Meacham family fell in love with ‘Zina’

This is Part II of a series about the historic vessel ZINA, click here for Part I.

As the ledgers of Winslow’s Hall Brothers Marine Railway & Shipyard moved toward closure, the log of the yacht ZINA began. The cruiser, built by Jimmy Hall, master carpenter and heir of Hall Brothers’ legacy, was launched in Eagle Harbor in 1908.

A year later, ZINA made a splash in Pacific Motor Boat Magazine with a story and a photo that showed the owner, formally attired U.S. District Judge George Donworth and children cruising near their Westwood summer home. Two years later, however, Donworth sold the classic yacht to William Milo Meacham.

Meacham’s seaward path began in 1871 among waves of prairie grasses, not on Puget Sound’s seas.

“Our grandfather was born in a Kansas sod hut,” Mike and Bill Meacham recall. “His father, Milo Meacham, knew Wild Bill Hickock in Abilene. Three Meacham generations have ‘Bills’ – William Milo, William A. and William W. Granddad was completely self-taught yet became a mechanical and electrical engineer and inventor with patents in radio and electricity. He headed electrical exhibits at the 1897 Chicago World’s Fair.”

Grandson Mike relates: “When granddad saw wings lifting things into air, he thought the same could be done in water. He built a ‘wing’ fastened to a boat. Boats were slow then, so along a canal, he towed his craft by horse.

Their boat lifted – and stayed there! Alexander Graham Bell soon sought him out and bought Meacham’s patent for a hydrofoil! Thus he began an association with Bell in Nova Scotia.”

Meacham served in the Spanish-American War and formed a Chicago electrical engineering company. In 1905, he accepted a contract and moved to Seattle to help build and electrify Great Northern Railroad’s King Street Station.

His wife, Kate, a school teacher, pulled the switch that started its tower clock. It runs today! They made time, too, for ZINA, acquiring her for $800. ZINA became a fixture at Seattle Yacht Club moorings, anchored in West Seattle on Elliott Bay.

With partner H. G. Babcock, Meacham completed several major Seattle projects – the bridge to Union Station, tunnels, sewer lines. They were even low bidders to construct the Government Locks (later re-bid with everyone knowing their figures, and awarded to someone else).

On July 4, 1917, ZINA made history as one of the first yachts to go from salt water to fresh in the flotilla led by Arctic explorer Admiral Peary’s flagship, ROOSEVELT, that opened the new Ballard Locks.

When World War I erupted, Meacham & Babcock contracted with the U.S. War Shipping Administration to build wooden ships. On swamp land across the ship canal from Ballard, with help of W.T. Butler, they erected Seattle’s six launches, which led to it being the largest yard on the West Coast making ships of wood. Ballard mills couldn’t keep them in lumber, so they created two more mills in Everett. A yard photo shows shipwrights dwarfed by towering wooden freighters under construction – six at a time. One year after ZINA’s historic parade, 30,000 hailed her owners at the July 4, 1918, launch of two ships.

They built 12, the last six of which were “hard ships.” But when the war ended, the yard closed.

“I was watching PBS-TV here last month,” Mike Meacham said from Anchorage,” and fell out of my chair. They aired John Scabella’s film, ‘Throwback to a Golden Age’ (2004), and there at anchor in the 1920s was ZINA!”

Elsewhere about this time, with Meachams’ hydrofoil designs and a craft powered by WWI aircraft engines, Alexander Graham Bell “flew” beyond the world water speed record.

Construction stopped during the 1930s, yet Meacham kept ZINA. After WWII, his son, Bill A. Meacham, a Navy Reserve captain, and his wife, Eleanor, returned to Puget Sound with their three children. With leave time built up, they went cruising and for four months became Eagle Harbor liveaboards. They anchored off shore of the Navy Housing Project, site of today’s Waterfront Park.

“Dad rowed ashore daily to go to Seattle by ferry to find work,” Mike Mecham said. “Mom tied a tether to ZINA’s dinghy and retrieved it when he got ashore. In a few months, we were given Navy housing and dad and mom sold their 16-by-16 foot shack in Anchorage and found a home and new anchorage in Port Madison.

“ZINA was kept there on a buoy. Carlson’s Marina west of Treasure Island helped with haul outs. We cruised summers, except years when dad was called back to active duty in Korea. One day, Bill came home and found ZINA a foot below her waterline...”

(To be continued.)

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