MARITIME PLACE NAMES Inland Washington Waters is a historical text on Washington state maritime place names. It includes every named island, bay, point, inlet, pass, harbor, channel, strait, canal, passage, peninsula, rock, head, bank, bight, cove, lagoon, spit, sound, canal and shoal identified on current nautical charts. Variants and more obscure local names are frequently included as well as historical names that did not stand the test of time.
The book generally identifies the individual who named the place, when, why and for whom. In many cases, it also identifies the chart where the name first appeared.
Heavily annotated, the manuscript makes extensive use of quotes of the observations from our earliest explorers, to document their reasons for various names and to provide readers with an impression of what Puget Sound country looked like 150-200 years ago. The book includes a thorough discussion of each of these explorations as it relates to individual place names.
Where available, the text includes the early settlement history of each location. Who arrived first, what did they do, did they log, farm or fish, what hardships did they face, what about their families? The book includes a great deal of information on Indian lore, so important to our early history and place names.
The book contains about 100 aerial photographs of various places throughout our inland waters, as well as 30 historical charts beginning with the early voyages of the Spanish and continuing with those George Vancouver, Charles Wilkes, Admiralty Captains Henry Kellett and George Richardson, and James Alden from the U.S. Coast Survey. These charts range from the 1780s to the late 1800s and are fascinating to view from the standpoint of their accuracy. The precision is amazing when you realize the only instruments they used were a sextant and a log line. The book also contains 40 original panoramic landscape sketches. George Davidson began drawing these as early as 1851. The number of views grew through the years with the assistance of other explorers and artists to provide the reader with a broader image of our shoreline features.
A welcome companion while boating in our waters, useful for research purposes, or simply a good read for general entertainment, there is no equivalent scholarly text which provides more information on our early maritime history.