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Martin Petrich far right with his mother, brothers and sister<\/p>\nEvery family has its favorite stories. They\u2019re told on a summer camping trip, at Thanksgiving or after Christmas dinner. They start with \u201cDad, tell us again\u201d or maybe \u201cMom, remember the time when we went to\u00a0 . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
Like the best stories, these stories grow each time they\u2019re told; something new is remembered, or a favorite shade of color is added.<\/p>\n
My family has lots of favorite stories.\u00a0 I\u2019m one of 26 first cousins, my father had four brothers and one sister, and my grandparents were born in Ireland and Dalmatia -that sliver of land and strand of islands on the east side of the Adriatic Sea.\u00a0 At various times it\u2019s been known as Croatia or Yugoslavia, Austria, Venice or Pharos.\u00a0 For the people who come from there, they know it as Dalmatae or Dalmatia.<\/p>\n
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Martin Petrich far right with his mother, brothers and sister<\/p>\n
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The funny part about our favorite stories is that some of them weren\u2019t ever told to the kids.\u00a0 They had to learn about their parents and grandparents later, in some cases, after the main characters were dead and gone.\u00a0 This is one of those stories.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a story about a boat built by my family and launched\u00a0 in 1937.\u00a0 It has a claim to fame through an icon of\u00a0 American literature.<\/em><\/p>\n One part of the story begins just after the famous American writer John Steinbeck had published Grapes of Wrath.<\/u>\u00a0 It told horror stories of the Depression and the Dust Bowl and the Okies who came west.\u00a0 It described suffering in America.\u00a0 While the book was awarded the Pulitzer prize, Steinbeck, the writer, was vilified, accused of being a communist, or worse, a liar.\u00a0 He wanted to get away from the press and the attention.\u00a0 So he and his friend, marine biologist Ed Ricketts, chartered a fishing boat in 1940.\u00a0 After six weeks, he returned from the Sea of Cortez in Mexico and wrote his first nonfiction book.\u00a0 My cousin says that Steinbeck, in that book, made the Fishing Vessel Western Flyer \u201cthe most famous boat in American literature.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n John Steinback\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Original nail from Western Flyer<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just a minute, now.\u00a0 While this story features John Steinbeck and the Western Flyer, it goes back a ways to become one of my family\u2019s stories.\u00a0 That 77 foot, stinky sardine boat was built by my Grandfather, my father and his brothers.\u00a0 It was built in Tacoma WA at Western Boat Building Company.<\/p>\n When the buyer of a boat didn\u2019t have enough money to buy it outright, the company kept an interest in the boat and made sure to put \u201cWestern\u201d in its name.\u00a0 There was the Western Ace and the Western King, Western Spirit, Western Pride, Western Clipper and Western Pilot.\u00a0 This boat when it was launched in 1937 became the Western Flyer.\u00a0 It was built for my Grandfather\u2019s friend Frank and his son Tony Berry.\u00a0 Tony had fallen in love with Rosa, a Sicilian girl whose family fished for sardines.\u00a0 Tony followed her to Monterey.\u00a0 Some of the Petrich boys joined the crew to deliver the Flyer to Monterey.\u00a0 They had such a good time in California, finding jobs and living on Cannery\u00a0 Row that their father had to write them a letter asking them to please come home.\u00a0 There were more boats to be built!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Years passed.\u00a0 The sardines were fished out.\u00a0 The fishery collapsed.\u00a0 The Flyer was sold a couple of times; in the \u201860\u2019s to a fisherman who renamed her the Gemini.\u00a0 There\u2019s a mariner\u2019s superstition that if you don\u2019t appease the gods and seek permission when you change the name of a boat, bad things will happen.\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n After years of fishing the West Coast and Alaska, her owner lost interest in her.\u00a0\u00a0 She needed care. A community group in Salinas failed to raise enough money to buy her.\u00a0 A developer bought her with plans to cut her up and put parts of her on display in a tourist bar in Monterey.\u00a0 Before enduring that ultimate insult, she ended up sinking not once, but twice in the Swinomish Slough in La Conner WA.<\/p>\n Then, along came John Gregg in 2011.\u00a0 John was\u00a0 a successful businessman with a dream to save the Western Flyer, honor Steinbeck and transform her into a research vessel for young and old to learn about the sea and marine biology.\u00a0 For nine years, shipwrights of the Port Townsend Cooperative worked to bring her back to life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n On Wednesday June 30, an auspicious day to launch a boat, the Flyer was ready to be re-named, blessed and launched again.\u00a0 John Gregg asked the Petrich family to plan the Ceremony.\u00a0 We jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n I got out all my books on ceremonies and started researching online what it takes to rename a boat.\u00a0 My cousin Joe volunteered to hold a trident and stand in for Poseidon, the god who must approve the name change.\u00a0 My cousin Nora agreed to pray to the winds of the four directions for their blessing while my daughter Malory poured the sacrificial red wine grown in the vineyards of Dalmatia into the cups of four other cousins who proceeded to splash that wine on the bow and the hull of the vessel seeking the pleasure of the winds.\u00a0 The last part of the Ceremony was the part that would have meant the most to our Grandfather M.A.\u00a0 Last year his great grandson Perry had been ordained a Jesuit Priest and Perry was going to Bless the Western Flyer before it touched the water.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The day was overcast but not rainy.\u00a0 There is an otherworldliness that comes on those misty days in the north west.\u00a0 The boat lift met the Flyer nose to nose at the entrance to the shed where she had spent these many years.\u00a0 The workmen wrapped the straps around her and very slowly she was rolled into the yard.\u00a0 The path she followed to the water had been\u00a0 marked off with\u00a0 yellow tape.\u00a0 People gathered.\u00a0 Many of them had worked on her, built her with their own hands and hearts and skills.\u00a0 Families were there.\u00a0 The curious.\u00a0 The young and old.<\/p>\n The Flyer led the way while grownups, babies in arms, and dogs on or off their leashes fell in behind.\u00a0 It was a procession.\u00a0 The two leggeds and four leggeds shuffled silently or chatted in hushed voices with one another.\u00a0 Seagulls swooned and swooped.\u00a0 It took about 20 minutes to follow the Flyer to the berth where she was suspended 6 inches above the salt water, before being lowered into her natural home.<\/p>\n There were speeches, and applause, entreaties to Poseidon and the four winds, laughter, happiness and a few tears of joy.\u00a0 The moment for the blessing had come.\u00a0 Father Perry stood at the front of the crowd, his back to the bow.\u00a0 He laid the holy water on the pier and reached for the branches of rosemary he was about to use to sprinkle holy water on the Flyer.<\/p>\n Everyone was poised for this special moment.\u00a0 When suddenly, out of the crowd, headed like a heat seeking missile for the holy water, was the tallest white dog with black spots I\u2019d ever seen. He paused, put his tongue in the bowl and lapped up just the amount of water he wanted.\u00a0 Everyone burst out in surprise and laughter.\u00a0 Father Perry called him\u201d the holy dog\u201d and then he proceeded with the blessing.<\/p>\n But the Petrich cousins, wide eyed, were staring at one another.\u00a0 It was no ordinary big dog drinking the holy water.\u00a0 It was a Dalmatian in our midst at the blessing.\u00a0 A Dalmatian from the island where our grandfather was born.\u00a0 M.A.\u2019s spirit was making itself known and surely, approving the rebirth of his own boat, the Western Flyer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Written by: Clare Petrich, June 30, 2022, Port Townsend, Washington<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Clare Petrich <\/strong>(born in Tacoma in 1943) is the granddaughter of Martin Petrich, a highly esteemed Boatbuilder from Tacoma, WA.\u00a0 Martin was born in Stari Grad in 1880.\u00a0 Clare lived in Asia and Africa and continued in her family’s Maritime footsteps.\u00a0 She was elected to the Board of Directors of the Port of Tacoma Commission (the first woman ever elected) and Commission president and served in that position for 25 years, bringing together the Ports of Tacoma and Seattle to create the Northwest Seaport Alliance.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every family has its favorite stories. They\u2019re told on a summer camping trip, at Thanksgiving or after Christmas dinner. They start with \u201cDad, tell us again\u201d or maybe \u201cMom, remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/virtualnimuzej.aspira.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2-5-300x162.jpg\")
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Martin Petrich<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/virtualnimuzej.aspira.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/5-5-262x300.jpg\")
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The Petrich cousins, Clare (Martin’s Grandaughter, on left) and Nora<\/p>\n