Captain Bill Kasch, early ferry family
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Captain Bill Kasch, one of the first to make regular ferryboat runs in the islands, referred to himself as a "Jonah" because of the number of ships he'd sailed on that had sunk.
No one else would have called the congenial skipper a curse. Instead, "Captain Bill" endeared himself to island-bound folks not only by providing freight and passenger service but by his willingness to do more. He'd purchase a fry pan for a homemaker, deliver dentures in need of repair, or take a bucket of clams in lieu of fare.
The captain also kept an eye out for red flags. The distress signals would draw him in to anchor and carry off the sick or injured.
Born in Iowa, Kasch came to Anacortes in 1890 and ten years later bought the Molly K to haul freight to Friday Harbor. In 1904, he bought the Anglo Saxon and started passenger runs between Anacortes and the San Juans.
Kasch took the Anglo Saxon to Alaska where it was wrecked by a huge breaker. He returned home, bought the Yale, and added Bellingham to the island run. That upped business so much he bought the bigger Yankee Doodle in 1909.
Although no stranger to adversity (he lost a nine-year-old son to drowning, two fingers in an accident, and then there were those shipwrecks), Kasch was known for his constant singing and whistling. Neighbors "needed no alarm clocks for when they heard the familiar whistling, they knew it was right around 6:00 AM."
During World War I, Kasch left his Inter-Island Navigation Company in a partner's care and signed on to a steamship that sank off France. He later crewed on the S. S. Blackford which hit a tropical cyclone and was lost off lower California in 1918. The crew spent nearly two weeks in a deserted bay subsisting on turtle steaks.
Stormy weather rarely deterred Kasch from his island runs. One woman recalls boarding the Yankee Doodle and becoming nervous when she heard Kasch bellow, "All aboard for the San Juan Archipelago, if you don't care where the h--- you go!" Rough seas washed over the boat and flooded the engine. The anxious passenger heard the captain pounding away when "Suddenly the engine started and the door swung open. Captain Kasch, covered with grease and oil, came through singing "Nearer My God to Thee."
The captain, his health compromised by the Blackford shipwreck, died at age 52. But memories of the "singing skipper" live on.
-- From Colorful Characters & Local Lore exhibit, Anacortes Museum, 2008
