The ghosts of Tacoma’s waterfront during the age of sail still wander along the Foss Waterway–a stretch of boardwalk here, barnacled granite rip rap there, the old decking for Municipal Dock in the shadow of the Morgan Bridge and the steamshovel dredged waterway itself, cut to the length of a four masted windjammer so its helmsman could hoist a head sail at its mooring, pivot on its stern line and sail north onto Commencement Bay unattended by a tugboat.

But by far the best lens into Tacoma’s seaport past was on the camera of Wilhelm Hester, a young German immigrant and itinerant photographer who specialized in documenting sailing ships and their international crews. His best work was produced between 1893 and 1906 focusing on the Tacoma, Seattle and Port Blakely waterfronts with sojourns to San Francisco (where he created rare documentary images of Chinatown) and Alaska during the gold rush.

Hester viewed his subjects through a large format 8 by 10 inch glass plate negative camera which permitted him to correct the lens curvature seen in smaller cameras so the rigging and lines of the tall ships were visually straight and accurate. The large format imagry also let him focus in on the faces and fine details of life abord a merchant sailing vessel during the Victorian period. His skills at portrature and composition are timeless and they were essential in selling his photographs to both captains and crew.

And then, back on ship, there were the portraits, where captain and crew were gathered in their best cloths for a formal record of their Tacoma visit, suitable for wall hanging. Once the terms were set, Hester would compose his subjects, usually on deck with daylight and sharp focus giving each face a sense of character and perhaps a bit of heroics reinforced by the scale and loft of the surroundings. His photographs are masterful for their details, the calm expressions of skilled sailors in their element, the confident stance of a sea catain with his glass or the domestic touch of a sea dog curled up on the deck.

Wilhelm Hester unexplainably left the craft he was so gifted at in his early 30’s. While he continued to take pictures most of his life he and his brother Ernest moved into real estate speculation. In 1907 he closed his photographic studio on the top floor of the Bernice Building on Pacific Avenue, a peculiar office building full of detective agencies, lady lawyers, spice and tea dealers, artists and “international trade agents”. By 1929 Hester was reputedly worth a quarter of a million dollars. He lost it all in the Depression but then rebuilt a portfolio of income properties and lived out his life in a small mansion on lower Capitol Hill overlooking Lake Union. With the same precision and descerning eye he used in his photographs, Wilhelm spent his later years accumulating objects like a collection of the flotsam of his memory.

When he died in 1947, the rooms of his house were filled with shelves, boxes and barrels of artifacts, gadgets and instruments. In a barrel were 58 alarm clocks in a nest of parts, movements and dials. In another a collection of bird cages and women’s feathered hats. And in another his cameras and more than a thousand glass plate negatives which make up the Hester Collection at the University of Washington Special Collections Library.

Perhaps the most displayed and discussed photograph ever made by Wilhelm Hester was his portrait of the doomed crew of the British four masted bark Andelana taken on January 14, 1899. Later that night at approximately 2:30 a.m. the vessel was caught in a violent squall while sitting empty at anchor in Commencement Bay. The steel hulled ship sank in 200 feet of water with all hands lost. Here is the haunting photograph.