George Hobson Sr. recalls, to the hour, his first day on Everett’s waterfront.
“I was hired to report for work on Feb. 12, 1963 – at 2 a.m.,” said Hobson, remembering his start as a tugboat deckhand.
That first vessel was a 26-foot log storage tending boat. The tides dictated his hours.
Elizabeth Armstrong / The Herald
“It was a highball job,” Hobson said. “You had to work fast, before the tide dropped too far.”
Life has slowed since Hobson, 66, retired from a maritime career of more than 30 years.
While the nation marks Black History Month and mourns the loss of Coretta Scott King, the Snohomish area man makes little mention of the fact that he made history.
“I was the first African-American tugboat captain on Puget Sound,” he said.
Hobson was recognized in the 1980-81 edition of “Who’s Who in Black America” for his achievements in the maritime industry.
“There were tensions, and uncomfortable moments,” Hobson said. It was his only acknowledgement of any difficulty breaking down racial barriers on the waterfront. “Overall, I was fairly treated,” he said.
“I like to look back on the people who worked on the vessels with me,” said Hobson, an Everett native. “Some of the deckhands went on to be captains and even ship pilots. I learned under the best, they were real pros.”
In the comfortable home where he lives with his wife, Clementine, there are hints of his seagoing life. There’s a painting of the Thea Foss, the restored, 120-foot corporate yacht owned by Seattle-based Foss Maritime Co.
By the time Hobson retired from Foss in 1997, he had worked on every tugboat in the Everett harbor. He quickly rose to captain, and worked out of Bellingham on larger boats that helped dock freighters and oil tankers.
For the last decade of his career, Hobson was captain of the Thea Foss. Designed by naval architect Ted Geary, the yacht was built in 1930 for acting legend John Barrymore. “Drew’s grandfather,” Hobson said. Barrymore and his wife, Dolores Costello, called the yacht Infanta.
Restored to its original splendor, the yacht was used by Foss to entertain shareholders, customers and public officials on dinner and overnight cruises from Puget Sound to Canadian waters. Hobson remembered former Gov. Dan Evans and former Seahawks coach Chuck Knox being aboard.
Before Foss bought it in 1950, the vessel was used by Alaska salmon packers, and during World War II, renamed the USS Amber, it helped guard the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Hobson said the Thea Foss, named for the Norwegian immigrant who founded the company with her husband in 1889, is now in a shipyard at south Lake Union in Seattle.
“I loved being a captain,” Hobson said.
His love of the waterfront goes back to his boyhood. As a kid, he was yelled at by a tugboat captain because he was walking on logs in the Snohomish River. “I saw him later when I went to work. We used to call him Big Daddy,” he said.
Hobson has a photo showing a much different view of the area that’s now Everett Marina Village. It was once a sea of logs, with smoke from the mills rising in the background.
The picture reminds Hobson of toiling on small tugs, going far up the Snohomish River and the sloughs, and following the tides.
He measured depth with a stick, “pike-pole navigation,” he called it. “Now they have radar and GPS. I came up the hard way.”
Foss once had 25 tugboats in Everett, but no longer has an office here. Now, Hobson said, Everett’s harbor tugs are from Dunlap Towing Co.
With a master’s license and other U.S. Merchant Marine documents, Hobson took his skills out of Port Gardner into Puget Sound. He was captain of the Richard Foss, a 110-foot steel tug, before his job on the Thea Foss.
He’d spend two weeks away during the years he and Clementine were raising their four children, George, Pam, Greg and Angela. Pam Marsh is married to Curt Marsh, a University of Washington football standout who went on to the NFL’s Oakland Raiders.
With four children and seven grandchildren, there is now much to keep Hobson on dry land. Asked if he misses life on the water, Hobson didn’t get the chance to say before his wife answered for him.
“Yes,” Clementine Hobson said.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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