" said Dewitt Jensen
a civil engineer. The younger Jensen has worked on plenty
of projects around the water.
He was the lead civil
engineer on the lower span of the West Seattle bridge
and on the Waterfront street car.
But here in the boat yard
he is Anchor’s son, not so far removed, not so far
removed from the days he was sweeping out the shop for 50
cents an hour in
a time-honored apprenticeship like his father and
grandfather before him. And
like them, he knows he will take the business over
someday.
With room for only about a
dozen boats at a time, Jensens keep a waiting list,
although they can’t say how long the wait will be.
"It depends on what
you’re waiting for," said the elder Jensen. And
it’s
difficult to predict how long any one boat will be in the
shop. Jensen and half a dozen subcontractors work on
between a 100 and 150 boats a year.
About 40 percent of the
business is repairing wooden boats. The balance
is fixing fiberglass crafts "and every other kind of
boat, you name it," Jensen said.
But Jensen still prefers
working on wooden boats. "You can never outguess
the wood," he said. "You never know what you're
into until you get to work on it.
"It’s the same
as these doctors going after cancer," he said.
"They think they’ve
got everything, and the next month the patient
dies."
"He is known as one
of the masters," said Dick Wagner, founding
Director of the Center for Wooden Boats on Lake Union.
Jensen along
with master builders such as Norm Blanchard, now retired,
and the late
Frank Prothero, built a national reputation for Puget
Sound boat building.
But Jensen’s company is perhaps best remembered for
having built the
Slo-mo-shun IV and V hydroplanes in the early 1950s. The
boats awed
race fans, breaking world records and winning trophies in
a nearly unbroken
streak until they retired. More than a few competitors
broke up in their wakes.
Others just quit.
They were responsible for
bringing the Gold Cup race to Seattle from it’s home
in
Detroit, spawning a hydroplane fever that is still with
the city today.
to be continued:
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