Steven J. Barker was born in Seattle, WA, educated there and obtained a Ph.D. in Scandinavian Literature from the University of Washington in 1980.  After a 46-year career as a corporate banker, Dr. Barker served on the boards of the National Nordic Museum, Tolt Historical Society at Carnation and Snoqualmie Valley Historical Society and Snoqualmie Valley Museum in North Bend, WA.  As a writer, in 1980, he published his doctoral dissertation, WALLENBERG AND HIS ENGLISH CONTEMPORARIES:  A STUDY IN AFFINITIES, comparative literature study of a Swedish chaplain’s comical travel book, published in 1781.  Dr. Barker and  Jack M. Russell, Jr. co-authored the book, STEAMBOATS ON THE SNOQUALMIE, published in 2022. This book gave an account of the historical steamboats in Snoqualmie, Snohomish and Skykomish river valleys of Western Washington State.
 

Jack M. Russell, Jr. was born in 1945, attended public schools in Seattle where he met co-author Steven J. Barker in 5th Grade.  They became life-long friends with a special interest in steamboats and especially steam sternwheelers.  Jack first developed an interest in steamboats when his grandparents gave him a copy of the book, Ships of the Inland Sea, for Christmas in 1957.  This led to his expanding a collection of a wide variety of books, magazine and newspaper articles on steamboats, and eventually to building steam-powered working scale models of the Skagit River steam sternwheelers, the SKAGIT CHIEF and the SKAGIT BELLE, when he was 13 years old.  His friend Steve constructed an electric powered working scale model of the Skagit River steam sternwheeler, the E. G. ENGLISH, at the same time.

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​In 1963, Jack with the skilled assistance of his grandfather, John Russell, built a 30-foot wooden steam sternwheeler, the OLYMPIC.  It was propelled by a Semple twin expansion steam engine, via chain drive to a paddle wheel, with steam raised in a 10-hp. fire tube, oil fired vertical boiler.  Jack and his father, Jack M. Russell, Sr. enjoyed many joyful hours on the OLYMPIC, with the most notable trips of up the Sammamish Slough, Mercer Slough and around Mercer Island in Lake Washington as well overnight voyages up to the North Fork of the Skagit River and up the Stillaguamish River.  His friend, Steve, often accompanied Jack and his father, and typically attended to the steam engine and boiler under way.  Several years ago, Jack sold the OLYMPIC to a steamboat enthusiast friend, who takes the vessel out on Lake Whatcom in Bellingham, WA, from time to time.
Jack realized the fulfillment of a long-held dream of running a business that was also his hobby when he purchased a 68-foot diesel sternwheeler passenger vessel in Newport Beach, CA in 2003.  He had the vessel trucked North to Seattle, where it was transformed into a West Coast historical design of replacing twin stacks with a single stack and installing an authentic steam whistle to operate on compressed air plus authentic painting and pilot house configuration. The vessel, the CHRISTINE W., continues to operate successfully today engaged in charter service, based at Fishermen’s Terminal in Seattle.  The CHRISTINE W. is a common sight in Seattle particularly in the Summer months – a gleaming, white and black sternwheeler majestically powering through the waves, filled with passengers, enjoying food and drink, taking in narrated sight-seeing tours of Lake Union and Lake Washington.  
 

Steven J. Barker and his wife, Kelly, reside in rural Duvall, WA in their log house.  He was born in 1945 in Seattle, attended Seattle public schools and graduated from the University of Washington with several degrees included a Ph.D. in Scandinavian Languages in 1980.  While at graduate school, he wrote a doctoral dissertation, WALLENBERG AND HIS ENGLISH CONTEMPORARIES: A STUDY IN AFFINITIES, a comparative literature study of a Swedish Chaplain’s comical travel book, published in 1781.  In this book a young man of the cloth crudely critiqued crew members, unabashedly berated the appearance and virtue of women in each port visited and reveled in describing bizarre, coarse ship happenings  during a one and one-half year voyage from Sweden to China and return aboard a Swedish East India Company schooner, the Finland.  From an early age of six years old in 1951, Mr. Barker became fascinated with all kinds of boats but especially steam sternwheelers. One fine summer day of that year, his great uncle introduced him to the sight and sound of the SKAGIT CHIEF, a 165 -foot Skagit River steam sternwheeler, smoke billowing, rising from its stack, paddle-wheel churning, as it stately glided by his family’s summer cabin at Sandy Point, Whidbey Island, Washington.  Memory of that experience ignited his fascination with local steamboats that ultimately culminated in the writing of this book. 
After retiring in 2015 from a 46-year career as a banker, his good friend since Grade School days, Jack M. Russell, Jr., and he started researching the history and seeking photos of steamboats, bridges, and place names of the Snoqualmie, Skykomish and Snohomish Rivers.  Although this book can serve as an outline of the step-by-step Euro-American settlement of the river valleys, its main purpose was to shed light on the role of steam navigation in this settlement.  It focuses on the practical, graceful design of the steamboats, their outlay of durable machinery and equipment, the resourcefulness of their skippers facing all sorts of emergencies and obstacles in high and low water conditions, and the striving to meet set schedules but still calling on way ports in route to satisfy the needs of communities, freight and passenger customers.  These captains and crew were brave men who sometimes did not survive the trip.  Their arrival at all manner of wharves, docks and river banks often gave rise to settlers’ celebrations and relief that family and friends had a safe delivery in the still not quite tamed frontier of those times.