Story and Photos by Maria Brooks
Working men look to John Henry and Paul Bunyan and a list of other heroes. But what about working women? Who mirrors their lives in American lore?
One stands out. She goes by the name of Tugboat Annie.
Annie is an industrial worker, a working stiff, and for the most part she is alone in the world. No other blue-collar heroine has endured as long in popular culture as this bosomy mariner of the Puget Sound.
Tugboat Annie Brennan worked as senior captain of a deep sea tug and towing operation in a mythical town that resembled Tacoma. She was a big lady, built like a fire plug. When she darted from tug to pier, buildings quaked and pilings quivered. Her ample girth was maintained by a diet of pork chops, mash potatoes and pancakes.
The public met this unconventional woman in 1931 in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post. Tugboat Annie was created by writer Norman Reilly Raine, who sailed in his youth as an ordinary seaman. Annie’s heroics are described in 75 stories spanning 30 years. Hollywood made movies about her and Ronald Reagan starred in one of them. In the 1950s Tugboat Annie re-surfaced in a television sitcom. Defying all feminine stereotypes, Annie touched America’s heart. And like a cork in the water, she refused to go away.
“The preconception of tugboat workers,” says Captain Jean Pinto, “is we’re all big and we waddle. The public expects to see people with thick arms, fat and tattooed.”
Pinto, a tugboat operator on San Francisco Bay for 18 years, looks trim and shapely.
If the public has a stereotype of tugboat workers, chances are it came from the pages of The Saturday Evening Post a long time ago. Raine would eventually earn an Academy Award for screenwriting. But when Tugboat Annie dropped into his imagination, he worked as a journeyman writer of short stories. Back then the public read books and magazines for fun. Radio was still a weird idea and television didn’t exist. In its heyday The Saturday Evening Post was the most popular magazine in America. When Tugboat Annie jumped out of its pages, the reader met a woman pumped up and full of herself.
“She cops an attitude because she’s really good at what she does,” says Pinto after skimming a Tugboat Annie story in the galley.
Annie’s got plenty of attitude. Tangling with her can be risky business. She’s brazen and smart and reads maritime law. She’s a seasoned sailor on the Puget Sound, with 40 years of experience under her belt. No one knows the job better.
In the late 1920s Raine moved to Tacoma, Washington. He was living there when Thea Foss died. The town honored this private woman with the largest funeral ever seen. Foss was the matriarch of the tug and barge company that bears her name. With her husband Andrew she raised three sons. It was from conversations with her sons that Raine developed the concept for “Tugboat Annie.”
In real life Thea Foss was very different from Annie. A motherly Norwegian, Foss was a sharp business woman and a good cook. But the Foss sons gave Raine story ideas, describing their tugboat operations around the Puget Sound. Raine used their anecdotes in his story lines. He credited Thea Foss as the model for Tugboat Annie. But in actuality, Annie’s character sprang fully formed from the writer’s imagination. With his creation, Raine gave a nod to working women everywhere.
In the stories Tugboat Annie faces down all kinds of riff-raff. Some of these low-lives are shipowners. She outwits con-men and swindlers. She gets little help from her male cohorts. She must prove her smarts over and over again.
“Not much has changed in that regard,” says Marina Secchitano, San Francisco Bay Regional Director of the Inlandboatmen’s Union. “Annie works twice as hard as the guys. She’s a super achiever, but even so, she’s constantly suspect for being a woman.”
Annie may be a master mariner, but there’s one thing she’s not. She’s not a sexual being. Apparently the public could accept a woman as a skilled seafarer, but they drew the line on sex. She is sexually neutral, even undesirable. She “waddles.” She’s often compared to ungainly animals. We’re told she looks like a hippopotamus or a “baffled” rhinoceros. She may beat men at their own game, but the price she pays is her womanliness.
At times Annie seems forlorn in this world of men. When she sprains an ankle and is laid up, her buddies stop by and ask, “How’s your hoof, Annie?” Tugboat Annie moves through her life alone. When we first meet her, she’s running at full throttle. She’s 65 and a widow. Her crew and seamen, down on their luck, make up her family.
When Hollywood made its first “Tugboat Annie” movie, they fiddled with her character. Annie comes on screen with a husband and son. She had morphed into a seagoing housewife. Apparently, Hollywood felt nervous that Tugboat Annie might be perceived as a lesbian. The film flopped.
“It’s interesting as a woman, how you have to change your whole image, your public image, to get things done,” says Melissa Parker, a tugboat owner and operator on San Francisco Bay. Women may change their image, but they rarely move into a man’s world unnoticed.
“You feel everyone’s watching you,” remembers Pinto of her early days on the bay. “I didn’t want to screw up because it would mean ‘the Girl’ screwed up.”
Pinto worked her way up from deckhand to captain. On the bay surprisingly few women drive tugboats. Pinto, a union member represented by Masters, Mates and Pilots (MMP), is the only one who works steady.
“I don’t see a lot of women doing this,” she says. “The wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living. You’re on call 24 hours a day. Women who come out of maritime academies go right on to ships, not many come on to tugs.”
There’s not much glamour in driving tugs. Deckhands embrace the culture of the fo’c’sle. Tug captains often work their way up the “hawsepipe,” shunning prestigious maritime academies. Pride comes from having learned your craft the hard way.
“I felt I had to prove myself,” says Pinto. “The lines are really heavy. I could throw them up on the bits, like the other guys did. But they’d yell at me, ‘You’re not strong enough to work on deck!’ So I’d lift weights. By working on deck, I got stronger. The moment I showed up on the boat, till I got off, I stayed busy. I felt I had to.”
At 45 Jean Pinto shares little in common with her fictional counterpart, Tugboat Annie. As a young woman Pinto sailed in New England with her family. She was athletic and adventuresome. For a short time she attended a Quaker college. Dropping out of school, she moved to Brazil to study music. For a time she worked for Amnesty International, feeling a need to do something meaningful. Frustrated in her pursuit of music, she returned to the Bay Area to look for a job.
Pinto hoped to make a living on the water, but at that time women were invisible in maritime. She created her own job. She started painting and repairing pleasure boats. While working, she watched the runty tugboats pushing and prodding around the bay.
“I wanted to do that,” she says.
There was no welcoming mat for women. Companies resisted hiring them, unions offered little or no support.
“Without affirmative action it would have been difficult to get this job,” Pinto says. “I’d have had no legal recourse if I had been denied access.”
Women sued for the right to work. In Pinto’s case she had an ally in her employer. Oscar Neimeth owned a family towing operation on San Fran-cisco Bay. He had daughters.
“I saw that Jeannie really worked hard,” he remembers. “Why not give her a chance?”
Feeling stymied is a theme in the lives of seafaring women. For Tugboat Annie it was no different. In every story, somebody trips her, tries to sabotage her best efforts. Often the adversary is the system itself.
Tugboat Annie was sidelined during WWII when Raine, working in Hollywood, didn’t send stories to the magazine. At the end of the war Annie appeared again in The Saturday Evening Post. Her fans were anxious to know how she spent the war.
They meet up with her on the Puget Sound. Annie is outraged. She’s been rebuffed by the Navy.
“I axed the Navy to take me,” yells Tugboat Annie. “Me, who knows ships and the sea like the inside of me hat. ‘Ye’re a woman,’ they says.”
Later in the story, she discovers that women are being recruited into the WAVES, so she applies again. She’s rejected again.
“’You’re too old,’ they says!” relates Annie disdainfully.
Operator Parker experienced a variation on Annie’s lament. “They tell me, ‘You’re too young. You don’t have the experience,’” she says from the deck of the tug, Nokomis.
“Some companies say they’d rather have guys of any age than hire a woman,” Parker says. “This attitude is still out there, but it’s not out in the open. It’s still a fight to work.”
Parker graduated from Maine Maritime Academy. She looks younger than her 30 years. Her long chestnut hair hangs in a pony tail.
“I love tinkering around the engine room,” she says. “I enjoy working on boat engines, taking them apart, repairing them, trouble shooting.”
She holds a third mate’s license and is also a member of MMP. Her first jobs were on tankers. She noticed the tugs assisting the ships and fell in love. Tugboats became a passion.
Six months ago Parker gave birth to Mary Rose. Motherhood adds another dimension to the problems of a seafarer. The first snag is unemployment. When it became obvious that Parker was pregnant, she lost her operator’s job. After Mary Rose was born, Parker’s job prospects became more problematic. She’s a single mother.
In the last couple of months Parker has put the baby in a basket and climbed into the wheel house.
“I’ve done a few jobs since she was born. One of them was 12 hours, the other 32,” she says.
Parker is nursing Mary Rose, but when the baby grows older, she hopes to find child care, although it won’t be easy.
“If I hire somebody to watch my daughter for six hours, and go to a job and find out I’ve got to work 12 or 32 hours more, I’ve got to inform my child care provider. ‘Oh, it’s not six hours you need to watch my daughter, it’s 32.’” she says. “People don’t put up with that.”
Mary Rose has been toted on and off tugboats all her short life. She plays with toy tugboats in her bath and sleeps with a stuffed tugboat by her side. A good-natured baby, she seems delighted by the churning of diesel motors.
Before Mary Rose was born, Parker bought a WWII tugboat she plucked from the scrap heap. In its prime the old tug, Nokomis tried vainly to squelch the fires of Pearl Harbor after the attack. Nokomis had been neglected for years, left to rot in the mud flats in San Francisco. Parker bought her at auction for 50 bucks.
“I thought a piece of history like this needs to be preserved. It’s too important to end up in the scrap pile,” says Parker.
She believes the engines on Nokomis will fire up once more after a little tinkering.
“Nokomis has a diesel electric plant,” she says. “I’ve worked on diesel tugs on the bay, but diesel electric is a completely new kind of plant to learn. It’s cool!”
Mary Rose squeals in her carrier on deck as she eyes sea gulls. Nearby Parker inspects chipped paint in the galley. Not long after saving Nokomis, Parker heard of another WWII tug in distress. This one was named Wenonah and her engines actually work. Last week Parker and a group of supporters piloted the old tug from Newport Beach in Southern California up the Pacific Coast to berth her next to Nokomis.
“Once we’ve restored the Nokomis to her WWII state, we’ll offer educational programs on her,” she says.
Parker plans for her tugs to assist the historic Liberty and Victory ships in San Francisco Bay. She’ll offer to carry ashes of fallen veterans to their burial at sea. Parker formed a non-profit organization to maintain her boats and calls it “The Historic Tugboat Education and Restoration Society.”
“I’m currently trying to buy a charter business,” she says picking up a wrench from the floor plates. “I’m wheeling and dealing and talking creative financing with a bank this afternoon.” Glancing at Mary Rose, she adds, “As long as I’m the boss, she can come with me wherever I go.”
Across the bay in the Oakland, Captain Pinto readies for work. She’ll be assisting a mammoth container ship down the Estuary. She and the ship’s pilot will work together in a call and response duet. For a while, Pinto studied to become a pilot herself.
Brushing her blonde hair from her face she says, “I think I’ve shown other women it’s possible to have a career on the water.” For years Pinto felt alone. There was only one other woman operator on the bay. “Nowadays when women come on ships, it’s not a big deal. It’s no longer shocking.”
When Tugboat Annie pushed freighters, it was shocking. Her pluck delighted a generation of readers. When men tossed verbal abuse at her, she gave as good as she got. Annie loved her job. She loved being boss. “I’ve been referred to as ‘Tugboat Annie,’” says Parker. “For a while I didn’t know what it meant.”
Parker looked on the Internet for information and then started buying Tugboat Annie stories.
“I think her image, even for my generation, is a good one,” Parker says. “Being female in a man’s world isn’t easy. Tugboat Annie wasn’t willing to lie down and die—and neither am I.”
Reflecting a moment, she adds, “Now, when I’m called Tugboat Annie I feel it’s complimentary. Annie drove boats because she loved it. I’m here for the same reason. There’s nothing I love better than to captain a tugboat.”
Tugboat Annie would be proud. Following her lead is a new generation of daughters. And in a basket on the deck of the Nokomis sits Mary Rose, grasping a toy boat. Maybe Mary Rose sees what we cannot—a big lady at the wheel, who beckons with a hearty laugh to come race the wind. In a few years Mary Rose may do just that, and give Tugboat Annie a run for her money.
Writer Maria Brooks, is looking for information on women seafarers working on ships before WWII for a television documentary about women in the maritime industry. If you know old timers who might want to participate, please contact Brooks at maritimewomen@aol.com
