Builder T. H. Petersen is front row, 2nd from the right, Mrs. Petersen is at the left. The schooner was built for E.P. Nissen, a merchant from San Francisco, CA. where the TRANSIT was documented in 1892.
The schooner TRANSIT, one of the last ships built by Thomas Heinrich Petersen was built at this location on Salmon Bay, in 1891.
Petersen was a native of Denmark who left in 1856 when he was 21. He had served a 4-yr apprenticeship in a shipyard and earned certification as a carpenter’s mate.
Those papers opened doors for the young man; he continued a lifelong career designing and building boats in several yards on the west coast of the US after he left his ship in San Francisco in 1857. Thomas constructed vessels at Mendocino, Little River, Whitesboro, Navarro, Cuffey’s Cove, Eureka, Gardiner, OR, Florence, Port Orchard, and Deadman’s Island at Port Madison, before he arrived at Salmon Bay in 1890. He was moored there until Commodore Way cut through his property, according to Seattle historian Lucile MacDonald researching some family papers that were donated to the Puget Sound Maritime Society, Seattle, in the 1950s.
