By Colleen Smith Armstrong

A historic schooner that many locals have seen navigating island waters for years ran aground in Wasp Passage today. No injuries were reported.

Around noon, the 133-foot schooner Adventuress struck a rock. The Coast Guard, Vessel Assist and the state ferry Sealth went to the scene. The Sealth and Vessel Assist removed all 27 passengers and crew safely from the vessel.

Coast Guard Air Station Port Angeles launched an MH-65C Dolphin helicopter crew to the scene as well as a rescue boat crew from Coast Guard Station Bellingham.

The Adventuress is owned by Sound Experience, a Puget Sound-based environmental and youth leadership organization that runs programs aboard the wooden schooner.

The Coast Guard will conduct an investigation into the cause of the grounding, which is unknown at this time. No pollution has been reported.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted a Coast Guard spokeswoman as saying the schooner sustained no apparent hull damage but ran aground fairly hard.

The Adventuress was built in 1913 as a luxury schooner for John Borden II of Chicago, founder of the Yellow Cab Company. “On her first trip, she sailed all the way down to and through the Straits of Magellan and then up to arctic waters so Borden and his companions could hunt — unsuccessfully — for bowhead whales,” according to Sound Experience’s Web site.

For 35 years, she was a pilot boat off California’s Farallon Islands. She served the Coast Guard, guarding San Francisco Bay, during World War II. She was beached for 10 years near Sausalito and was vandalized. About 1960, she was brought to Lake Union and began use as a sail-training vessel.