F/V SHENANDOAH

The F/V SHENANDOAH is being conserved at the Harbor History Museum in Gig Harbor, Washington [2019]. She was donated in 2000 to be a teaching vessel after a seven-decade career tending in Alaska and fishing the San Juan Islands salmon banks. She is the centerpiece of the Harbor History Museum’s working Maritime Gallery, with conservation to be completed in 2025.The boat was originally built for Pasco Dorotich, his son John, and son-in-law Nick Bez. Bez had just bought his first cannery in Alaska and they used SHENANDOAH to tend the cannery’s fish traps. It was later re-rigged for purse seining and fished the Puget Sound San Juans for decades after the Alaska fishery limited seiner length to 58 feet. F/V SHENANDOAH was sold in 1967 to Antoni Janovich, another Gig Harbor fisherman, after John and Pasco Dorotich had passed on. Janovich fished the boat until 1998, along with “guest skippers” Jake Bujacich in 1973 and Martin Skrivanich in 1972.She one of only three Skansie seiners remaining out of the hundreds the yard built during its 30-year heyday. SHENANDOAH was documented for the Historic American Engineering Record (Library of Congress), HAER WA-178.