"A good sea boat" is how George Maddock, retired Foss Maritime vice president, remembered the Justine Foss, on which he served as deckhand and captain in the 1930s.

  Although only a 57-footer, the Justine - later sunk by the Japanese at Wake Island - spent much of its time working in waters off the Pacific Coast. Maddock recalled wrapping a heavy tarp, with grommets, across the lower portion of the wheelhouse windows to prevent thern from breaking as waves cascaded over the gunnels and foredeck. The helmsman peered over the upper edge of the tarp to see through the windows.

  "Out in heavy weather, the driest part of the boat was the bilge," Maddock remarked. "She was an able boat. And she was a good juggler."

  The Justine operated along the entire coast - from Alaska to Southern California - as well as in Puget Sound area waters before being towed from San Francisco to Wake Island, where it was operating when war broke out.

  One of the more interesting jobs in the Justine's early years was in 1932 when it helped construct Oregon's scenic coastal highway. The tug barged rock and gravel to trucks that took the material to highway construction sites. Later, the Justine towed heavy log cribs from Sail River, next to Neah Bay, to Port Angeles and bundled log rafts from Hoh River on the coast - a sometimes risky venture - to various destinations on Puget Sound.

  Maddock and Tom McInnis, one of two Foss employees who later was executed by the Japanese on Wake Island, alternated as skippers of the Justine in 1936 when the tug was assigned to a long-term job towing dump scows in support of a sewer outfall construction job in Southern California. What started out to be a quick tow and rapid return home turned out
to be nearly 10 months away from home for Maddock and other crewmembers.

  After returning to Puget Sound, MrInnis went onto the Iver Foss and Maddock became the Justine's regular captain, serving on that boat for about another 18 months before he came into the office for the rest of a long career with Foss.

  Later, the Justine and the oil barge Foss 11 delivered petroleum products in Southeast Alaska. And in 1940, the Justine supported construction of a military base on Kodiak Island. Returning to Puget Sound at the end of that year, heavy seas stove in the wheelhouse windows. But true to form, the Justine - a relatively small tug for its formidable offshore towing assignments - came through with the need for nothing more than voyage repairs.

  Not until it was intentionally sunk by the enemy during the war did the Justine wind up on the bottom of the sea.