Everett Archives: The Story of the Equator
The Equator dry-docked at 14th Street // Courtesy the Northwest History Room
Maybe you’ve seen the Equator. You’d know if you’ve laid eyes on it - it’s the giant boat in a shed on the Everett Waterfront. The vessel is slowly falling to pieces, corroded by salt air and eaten by termites.
What is the single most interesting fact about the Equator? I can’t decide. It’s the kind of thing I tell my wife about whenever we drive or bike the waterfront, the kind of thing that I bring up, like a nerd, at parties.
Because it was a coconut delivery ship. Because it’s haunted by the ghost of a Hawaiian King. Because of its ties to Robert Louis Stevenson. And because it’s in a shed in Everett for now -- the last surviving hull of its era, slowly being erased into sawdust before our eyes.
And we wouldn’t even have this disintegrating wreckage if it weren’t for a benevolent dentist.
But let’s start at the beginning.
The Equator has served many purposes, has assumed many practical forms, ship-wise. As such, it should be admired.
It’s a pygmy schooner. It was built in San Fransisco in the mid-1800s. As near as I can tell, it’s sailed across every ocean.
The famous Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson once chartered the Equator. He traveled aboard the schooner when it voyaged from the United States to Indonesia to pick up a load of coconuts. The trip was the inspiration for Stevenson’s travelogue “In the South Seas.”
Along the way, Stevenson stopped for a time in Hawaii, where he befriended the resident King Kalakaua.
After the voyage ended, the boat was retrofitted with steam power and served as a whaling ship in the Arctic Ocean. Then it made its way to Puget Sound where it did duty as a tugboat.
And that’s how the Equator ended up in Everett. The decommissioned tug was hauled to Jetty Island with other scrapped boats where it helped to form a breakwater, protecting the sliver of land from incoming waves in the bay.
It was in the 1970s that a dentist discovered the boat. He hauled it to shore, drydocked it, and formed a nonprofit group called The Equator Foundation. The group was dedicated to restoring the Equator to its former glory, as a seagoing vessel fit to carry Robert Louis Stevenson to his literary ports of call.
And then... nothing happened. The nonprofit disbanded, and the boat was left to slowly fall to pieces, apparently forgotten by time and restoration enthusiasts.
The back end of the boat collapsed in 2017, gnawed to pieces by termites. According to one credible local historian, this collapse tolled the beginning of the end for the Equator. The vessel seems now to be damaged beyond any easy repair and any attempt to restore it would be less like setting a bone and more like major reconstructive surgery.
Today, the boat is said to be home to a resident ghost: the spirit of the Hawaiian King Kalakaua. According to supernatural enthusiasts on the internet, the ghost appears after dark as a dancing light on the hull of the boat.
Will the Equator ever assume its old glory? Will it return to at least a close facsimile of its original form?
As Robert Louis Stevenson himself once said, “To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
If the Equator never becomes anything more than its current state of semi-wreckage, perhaps the boat’s spirit can rest easy, knowing it once reached its full potential on the high seas.
It was a storied boat, once. And as long as it’s in Everett, its story will still be told.
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