The Nome daily nugget., 1934-12-14
TO GET SIGHT OF HISTORIC
 GOLD VESSEL 
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That FeI1aTk IS IyplCdl O1 Sol tlo whole unique career. He started out as a house-mover, but his insat- fable desire to keep trying some thing harder has brought him long and spectacular way since then. When a Florida hurricane blew a fleet of ships up on land, Curtis was the man who moved them back to sea; he was sent to Nome, Alaska, to take charge of the shifting of a giant gold dredge for the Hammon Company, for a distance of mile and half, and he has dozens of other equally unusual performances to his credit
 "Its just question of figuring out how to do thing" Curtis explain ed. Eve always been practical man. House-moving isn't taught in books. You've got to figure out a system for each job you get-and that's all I do."
 Lots of other men have also tried to figure out system" for raising the Islander since the ship went down in Stevens Passage, g miles out of Juneau, on August 5, 1901, carrying seventy-two persons to their end. But Curtis alone was successful.
 The wreck was first located in 1904 and a buoy was attached to her., but nothing further was at- tempted until 1909, when it was re- located by the Wiley Brothers, who succeeded in taking out about four thousand dollars worth of gold by using a diving bell.
 Curtis was first approached on the question in 1881. He agreed to try to raise the wreck, but it was June 13, 1883, before he actually left Seattle to begin operations.
 He had decided to make the ship lift herself by fastening her to an- other vessel on the surface and let ting the tide carry her gradually up and in, each time it rose.
 For this purpose he got the tow barge Griffson, equipped with forty heavy duty winches, and lowed her to Alaska with the original diving bell. First he surveyed the situa- ton with the diving bell and then he went to work passing lines be- heath the wreck every ten feet or so and making them fast to the winches on the barge above By the time all the lines were in place it was possible to lift the wreck just off the floor of the sea by sim ply taking all the slack out, and then the next high tide would carry both barge and bulk shoreward.
 We had good tide to work with" Curtis explained Some times it was as much as nineteen feet six inches. But just the same it was long, hard job. As the bot tom is anything but even our pro- gress wasn't steady. Sometimes a tide would move us no more than 100 feet. The next day we might go 2,000. But we got the hulk as far as she would go by the time the winter storms began to set in. The wreck was actually touching the bottom of the barge then and there was nothing to do until we got a second barge, so we could lift the hulk between the two.
 "As the weather wouldn't permit any further operations for the time, we let the wreck down in seventy five feet of water and returned to Seattle. Last April I went back with the barge Forest Pride, and stretched big logs between the two vessels to carry the wreck.
 We discovered that the hulk had slipped back during the winter and was now in ninety feet of water but we got to work right away, us- ing the same process as before, and on July 27, we beached her."
 Then came the big disappoint- ment-the fortune in gold thata had been expected failed to materialize even though every inch of the hulk was prospected.