William S. Lagen photograph collection, approximately 1908-1945

The Lagen family was involved in the whaling business for many years, running companies starting with the North Pacific Sea Products Company in Aberdeen and The Consolidated Whaling Corporation, originally of Victoria, B.C. Both hunted whales and sold whale oil, fertilizer and bone meal. William Schupp, grandfather to William Lagen, changed the name from North Pacific Sea Products Co. to American Pacific Sea Products and subsequently moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington, where the whaling ships wintered in Maidenbauer 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. American Pacific operated seven "killer" boats: the Moran, Paterson, Aberdeen, Westport, Unimak, Kodiak and Tanginak . Consolidated Whaling Corporation, purchased by the Lagen Family in 1917 or 1918, operated six or seven "killer" boats along the coast of British Columbia, first at Sechart and Kyoquot. These stations were 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