Lost ship, found timbers.

I had just started schematic design of this house when we received an interesting tip at the office. The hold of a sunken 100-foot cargo ship had broken free and it’s contents floated to the surface. The ship had been underwater since 1921, when it sank in a storm near Willapa Bay, Washington. Inside the hold of the ship were massive sawn timbers, on their way from Vancouver, BC, to San Francisco.

A smart local from the area saw what had happened, went out on his aluminum skiff, pulled them to shore one by one and put out the word that he had some wood for sale. My client was fascinated by old growth timber and had already identified a standing stump on the Olympic Peninsula 14 feet in diameter to salvage cedar from for custom exterior siding. When I called and told him about the timbers, he got on the phone with the savvy guy with the skiff and soon was on his way to southwestern Washington.

It turns out these timbers, underwater for 80 years, were spectacular. Many of them over 40 feet long, 30 inches square, perfectly straight and the tightest grain you’ll ever see. He purchased an entire logging truck full of the best ones and had them delivered to his property on Bainbridge Island, an incredible 13-acre waterfront lot that had been planned to be cleared for a housing development, but now was destined for one house.

And the direction to me was, “don’t cut down any trees, and use these timbers for the structure of the house”.’