Archives West Finding Aid

Frederick Pease Harlow was an American sailor and author. He is best known for his memoir The Making of a Sailor, published in 1928, an account of his work and travels around the world on the Akbar, Conquest, and other merchant ships.

Harlow was born in Illinois in 1856 to William T. Harlow, a Methodist minister, and Frances Ann Winsor. When Harlow was a child, the family moved to Massachusetts and, later, Rhode Island, where he graduated high school. In 1875, Harlow shipped out on a two year deep-water voyage to Australia aboard the square-rigger trade ship Akbar. In 1878, he traveled from Boston to the West Indies aboard the Conquest. Harlow left the sea in 1879 and moved to Chicago, where he worked in a Methodist bookstore.

During the 1880s, Harlow worked as a railway express agent for American Express in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and for Wells Fargo in Colorado. His work consisted of transferring valuable goods and money to the next agents on the line, in progress towards their ultimate destination. This kind of employment was extremely dangerous, and Harlow’s papers include mentions of his own and others’ experiences as the targets of robberies and raids. Harlow was also involved in numerous railway accidents, a large factor in his later decision to move on to more stable employment. While working as a railway agent, Harlow befriended a Texas Ranger named Frank W. DeJarnette, and in 1885 DeJarnette sent Harlow a scalp he had acquired during a raid. A small segment of the scalp and its accompanying correspondence between Harlow and DeJarnette are included in this collection.

In 1888, Harlow began work as a money agent for the Northern Pacific Express Company out of Portland, Oregon, and then transferred to Seattle, Washington in 1890. He arrived in Seattle just eight months after the Great Fire of 1889. His memoir includes stories and observations from this period of rapid reconstruction which saw various city regrade projects and the raising of Seattle’s downtown core 22 feet higher than its previous level.

Harlow married Gertrude Gilleland in Seattle in 1898. They had one child, Frances Winsor Harlow, born in 1899. In 1901, Harlow left the railways and began work as a bookkeeper for various Seattle companies that were busily rebuilding the city’s infrastructure: Fritch & Harlow (cement contractors) from 1901 to 1903 and Stanley & Sons (city grading and bricklaying) from 1903 to 1908. In 1908, he started the Occidental Fish Company with some associates, and worked there until the company was sold in 1911. He spent the summer of 1912 with his family aboard the schooner William Nottingham which was moored in St. Johns, Oregon. Included in this collection is the hand bound manuscript that his daughter Frances wrote and illustrated about their summer on the schooner.

Harlow continued working as a bookkeeper for the Arctic Club (1912-1915); Johnson & Dean Lumber Company (1915-1917); the Washington Shipping Corporation (1917-1918); Syms & Carey Contractors (1918); and, finally, the Puget Sound Navigation Company (1919-1933), where he remained until he retired. It was during his downtime at the Puget Sound Navigation Company that he wrote his well-regarded work The Making of a Sailor, which was published in 1928.

In addition to his travels on the sea and on the rails, Harlow also took two extensive trips by bicycle: one through Yellowstone Park in 1896 and one along the Oregon coast in 1898. Visiting the park via bicycle allowed him vantage points inaccessible to tourists in stagecoaches, the usual mode of visiting the park. His descriptions of Yellowstone consist of viewing the geysers, hot springs, and wildlife in that park, as well as taking a steamer across Yellowstone Lake and bicycling over the Continental Divide. Two years later, Harlow’s bicycling trip with friends along the Oregon coast took him through Tillamook, Cannon Beach, Seaside, and Astoria, and he had the chance to view a number of shipwrecks gone ashore. He also visited the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle in 1909.

Harlow’s memoir details his travels after retiring in 1933. He and Gertrude travelled by car throughout the United States from 1933 to 1935, and were present to witness the creation of Lake Mead as the Hoover Dam’s tunnels were closed. After touring the United States, they decided to travel around the world, and departed from Los Angeles aboard the Asama Maru ocean liner in April 1935. Their travels brought them to Japan, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines (where they were present at the inauguration of Manuel L. Quezon), Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Egypt, France, England, Cuba, and Panama, all just a few years before World War II would radically change these nations’ physical and political landscapes.

Harlow spent his later years building ship models and working on his memoirs. He spent many years pursuing the publication of his memoir as well his collection on sea shanties, Chanteying Aboard American Ships. The latter was posthumously published in 1962, due to the efforts of Harlow’s granddaughter Elaine Eberle Tompkins; Harlow’s typewritten memoir, included here, has never been published.

Harlow died in Seattle in 1952, at the age of 95.