The year was 1929 and the tall lanky fisherman was a blur of movement as he hauled salmon after salmon into his troller.
Fishing was great. Equipment and lines were running smoothly.
He started bringing in a dog line holding the floats. Then it happened.
Block fastenings gave way and the heavy block swung, clipping the fisherman on the jaw. The punch was better than Joe Louis ever threw.
Down went the fisherman. When he awoke he felt numbing pain along his jaw. And he felt something trying to choke him and pull him over the side of the boat.
He reached for his throat and grabbed the dog line that had entangled his neck. He freed himself as he hung dangerously over the gunnels.
Jaw Broken
The fisherman climbed back on the deck and spit out blood and teeth. He could feel his jaw was broken. He knew he'd have to get to a hospital.
In a short time he was heading back to Neah Bay, some 400 miles down the Canadian coast. The suffering man lay in the bottom of the boat steering with his feet. This lasted from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. "Gosh," he thought, "wouldn't an automatic pilot come in handy now."
When he docked in Neah Bay, friends rushed him to Port Townsend hospital. Doctors had to take out a part of the shattered jaw bone. He lost 14 teeth. In time he was back home in Tacoma, still thinking about the automatic pilot idea.
"The Lord had to hit me on the jaw to make me do something I should have done long before," the onetime commercial fisherman, Wood Freeman, 78, said laughingly as he reminisced in his plant this week.
Pilots Go Everywhere
Freeman is founder-president of Metal Marine Pilot, Inc., 2119 S. Mildred St., suppliers of pilots for everything from small outboards to hugh ocean liners the world over.
"I went through a terrific amount of research, night after night," Freeman recalled the pilot development. He experimented.
Back in his boat he made a simple pilot with trolling pole attached to the tiller arm, line and weight. As the vessel would veer, the weight in the water would pull the line, pole, arm, correcting the course.
He developed more effective pilots with a wind vane and electrical contacts for quick correction.
In 1934 Freeman, working in his basement, turned out the first Wood Freeman Automatic Pilot for a customer. Today, 90 per cent of the Pacific Coast and Gulf fishing boats have the Tacoma pilot, Freeman estimates.
Near Airport
The factory moved from the basement to a new 10,000 square foot building on a 10-acre site last June. The firm adjoins Oswald Airport where Freeman has a plane.
The company pilot is Freeman's son, Dr. Robert Freeman, Tacoma physician-surgeon. The doctor, a captain in the Naval Reserve, spent 10 years in the Navy as an aviator. He was also associated with electronics and research while in the service.
With this experience plus his knowledge from earlier studies in engineering, Dr. Freeman, with his father, tackles the intricate design of the pilot's mechanism.
The physician explains the pilot workings thusly.
"The control compass is the brain. The relay unit acts as the nerves. The relay amplifies the brain signal up to where the motor or muscles can turn the steering wheel."
Up to 25 people work in the factory. There are 10,000 Freeman pilots in service around the world now.
The elder Freeman says, "Since I cam to Tacoma (from Florida in1903) I always wanted to make something, sell it on the outside and bring money to Tacoma."
