The Black Prince of Deadman Slough
Editor’s Note: Originally published November 10, 2017. Republished January 13, 2022
One night in 1935 Captain Howard S. Wright, commodore of the Everett Yacht Club, had a dream.
In his dream he saw an all-black boat: black bow, black forecastle, black anchor.
Captain Wright took the ominous dream as an omen. He had been considering buying a certain boat for some time.
It was a retired sternwheeler built on Deadman Slough outside of Everett in 1901. It had a 93-foot hull, steam engines, a brickyard boiler. It was a majestic handcrafted boat, specifically designed to pull lumber up and down the Skagit River.
The boat's owner, Harry Ramwell, sold the sternwheeler to Commodore Wright for one dollar.
Captain Wright was pleased. He named the boat The Black Prince, after the dark vessel of his dream.
The Black Prince in Deadman Slough. The boat was originally used to tow logs.
Wright had the boat towed to the Everett waterfront. The Black Prince was pulled up on the bank at the foot of Bond Street, Pier 2. It was placed on a permanent cradle adjoining the Everett Yacht Club.
It was remodeled into a private clubhouse.
THE CLUB
The Black Prince, private club, had ten "one-armed bandit" slot machines.
Well drinks were 35 cents. And they had all the good drinks of the era. Sam Thiessen, bartender, poured pink ladies, sloe gin fizz, Singapore slings, brandy Alexanders, and whiskey sours.
The clientele were polite (unlike, say, the rowdy millworkers who frequented bars on Hewitt). The tips were good. Senator Henry M. Jackson and family would come to dinner at the Black Prince on Friday or Saturday night if he was in town. Classy.
Visitors would enter the boat from the bow via gangplank, then climb down steep stairs into the club. This was a no small feat for women in dresses and high heels.
The Black Prince was rented out for Everett High School dances and socials. Teens liked the jukebox there. Sometimes The Banana Peelers, a Snohomish band (fronted by the improbably named Dic Pec), would get the kids dancing.
The boat-turned-dancehall was the coolest place in town, the original Rock the Boat.
Source: Everett Yacht Club Centennial
In 1956 The Black Prince was destroyed.
By some accounts it had grown too old and weathered to maintain. By other accounts the Port wanted the property and politely pushed the yacht club further north.
"They set fire to it," said bartender Sam Thiessen. "Took it out to the bay and sunk it."
The spot where it once stood on land is now a giant aluminum dome.
The boat's steering wheel now hangs on the wall of the Black Prince Room in the Everett Yacht Club.
The Black Prince's charred remains are still there at the bottom of Possession Sound. It was a dream, an omen, a workhorse boat, a dancehall, a fire. It sleeps with the memories of sea captains and gamblers, doo-wop tunes from jukeboxes, and the spilled gin from a thousand well drinks.
Author's note: For those of you keeping track, I wrote a story earlier this week about Howard S. Wright. He was an Everett cabinet maker who started a family business, a business that went on to build the Space Needle. He led an interesting life by any metric: sailed to Port Townsend from Nova Scotia the long way, around South America.
This week I was surprised to discover that Wright was also the commodore of the Everett Yacht Club, an avid sailor who won numerous boat racing trophies, and the man behind the Black Prince (I had been trying to write a story about the boat for about a month, piecing together research).
Small world.
Richard Porter is a writer and photographer for Live in Everett.
