News - Local News

POSTED: Monday, Dec. 22, 2008

New video documents history of Bellingham Shipyard

Todd Warger's seven-year romance with Bellingham Shipyards is finished.

He hasn't fallen out of love with the subject, but his documentary film on the landmark business is done and he's ready to move on.

"It turned out to be a project of love," said the Whatcom Museum curator. "I have a strong love of history and this was something that wasn't being done."

Consider it done. During his research, Warger collected thousands of pages of text and photographs, plus old film footage, to enrich the museum's archives.

For the viewing public, Warger and Bellingham video whiz David Lowrance have released a new video set through the museum.

The $20 one-disc set features their 73-minute history of Bellingham Shipyard, a powerhouse among the country's small shipyards from 1941 to 1963, plus four related short films.

For $5 more, you can get the deluxe version with a second disc with nearly 4,300 pages of documents and images, a digital research library for people deep into the subject.

"It's a huge steppingstone for somebody else to take it further," Warger said.

Warger's journey began seven years ago when he put together a museum exhibit on military ships that had visited Bellingham Bay. Old-timers who came for a look-see urged him to look into local boat-making history before all the veteran shipwrights died off.

Warger grew up in Massachusetts, studied history at the University of Nevada and studied archives management at Western Washington University before joining Whatcom Museum 14 years ago. He didn't grow up a boat-lover, but his love of local history is palpable.

His research got off to a good start when he found about two-dozen rolls of 16 mm film of Bellingham Shipyard. The good-quality, homemade footage was part of local historian Galen Biery's archived collection at the museum.

"How Galen came by it, I don't know," Warger said.

He talked to Lowrence about using the footage in a video, interspersed with photographs and new interviews. But Warger found only a handful of shipyard photos at the museum, and learned that the shipyard's documentary history was surprisingly skimpy.

Thus began his deep and ever-widening research, not only into the shipyard owned and run by managerial master Arch Talbot, but also into other local boat builders, and into the significance of small shipyards, especially during World War II when they produced small military ships by the thousands.

After the war, Bellingham Shipyard made fishing boats, then a new class of minesweepers during the Korean War, and then introduced something new to boaters - fiberglass pleasure crafts.

Over time, Warger came to more and more appreciate Talbot, both as a manager and as a man. Talbot introduced morning and afternoon coffee breaks at the shipyard, a startling idea at the time, and shared profits with his workers.

"People just loved this man," Warger said.

The business on the Squalicum fill became the largest, privately owned wooden-boat shipyard in the country, Warger said. The shipyard built 110 vessels during World War II, winning a fistful of federal honors for its fast, efficient and high-quality production.

With the video done, Warger, 46, is spending time marketing it and trying to land showings at film festivals. He's also working on his next project, a book about the first three Mount Baker Marathon races, the memorable, grueling treks staged from 1911 to 1913.

"Preserving local history is what it's about," Warger said.