Athlon (steamboat)
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Athlon
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| History | |
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 United States
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| Name: | Athlon |
| Builder: | J.H. Johnston |
| Launched: | 1900 |
| In service: | 1900-1921 |
| Fate: | Sunk after grounding, 1921 |
| Notes: | Converted to oil fuel 1906 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | express passenger (inland) |
| Length: | 112.4 ft (34.3 m) |
| Beam: | 19.7 ft (6.0 m) |
| Draft: | 7 ft (2.1 m) |
| Propulsion: | Compound engine as built, re-engined 1907 with triple expansion, 66" propeller, with 96" pitch |
| Notes: | 157 gross tons; 104 net tons, all-wooden construction, steam-powered |
Athlon was a typical passenger steamboat of the Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet.
Athlon was built in Portland, Oregon by the J.H. Johnston yard. Her first owners were a consortium of Jacob Kamm (and his company, Vancouver Transportation Co.), Shaver Transportation Company and the Kellogg Transportation Company. The consortium built her at a cost of $4,950. The consortium's purpose was to Captain Neusome, owner of the Iralda, which he ran on the lower Columbia. Neusome had refused to fix (or “cooperate on,” as the phrase then was) steamboat rates on river. Neusome came around when Athlon was launched, and struck a deal with the consortium. In return, Athlon was sold to H.B. Kennedy, who took her up to Puget Sound.
Once at Puget Sound, H.B. Kennedy put Athlon on the popular Seattle-Port Orchard (Navy Yard) Route, in competition with Joshua Green’s boat, the Inland Flyer. Athlon’s first captain on Puget Sound, in February 1901, was William Mitchell, who had worked his way up from cabin boy. (Mitchell eventually in 1933 became manager of the Kitsap Transportation Company, one of the last remaining competitors to the by-then dominant Puget Sound Navigation Company.) By July 1901, H.B. Kennedy and Joshua Green reached a deal to end competition between their two boats, fixing rates on the route as was usual with these anti-competitive agreements. Over the years, the firms of H.B. Kennedy and Joshua Green's Puget Sound Navigation Company drew closer together and eventually merged. By 1903, Athlon was still owned by H.B. Kennedy personally, but was being operated by Puget Sound Navigation. This combination drove off all would be competitors including the Manette, and later, Arrow, even though Arrow was a much faster boat than Athlon, beating her by 30 minutes on a race from Seattle to Bremerton.
In January 1904, the steamer Clallam and 50 of her passengers were lost en route to Victoria crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Clallam carried no distress rockets, which in those days before radio, might have saved some or all of her people. Steamship inspectors cracked down and fined a large number of steamers, including Athlon, $500 and more for operating without fog horns, signal flares or rockets, fire axes or proper life-saving equipment. Some measure of the severity of the fine can be judged by the fact that it was almost exactly 10% of the cost of Athlon’s construction.
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