R.D. Hume, a pioneer and early industrialist, built the steamboat Mary D. Hume for his Gold Beach Cannery. The ship was named after his wife. R. D. Hume was a forerunner in the Wedderburn and Gold Beach areas of Ellensburg. By 1881, he had erected Mary D. Hume to support the cannery business and had developed a fish cannery.
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Various owners rebuilt her throughout the years, and she has been utilized for a variety of purposes in and around Gold Beach and along the Pacific coast. In the 1970s, it was even the oldest continuously operating commercial vessel.
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The Hume spent the first eight years of his career transporting freight between San Francisco and Gold Beach. The Pacific Whaling Co. bought the Mary D. Hume for $25,000 on December 5, 1889, and the Mary D. Hume began her career as an Artic Whaling vessel.
Mary D. Hume soon set off for the Bearing Sea and a ten-year career that made her legendary in the annals of Arctic whaling. Several seamen perished from scurvy, cold, and madness induced by loneliness and isolation during her lengthy Arctic trip.
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Her first mission, which lasted from 1890 to 1892, caught 37 whales with a cargo worth $400,000. She then set a record for the longest known whaling journey in Arctic history, lasting six years from 1893 to 1899.
She was sold to the Northwest Fisheries Company in 1900 for service as a cannery tender in Alaskan waters, but four years later she drowned in ice in the Nushagak River, was rescued, and sent to Seattle for repair.
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Mary D. Hume was acquired by the American Tug Boat Company on May 20, 1909, and she was converted into an ocean tugboat. Two-story housing was erected somewhere in the early twentieth century.
She continued to serve as a tugboat, a tender for halibut fishing vessels, and a towboat when the whaling boom ended. Her steam engine was replaced with a diesel engine in 1954, and she continued to operate until 1978.
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When Mary D. Hume retired, the historical society attempted but failed to turn her into a museum ship. Although Mary D. Hume is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, she is in disrepair and is slowly collapsing into the Gold Beach dirt.