Frank Waterhouse & Company
with the larger entry of the United States into international trade that has come about as a consequence of the cutting of the Panama Canal and still more because of the readjustment of international trade and the shipping industries as one of the results of the world war, a much higher degree of importance attaches to our Pacific ports, all of which are realizing a gratifying expansion of trade. Among the cities in which this development has occurred that of Seattle has had the most remarkable accessions of trade and industry. It is now one of our greatest seaports, one of our largest centers of overseas trade and one of the cities that count for most in the calculations of the great advance in international commerce expected to be made in the United States.
A leading firm which has been intimately iden-tified with the development of Seattle as a port is that of Frank Waterhouse & Company, first established in 1898 by Frank Waterhouse as pres-ident, Messrs. Neal H. Begley vice-president, R. D, Smalley secretary, and J. Richard Lane treasurer. This is a company of numerous departments, controlling through important subsidiaries various branches of production and trade and carrying on an extensive business as ship owners, charterers, dock operators, forwarders, coal bunkerers, automobile and truck dealers, insurance agents, publishers, etc. Besides the general offices at Seattle the company has branches in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Vancouver, Kobe, Singapore and Calcutta.
The most important branch of the business con- sits of the operation of a number of steamers rich it owns and charters in the trans-Pacific arid other oceanic trades. In this department the firm is especially prominent in the transportation of cargoes between Seattle and other Pacific Coast ports and the Far East, including Japan, China, and the various colonies and presidencies British India. Long experience in this trade and well-established connections in the ports of the Far East have made the firm of Frank Waterhouse & Company known as one of the evading representatives of American transportation interests to those countries. In addition to this seagoing service the company operates a fleet of small steamers on Puget Sound. The company has a subsidiary incorporated under the laws of Canada and known as Frank Waterhouse & Company of Canada, Ltd. In like manner the company has strengthened its organization for business in the Far East by the incorporation in Japan of the International Shipping Company, Ltd., in which it is largely interested, and through which its affairs at the eastern end of its seagoing services are most efficiently organized and effectively oper-ated.
Another important interest of the company is a large fire and marine insurance brokerage business through which the company is prepared to place insurance on acceptable risks in the best and securest companies at current premium rates. Another department of the business is that of deal-ing in coal, which it does on a large scale, having spacious yards and connections for procuring the best qualities of coal, and its supplies not only Seattle but also ships to Pacific Coast ports, and makes a special business of prompt attention to the bunkering of coal for steamships visiting Puget Sound ports.
The company has extensive wharves and ware-houses and does a general warehouse business, with every facility for receiving and shipping, and also rendering the best and most reliable service in the forwarding of cargoes and freights to all foreign and domestic points and ports. Experience and efficiency are applied to all of the varied activities of the company, which has a record of service not excelled by any other firm on the Pacific Coast.
The automobile and truck department of the business is also important, the firm being repre-sentative of several of the leading makes of auto-mobiles and motor trucks, which they handle for domestic and foreign sale.
One of their most important auxiliaries is the Vulcan Manufacturing Company, a large plant with a complete equipment of all the necessary machines and devices for the effective manufacture, on a large scale, of engines of various types, deck machinery for steamships, cranes, derricks, and other devices, the plant containing a complete machine shop as well as a large foundry and forge. This branch of the business has been especially active during the past two years in connection with the supplying of engines and cargo-handling machinery to many of the vessels which have been built during that period in the Paget Sound and other Pacific Coast ports. Orders for machinery of this kind can be given quick dispatch at this plant, which is under the supervision of technical and practical experts and which turns out a quality of machinery and appliances not surpassed by any other manufacturer.
In connection with their coal department, the company owns and controls the Washington Col-lieries Company, which are extensive miners and producers of coal, supplying their product in quantities ample for meeting the large and in-creasing demands that come to this department for bunker coal for the steamers that come to Pacific ports from overseas and for the local steamers operating on Puget Sound.
Another important branch of the business of Frank Waterhouse & Company is represented by their subsidiary, the Seattle Taxicab & Transfer Company, which has an extensive and well- organized service of local transportation to all parts of the city of Seattle and its suburbs and for the transfer of baggage, freights, etc., coming in by railroad or steamship lines. This business has developed with the growth of the city upon a basis of prompt service and great efficiency.
The large interests controlled by the firm and the many branches of shipping and business interest which its operations touch, not only at Seattle, but also at San Francisco, Vancouver and the other Pacific Coast ports, has given the firm a representative position with reference to Pacific shipping and port interests that is highly influential, and in connection with this interest the company are publishers of a well-known and excellently edited periodical known as "Pacific Ports," of which both annual and monthly editions are printed and issued, and which is regarded as a leading authority upon the subject of shipping and general marine interests of the Pacific seaboard of the United States. The publishing company, which is in charge of this branch of the Waterhouse activities, is organized as Pacific Ports, Inc.
Mr. Frank Waterhouse, the president of the company, has long been known as one of the most influential and progressive men of the Puget Sound region and thoroughly representative of it; shipping and commercial interest. The gentlemen associated with him as niters of the company are all men of experience and prominence in the business life of Seattle, whose united efforts maintain the most as one c the most important on the Pacific Coast
The development of the firm has proceeded along progressive lines and its growth has been parallel
ful Pacific port in which the the most influential and important farers
All measures for the welfare f Seattle the Pacific Coast generally have die support of this representative. X house has better facilities for faithful maritime interests.
Seattle has had a career of wonderful Its situation on Puget Sound gives narrow advantage for becoming one of the greatest centers of world trade. As the ambition of the United States for great enlargement and prize save development of a merchant marine which will carry the American flag to a prominent plate of dominance of the Seven Seas and all principal ports is accomplished, a large share of this augmented participation must be in trade with the Far Orient. For this trade Seattle is the most appropriate and inevitable center, and that clot will more and more need the facilities which such resourceful shipping firms as that of Frank Water- house & Company are best able to supply.
The firm has so fixed its resources and connec-tions as to be fully prepared for the extensions and enlargements of trade which are expected t come from the expansion of our overseas relations. The progressive and indomitable spirit c Pacific Coast leaders has been amply manifested from the days of the Argonauts, and Frank. Waterhouse & Company, in its line, fully reners that spirit.
