The steamboat City of Shelton operated in the 1890s and early 1900s as part of the Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet

Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet

The Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet was a large number of private transportation companies running smaller passenger and freight boats on Puget Sound and nearby waterways and rivers. This large group of steamers and sternwheelers plied the waters of Puget Sound, stopping at every waterfront dock...

Construction

City of Shelton was built in 1895 at Shelton, Washington

Shelton, Washington

Shelton is the county seat, of Mason County, Washington, United States. Shelton is the westernmost city on Puget Sound. The population was 9,834 at the 2010 census. In terms of population, the city is ranked 161 out of approximately 500 municipalities in Washington...

, to replace Willie on the Olympia-Shelton route. She was 99.8 feet long, 20.5 on the beam, with 6' depth of hold, and rated at 190 tons. City of Shelton was one of the few vessels built on the Sound at that time because an economic depression had driven down business.

Operations

One of her competitors was Marion, a small propeller-driven steamboat with an award-winning triple expansion engine. Marion’s crew derisively named City of Shelton “Old Wet-Butt” after the spray thrown up on her deck by her unguarded sternwheel. During one race, when Marion was running at full speed, her shaft broke, and she had to whistle for assistance to City of Shelton who towed her into Olympia.

City of Shelton once ran aground at Arcadia Point in a fog. While waiting for the tide to come in and float her off, the cook had himself lowered overboard in a bosun’s chair and came back with three huge geoduck

Geoduck

The geoduck , Panopea generosa, is a species of very large saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Hiatellidae.The shell of this clam is large, about to over in length, but the very long siphons make the clam itself very much longer than this: the "neck" or siphons alone can be ...

 clams, weighing a total of 12 pounds, which he made into chowder. Newell describes the reaction of the rest of the crew:
In March 1905, following the recent loss of the steamer Clallam

Clallam (steamboat)

The steamboat Clallam operated for about six months from July 1903 to January 1904 in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. She was sunk in a storm on what should have been an ordinary voyage to Victoria, British Columbia.-Construction:...

 in the Strait of Juan de Fuca

Strait of Juan de Fuca

The Strait of Juan de Fuca is a large body of water about long that is the Salish Sea outlet to the Pacific Ocean...

, steamboat inspectors cracked down and levied heavy fines against a number of steamboats on Puget Sound for inadequate safety equipment, including the City of Shelton, fined for having no signs advising passengers of life preservers, and no log of boat or fire drills. Her original fine of $500 (a lot of money for the time) was later reduced to $10, presumably as a result of curing the safety defects.

City of Shelton ran on the Olympia-Shelton run until 1907, when the Shelton Transportation Co. replaced her with S.G. Simpson

S.G. Simpson (sternwheeler)

The steamboat S.G.Simpson operated in the early 1900s as part of the Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet. This vessel was later renamed E.G. English.-Construction:S.G. Simpson was designed by Capt...

. City of Shelton‘s last skipper on the regular route was Capt. Ed Gustafson, who with mate Ole Gustafson and engineer John Lesli took over the new sternwheeler S.G. Simpson. City of Shelton was kept on as a reserve boat until about 1912, when she was sold to the American Tug Boat Co., an Everett concern. George E. Barlow (1842-1912) was another captain of City of Shelton.

Abandonment

Her new owners did not put City of Shelton to use, but simply moored her on Dead Water Slough in the Snohomish River

Snohomish River

The Snohomish River is a river in the U.S. state of Washington, formed by the confluence of the Skykomish and Snoqualmie rivers near Monroe. It flows northwest entering Port Gardner Bay, part of Puget Sound, between Everett and Marysville. The Pilchuck River is its main tributary and joins the...

with the Edison where eventually she fell apart in about 1930.