Archives West Finding Aid

General Notes: Consolidated Whaling was purchased by William Schupp, the grandfather of William Lagen, in approximately 1917-1918. Schupp also purchased North Pacific Sea Products of Bay City, Washington at about the same time and changed the name to American Pacific Sea Products. He subsequently moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington, where the whaling ships wintered on Meydenbauer Bay. American Pacific Sea Products originally operated ships from two stations, Bay City on Grays Harbor and Akutan in Alaska, which was built in 1912. Akutan was the most successful. The Bay City station was closed in the late 1920s and a station was built at Port Hobron on Kodiak Island in 1927, but was never as successful as Akutan. American Pacific operated seven "killer" boats: the Moran, Patterson, Aberdeen, Westport, Unimak, Kodiak and Tanginak.

Consolidated Whaling Corporation operated six or seven "killer" boats along the coast of British Columbia, first at Sechart and Kyoquot. These stations operated into the 1920s, after which Consolidated's boats then whaled from stations at Rose Harbor and Naden Harbor in the Queen Charlotte Islands.

These companies were probably the last full scale whaling operations in North America. Dwindling catches, rising labor costs and poor prices paid by their primary customer, Proctor and Gamble, contributed to the decline of the companies, but World War II was the final blow. During the war, the American boats were leased to the U.S. Coast Guard and Akutan was leased to the Navy, which turned it over to the Russians. When the Russians left, they dismantled and removed the station. After the war, American Pacific attempted to recover its losses from the Navy.

General Notes:

• Grandmother: Emily Victoria Kugler, born in Michigan, May 24, maybe 1868 . She and William Schupp had three children, two daughters and one son; only Emily survived babyhood, and she had a terrible bout with diphtheria. Beginning in 1901, she took daughter Emily to Europe for two very extended trips, and attended university courses as they traveled. Later, traveled with her daughter Emily (who was dancing on concert stages as "Lada") until her death in 1922. Included in the collection is her scrapbook from her early home in Saginaw, with camping at "The Point" on Lake Superior, and hunts at a hunting camp in northern Michigan.
• Grandfather: William Schupp, born in Saginaw, Michigan, February 22, 1864. Married Emily V. Kugler in Michigan; after a rough start, made a fortune in the insurance business, then bought Pawling Manor Farm in New York State. He bought two whaling companies, the Canadian Whaling Company (out of Vancouver, Canada) and the American Whaling Company, which he moved from Westport, Washington to Meydenbauer Bay, Bellevue, Washington. (The two companies, in accordance with the law at that time, remained completely separate.) He kept an office in the Smith Tower until the depression, at which time he moved his office to his home on Meydenbauer Bay. The home was on property which now houses the condominiums behind the Meydenbauer Bay Marina. When Lagen planned to build the condos, he bought the lot to the north, sold the small frame house to a man who barged the house over to Vashon Island and reestablished it there. Lagen then moved his grandfather's estate house to the north lot and established it as the basis of his home. The original whaling dock can easily be seen today as the center of the Meydenbauer Bay Marina (sold to the city of Bellevue in 1998). Schupp died in Bellevue in 1948.
• Mother: Emily Schupp (later Lagen, later Grill). Daughter of William Schupp and Emily Kugler Schupp, born May 24, 1889. Educated in Europe while traveling with her mother, then at a boarding academy in Washington D. C. Performed for about 10 years as "Lada", interpretive dancer, on concert stages all over the United States. She was the first woman in New York State to receive a driver's license. Married her manager Marc Lagen on July 7, 1922; their only child, William, was born in July 1923. After the deaths of her husband and father, she remarried in 1950 to William Grill, who had been the family lawyer. Died in Bellevue, 1964.
• Father: Marc Aloysius Lagen, born in Dubuque, Iowa, July 11, 1882, the 7th of 9 brothers (one did not survive infancy). During World WarI, he was a commissioned officer with the Reconnaissance Balloons, serving in France. Shortly before the war, and afterwards, he was a theatrical manager, and was "Lada's" manager. After his marriage to Emily, and the birth of their son, the family moved to Seattle, where Marc became the manager of his father-in-law's business. During World War II, he continued to manage the business and worked with the Coast Guard, which had taken over the whaling boats as coast guard defense boats. They were returned after the war, in very poor shape, and were eventually sold for scrap. Lagen was a founding member of the Meydenbauer Bay Yacht Club. He continued to try to re-activate the whaling industry until his sudden death in 1946 from a heart attack.
• Other people referenced in collection:
  • Dorothy Kugler (Mrs. Henry Nesbitt, also called "Dodo"): favorite sister of Emily Kugler Schupp, later Executive Assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt during White House years. Collection includes some White House memorabilia.
  • Elsie Schupp Kugler (William Schupp's sister, then married to Emily's brother): Her daughter Elsie was married to Gano Fotheringham; their daughter, also Elsie was Lagen's cousin, died in late 1940s of polio.
  • Henry Schupp (William Schupp's brother): William always employed Henry during his lifetime and generally took care of him. Henry managed the Fort Hobron whaling station until Marc Lagen took over.
  • Johanna Rieche (later Olsen, later Uran): Emigrated from Germany as teenager; she and her brother Karl were both employed by William Schupp; Karl as gardener and baker, Johanna as his Secretary. Both lived on the estate with Schupp. Johanna took William S. Lagen to Germany in 1936 for the Winter Olympics. She was very athletic and took Lagen on all sorts of skating, mountain climbing, and skiing outings. During the 1920s, Rieche won annual "Walk around Lake Washington" so many times that she retired the trophy. She also established a record for the shortest time to climb Mount Rainier, a record which Lagen believes still stands, as of July, 2001.
  • Stanley and Elsa Griffiths: Stanley was the son of Captain James Griffiths, owner of the Sueja, a yacht built by famed nautical designer Ted Geary. The Marc Lagens spent a great deal of time with them on the yacht and at their farm on Whidbey Island.
  • Various Whaling Station personnel (identified as remembered by Lagen with photographs)