The Madaket

Photo courtesy of the Humboldt Bay Maritime Museum. Click here to go to their page and read more about the Madaket!

            When out-of-town friends and family come for a visit, what do you do with them?  Well, you can take them for a walk through the redwoods, or maybe a trip to a beach. And then, of course, there’s a bay cruise on the Madaket.

            For history buffs, that is a perfect idea. The hour and a quarter long narrated tour is like riding a time machine through Humboldt County’s past. Besides enjoying the sea air and sweeping vistas, voyagers learn about the Wiyot’s island site and notorious 1860 massacre, the enduring egret rookery, the fabulous Carson mansion, the fishing business and oyster beds, and the ship-building yards and lumber mills that once ringed the bay. You learn where the name “Humboldt” came from, about the early explorers of the bay, and how just over the peninsula the USS Milwaukee spectacularly wrecked in 1917.

            But as you travel, you are also riding on a piece of history itself – the good ship Madaket. Her story began when mariner Jacob Cousins left Maine and sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco, eventually settling in Eureka in 1863. His son, Henry H. Cousins, grew up around ships and the waterfront, piloting a steam paddle-wheeler at age 16. In 1906 he founded the Cousins Launch Company.

            That was also the year of the great earthquake that devastated San Francisco and brought boom times to our local timber industry that was needed to supply materials for rebuilding the city. Cousins’ launches were in great demand to transport the lumber yard workers across the bay to the Samoa mills and then to take the mill products to waiting ships. At times, these launches ferried over 2,000 workers a day across the bay.

            In a small yard on Samoa, to keep up with the demand, Cousins built six launches, naming them after members of his family. The Nellie C., named after one of Cousins’ six children, Ellen Anita (called Nellie), was launched June 6, 1910. Business was good for many years, though the 1914 completion of the railroad into Humboldt County reduced some of the demand for maritime traffic. The Depression slowed things even more, and in the early 1930s the rival Coggeshall Launch Company purchased most of the Cousins ships and renamed them after native tribes of Massachusetts, the home state of company founder Walter Coggeshall. The Nellie C. became the Madaket.

            Through several ownership changes, the Madaket continued to ferry passengers and goods across the bay, serving among other customers the Coast Guard Station near the bay entrance. However, in 1971 completion of the Samoa bridge ended the need for ferries. Still, local maritime enthusiasts were determined not to lose this part of our history, and the following year a refurbished Madaket began its career as a tour boat.

            Several more fund raising and refurbishing efforts kept the Madaket afloat. Now owned by the Humboldt Bay Maritime Museum, the Madaket was named as an official California Historic Landmark in 1994. It is the oldest passenger vessel in continuous service in the United States and even boasts the smallest licensed bar in California.

            In June of 2010, the Madaket, and all of Humboldt County, celebrated her 100th birthday. Bands, flags, dignitaries, a parade of ships and much champagne marked the occasion. And today (when lockdown restrictions permit) the bell and horn sounding as the Madaket sets off, still link us to our living past.

            For more links to that and all aspects of our past, check out the Humboldt County Historical Society. You might even consider it as another place to take those visiting history buffs.