South to Alaska

From the Heartland of America to the Heart of a Dream...
South to Alaska

Born in Oklahoma in 1916, 10-year old Melvin sees a photograph of a cabin deep in the Alaska wilderness in his fourth-grade geography book.  He dreams of living in the "north country" and, nearly fifty years later, builds a 47-foot boat in his backyard and cruises it from Arkansas to Alaska.

Melvin has never been south of the United States border, has never even been on a boat in the open ocean, and has certainly never navigated a homemade boat for thousands of miles in the Caribbean and Pacific Oceans.

"Learn by doing," he says.

Melvin and Cecil Marie aboard the Red Dog, Bellingham, Washington, July 1973. (Photo courtesy of Bellingham Sunday Herald.)

 

 

Building the Red Dog in Arkansas, 1968-1971.

RED DOG LOG - MARCH 27, 1973:  Very rough going. Irving sick and scared witless... laying on couch and looking like a corpse.  Thinks he is going to die.  Thinks we are lost and over by Cuba and thinks they might start shooting any minute.

 Although the launching had not been announced, a crowd of approximately 65 persons gathered at the landing.  The crowd cheered when the boat hit the water and men rushed to help with the ropes.

---Southwest Times Record, Fort Smith, Arkansas, September 28, 1971.


Launching the Red Dog in Arkansas, 1971. 

 

 

 

 

 


 Melvin on the bow of the Red Dog along
Wilkinson Channel, British Columbia,
following Inside Passage to Alaska, 1973.


 Melvin at home on Pennock Island
near Ketchikan, Alaska, 1995.

Melvin Owens’ lifelong dream of living in Alaska begins to materialize in 1968 when, to the astonishment of neighbors and friends, he single-handedly constructs the 47-foot Red Dog in his Arkansas backyard. After launching the boat on the Arkansas River in 1971, he cruises the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico.

For the next year and a half, Melvin's efforts to get the Red Dog from Texas to Alaska turn into a mass of disappointments laced with mechanical problems, bribery and interstate fraud―an accumulation of events that threatens the relationship with his wife of more than thirty years. Eventually, in 1973, Melvin begins a solitary journey along the Caribbean coasts of Mexico and Central America, through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific Ocean to Alaska. Encountering tyrannical port authorities, ocean storms, illness and loneliness, Melvin fears a deadly end before reaching the place of his dreams, and returning to the woman he loves.

A true story of courage and endurance, South to Alaska chronicles Melvin's dangerous 10,000-mile journey through a watery world he knows little about, to get to a world he cannot forget.

  

Building the Red Dog, Hartford,  Arkansas, 1968. Ketchikan waterfront
from Pennock Island, 1993.  


It's a long way from a hillside in Arkansas to Squalicum Harbor.  But the 47-foot
Red Dog chugged into Bellingham Tuesday evening with its lone passenger, skipper Melvin Owens aboard.

                                    ---Sunday Herald , Bellingham, Washington, July 29, 1973.

SOUTH TO ALASKA

by Nancy Owens Barnes

 

 

Other Books by Nancy Owens Barnes

 

 

―Available through online booksellers and your local bookstores―
Copyright 2007 Nancy Owens Barnes
::: I am grateful to my brother Jerry and my late brother Donald for permission and use of a number of their photographs in this website. :::