Legends of Vashon
By Marc J. Elzenbeck
Navy submarines are designed to not be seen, so the recent upswing in surface sightings off West Seattle is noteworthy. In 2025 alone, West Seattle Blog readers reported at least four submarine sightings off Alki, and reports have continued in 2026.
These may be shakedown cruises, mild test runs from Naval Base Kitsap’s retro-fitting programs, or normal maintenance. But stories of Silent Service brushes and incidents around the lower Sound, some officially admitted and most not, were once common. Probably the best story is about the sub hijacked while on active service in order to take a high school sweetheart for a spin around Quartermaster Harbor.
The USS Spinax was getting ready to ship out for an August 1965 deployment to Vietnam. Her captain at the time was Jay K. Davis, who had graduated from Vashon High School’s class of 1947. Known as happy, smart, and a good athlete, he went off to attend Oregon State University and earned his naval commission in 1951.
The bureaucratic details of how Davis later managed to get permission for his diesel sub to visit Vashon are lost, but apparently included mooring at Dockton and inviting the public to come aboard. About 1,000 Islanders were estimated to have taken tours inside.
Some recall Captain Davis stating the visit’s true purpose was to show off to his former high school girlfriend. It seems likely he possessed a dry sense of humor and penchant for mischief. And it stands to reason that a “local boy done good” really enjoyed the opportunity to power an attack-class submarine into the outer harbor and throw open the hatches.
The Captain’s joke may also have been a confession; either way, meeting former teachers and classmates after 18 years must have been a hoot. With dinners ashore, laughs about watching “submarine races,” talk of old times and exotic ports of call.
The United States was still basking in victories and the Navy was at the height of its popularity and professionalism. The Spinax was an old diesel soon to be decommissioned, and bigger nuclear subs like those spotted more recently off Alki Point were taking over. These can run at a depth of 100 meters at 6 knots in complete silence, in fact quieter than the very oceans that hiss around them. Those capabilities in turn de-emphasized need for the Carr Inlet Acoustic Range (on Fox Island, just off Gig Harbor’s southwest corner) to collect sub sound signatures. The facility closed in 1992.
Even so, four years before the facility closed, the USS Sam Houston ran firmly aground off Fox Island in 1988 while undergoing acoustic testing, and had to be helped off by four tugboats, prompting a geography-challenged May 1st New York Times headline, “Atomic Craft Aground Off Washington Coast.”
Local Vashon lore then places a nuclear sub temporarily beaching in Colvos Passage in the early 1990s. An Island family boating in the Passage recalls the unidentified vessel made it off under its own power after frantic exertions. The Navy provides no record, but eyewitness testimony seems accurate enough, and all acoustic testing was coincidentally moved thereafter to Ketchikan, Alaska.
There are also claims of near-capsizings from surprise surfacings and fishing boats dragged by their nets, along with the true story of the USS Sea Devil’s periscope popping up beside a bemused fisherman during a 1951 Navy exercise testing Puget Sound’s harbor defenses.
Mooring another submarine in Quartermaster Harbor for a community party is currently hard to foresee. On the other hand, the Navy is building a lot of new housing out near Kitsap and Bangor, with national shipyards planned to expand. There might be a Vashon High grad or two lurking under the water right now, certifying as sub-deck officers on their way to becoming new captains.
