The T.J. Potter was a steamboat that operated in the Northwestern United States. The boat was launched in 1888. Her upper cabins came from the steamboat Wide West. This required some modification, because the T.J. Potter was a side-wheeler, whereas the Wide West had been a stern-wheeler. The boat's first owner was the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.

Design and construction[link]

drawing of T.J. Potter by Samuel Ward Stanton, 1895

The T.J. Potter, commonly referred to as the Potter, was built entirely of wood by a firm owned by John F. Steffan. She was built for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.^[1] She was launched at Portland, Oregon in 1888. She was propelled by two non-condensing steam engines, with 32" cylinders, each with an eight foot stroke, and generating (together or singly is not sure) 1,700 horsepower. Her single boiler and firebox were built in 1887 by the Pusey & Jones Company, of Wilmington, Delaware. The boiler was 32 feet (9.8 m) long with a diameter of 84 inches (2,100 mm). Her gross tonnage was 659 and her net tonnage was 589. As built, the Potter was 230 feet (70 m) long, with a beam of 35 feet (11 m), and depth of hold of 10¹⁄₂ feet.^[2] Her U.S. registry number was 145489.^[1]

Construction of the Potter was supervised by Captain James W. Troup, one of the most famous steamboat captains in the West. On May 26, 1888, the same year the Potter was built, Captain Troup had brought the sternwheeler Hassalo over a six-mile (10 km) stretch of rapids called the Cascades of the Columbia during low water, reaching speeds of 50 miles (80 km) an hour in the process.^[3]

When built, the Potter had a reputation as one of the fastest and most luxurious steamboats in the Pacific Northwest:

Operation on Puget Sound[link]

T.J. Potter in center, with smaller sidewheel steamer North Pacific on left, at Seattle, Washington, 1891

Panorama of Seattle waterfront in 1891, with T.J. Potter at Oregon Improvement Company pier

Steamboats at the Union Pacific Dock in Seattle, Washington, June 6, 1891. Multnomah appears to be the vessel closest to the dock. The larger vessel appears to be T.J. Potter.

The first season after she was launched, her owners put her on the tourist run from Portland to Astoria, Oregon. In August 1888, the Potter made the run from Portland to Astoria in 5 hours and 31 minutes.^[2] By comparison, the fastest steamboat on the Columbia River at that time was the Potter's competitor Telephone, which on July 2, 1887 had made the 105-mile (169 km) run from Portland to Astoria in 4 hours and 34 minutes.^[5]

After that, she was transferred to Puget Sound to compete with another famous steamboat, the Bailey Gatzert, which was owned by the Seattle Steam Navigation and Transportation Company. The Bailey was a stern-wheeler, and did better in the Sound than the sidewheeler Potter, which rolled from side to side in swells, raising first one paddle wheel then the other out of the water.

Even so, the T.J. Potter was one of the fastest steamboats on Puget Sound, and is reported in 1890 to have bested the famous sternwheeler Bailey Gatzert in a race. The Potter was also reported to have set a record time of 82 minutes on the run from Seattle to Tacoma.^[6] While operating out of Puget Sound, the Potter, along with many other local steamboats, helped fight the Great Seattle Fire of 1889:

Return to Columbia River[link]

Eventually the Potter was transferred back to the Columbia River for good. She was placed on the Portland-Astoria run, where she competed with steamboats owned by the Shaver Transportation Company. The Potter's owners, Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, struck an anti-competitive deal with Shaver Transportation, whereby the Shaver boats, including the Sarah Dixon, would stay off the Portland-Astoria route in return for a monthly subsidy from Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. Other competitors of the Potter on the Portland-Astoria run included Lurline and Georgiana.^[5]

Captain and crew[link]

In 1901, Joe Turner was the captain of the T.J. Potter. Other crew at apparently the same time, but whose positions are uncertain, included Al Gray (Faber, cited below, identifies Gray as captain), Julius Oliver, James Healey, Harry O. Staples, Ed Scott, Fred Ware, Claude Cooper, Wendell Smith, and Henry Hoffman.^[5]

Reconstruction[link]

T.J. Potter following reconstruction in 1901.

This photograph is from an old colorized postcard. The view is towards the west, and shows T.J. Potter pulling away from a landing, probably just before entering the Cascade Locks. Another steamer, a sternwheeler, is in the foreground, this is possibly the Charles Spencer. Coming up to the landing from the west another steamer can be seen, which from the vessel's apparent configuration and the white collar on her funnel, appears to be the Bailey Gatzert. The large crowds on all the steamers are readily visible; this is an excellent depiction of the high point of steamboat operations on the river.

In 1901 the Potter was rebuilt, increasing her length by only a few feet but greatly increasing her weight. Her gross tonnage rose from 650 to 1017 tons, and her net tonnage from 590 to 826.^[1][7] The increased weight cut several knots off her speed. Her wheelhouse was rebuilt, and instead of a flat roof, she had a dome with flagpole. This was unique among Columbia River steamboats.

Following the rebuild (which cost $86,000), the Potter's owners put her on the run from Portland to Ilwaco, Washington for connection with the narrow-gauge Ilwaco Railway and Navigation Company, serving primarily the summer tourist trade.^[8]

Later years and abandonment[link]

The Potter was refurbished in 1910, and continued in operation on the Portland-Ilwaco run.^[8] In the early 1990s, Professor Frederick Bracher recalled riding on the Potter from Portland to Ilwaco as a young child in 1915:

folk art model of the T.J. Potter

Just before the opening of the tourist season in 1916 the Potter was condemned for passenger use.^[8] The Potter was not replaced^[10] on the Portland-Ilwaco run, as there was insufficient passenger traffic to justify putting a new boat on the route.^[8]

The Potter then served as a barracks boat for construction crews until sometime in the early 1920s, when she was abandoned in Youngs Bay near Astoria. She was reportedly burned for her metal,^[5] but this may not be correct. Faber publishes a photograph showing her abandoned, stripped of upper works, but with her hull substantially intact, with large metal components such as her rudder strap intact. (Faber, at page 155).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Photo, remains of the T.J. Potter at Youngs Bay, Oregon, taken July 14, 1957 This photograph shows the typical fate of wooden steam riverine vessels that managed to survive into the age of the automobile, that is, abandoned and rotting on an out of the way beach.
• T.J. Potter at wharf of Oregon Improvement Company, sometime between 1888 and 1901. This photograph shows well the T.J. Potter before reconstruction including the ornate paddlewheel boxes.

T. J. Hooker is an American police drama television program starring William Shatner in the title role as a 15-year veteran police sergeant. The series premiered as a mid-season replacement on March 13, 1982, on ABC and ran on the network until May 4, 1985. The show was then picked up for a further single season by CBS.

The supporting cast includes Adrian Zmed as rookie Officer Vince Romano, Heather Locklear as rookie Officer Stacy Sheridan (season 2 onwards), and Richard Herd as Captain Dennis Sheridan as personnel in the fictional "LCPD" Police Department^[1] Academy Precinct. Towards the end of the show's second season, James Darren became a regular cast member as Officer Jim Corrigan.

The series was created by Rick Husky, who later went on to serve as executive producer of Walker Texas Ranger, and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.

Background[link]

The series was created by Rick Husky who had also worked on The Rookies for Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg. The series was originally to be a reworking of that former cop show, this time called The Protectors. After the pilot, it was decided to focus the series on William Shatner's character and retitle it T. J. Hooker. The series initially set out to give a more "hands on", procedure-based view of police work than some of the more stylized cop shows of the 1970s and 1980s, evident in the very early episodes.

Synopsis[link]

Veteran LCPD detective Thomas Jefferson "T. J." Hooker (William Shatner) saw his partner murdered. The longtime plainclothes officer then returned to the beat as a uniformed sergeant to try and rid the streets of the same type of criminals that were responsible for crimes including his partner's death. In "The Protectors," the series' pilot TV movie, Hooker trained a group of new police academy recruits, including those played by Richard Lawson (All My Children), Brian Patrick Clarke (The Bold and the Beautiful), Kelly Harmon (The Bay City Blues), and Adrian Zmed (Dance Fever). Hal Williams played a senior officer, and Richard Herd made a brief appearance as Captain Dennis Sheridan, Hooker's tough but understanding superior. Back in uniform, Hooker was assigned to train the academy recruits. During most of the series, Hooker was partnered with brash, sometimes hot-headed young rookie Vince Romano (Adrian Zmed). With Romano much his junior, Hooker acted as his mentor both professionally and socially. The age difference generally being the key hook of the partnership, the pair quickly became fast friends and a good team.

Outside of his work, Hooker was divorced as a result of his work putting a strain on his marriage, but was still friendly with his ex-wife, nurse Fran. Hooker was a ladies' man, but was still trying to adjust to being single once again. Lee Bryant was the original actress to portray Fran; the part was later reprised by a different actress.

Hooker's tough, no-nonsense demeanor saw him often clashing with station Captain Sheridan (Richard Herd), but he always got the job done and was highly respected as a result. Working behind the desk at the police precinct, Vicki Taylor (April Clough) was a female officer who usually spent time dodging pick-up comments from Vince Romano. Introduced at the start of the second season was attractive Officer Stacy Sheridan (Heather Locklear), the daughter of Captain Sheridan and Hooker's younger partner-in-command, who attended the police academy and replaced Vicki. Initially brought in to fill Officer Vicky Taylor's shoes, by the end of the season she had progressed to patrolling with Jim Corrigan (James Darren), another veteran cop much in the mold of Hooker.

From the third season onward, Hooker and Romano (Unit 4-Adam-30), and Stacy and Corrigan (4-Adam-16), usually worked closely together to tackle cases. The addition of Corrigan and Sheridan's partnership added an extra dimension to the show, sometimes with whole plots revolving around one or both of them.

For the final season, the series moved from ABC to a late-night slot on CBS. Along with the move, Adrian Zmed chose to leave the series to pursue other projects, leaving Hooker to patrol alone or to generally work as more of a trio with Stacy and Jim, often on undercover work.

With its blend of humor mixed with "on the streets" grittiness, the show proved popular. The first season ranked 28th in the Nielsen ratings, but subsequent seasons failed to repeat the same level of success.

The third season saw a slight revamp (including the theme music being rearranged into a more pop-driven version), with Corrigan set into place as Stacy's partner, Captain Sheridan being dropped into the background (appearing as 'Special Guest Star' in just a few third and fourth season episodes), and stories drifting toward a more straight forward cops-and-robbers fare.

Cancellation and revival[link]

Hooker was canceled by ABC in the summer of 1985, but the series survived when CBS picked up the show and produced new, longer episodes: 17 ninety-minute episodes and one two-hour TV movie titled "Blood Sport". The season begins with Hooker temporarily assigned to the Chicago Police Department and partnered with a young street-wise detective to work mostly drug and gang-related crimes. William Shatner (in his autobiography Up to Now) remarked that this format shift seemed like an attempt to emulate 48 Hrs., with him stepping into the Nick Nolte character. The experiment lasted just five episodes and Hooker ended back up in LA. The 90-minute episodes were shown later at night as part of the CBS "Crime Time After Prime-Time" showcase during the late 1980s/early 1990s. In reruns and international broadcasts, the 90-minute episodes are usually cut to one-hour, and "Blood Sport" is shown in two parts. The TV movie and the penultimate episode were both aired by CBS on May 21, 1986, with the finale one week later on May 28, 1986. The season was done on a much smaller budget, but was filmed in Chicago, for those episodes based there.

US and international syndication[link]

Starting in 2005, the A&E Network re-broadcast the entire series, running one episode per weekday at 4 a.m. It is also available in a shortened format on The Minisode Network^[2] and full length episodes are available on Crackle. Me-TV also airs reruns of the series. The Universal HD Channel started airing episodes in September 2010. On October 9, 2010, the Sleuth network began a 24 hour T. J. Hooker marathon.

In the United Kingdom, the show was originally broadcast by ITV in the 1980s. Most regions broadcast episodes at 7:45pm on Saturday evenings, later in a similar Friday evening slot; Some regions gave it a slot on a different day (southern region TVS, for example, typically ran it on Tuesday evenings), and not all regions broadcast the entire series, with some areas not progessing beyond the third or fourth seasons. Some regions also broadcast the later episodes - particularly those concerning a more adult or violent nature - as part of the night-time line-up during the advent of 24-hour broadcasting in that later 1980s. In 2002, Five ran the whole series through, in a weekday 11 a.m. slot. This run included every episode, although some were edited for content for the daytime slot. In 2009, digital channel Quest aired the series on a daily basis,^[3] although they only hold the rights to show the first three seasons.

In Italy the series started to air in 1983 on Canale 5. After his first run, it was often repeated through the years: first on Italia Uno (late afternoon or in the morning ) and then on Rete4 (in the morning) and Fox Retro (in the evening). Recently, METOO a Sister station of WCIU-TV in Chicago began airing the show in a 2:00pm timeslot.

Main cast[link]

• William Shatner as Sergeant Thomas Jefferson "T. J." Hooker
• Adrian Zmed as Officer Vince Romano (seasons 1–4)
• April Clough as Officer Vicki Taylor (season 1)
• Heather Locklear as Officer Stacy Sheridan (seasons 2–5)
• Richard Herd as Captain Dennis Sheridan (main cast seasons 1–2, occasional special guest star seasons 3–4)
• James Darren as Officer Jim Corrigan (seasons 2–5)

Hooker and Romano's radio call sign for their "black and white" was "4-Adam-30", and radio calls were very similar to those of Los Angeles Police Department, using three bursts of a 900 Hz tone, using LAPD-type radio codes, and the officers acknowledging with roger. The series itself was produced in the Los Angeles area, and the call sign denoted a two-officer unit ("Adam") based in the LAPD's Hollenbeck division ("4"), with "30" as a supervisor unit.

Recurring cast members and notable guest stars[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Shatner's Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy guested in the second season episode "Vengeance is Mine", as well as directing "The Decoy", also in the second season. In addition, both Sharon Stone and Tori Spelling guest-starred in episodes before they were well-known actresses (in Stone's case, it was the fourth season episode "Hollywood Starr", a backdoor pilot for a series that would have starred her, but which never sold^[4]). T. J. Hooker featured many notable character actors in recurring roles throughout the series, including:

• Hugh Farrington as Det. Pete O'Brien (18 episodes, 1984–1986)
• Paul Kent as Corter (6 episodes, 1982–1985)
• Nicole Eggert as Christine "Chrissie" Hooker (T. J.'s daughter) (5 episodes, 1982–1983)
• Lee Bryant as Fran Hooker (4 episodes, 1982–1983)
• Robert Miano as Alex Lucas (4 episodes, 1982–1985)
• Shawn Weatherly as Claudia Cole (4 episodes, 1983)
• Robert Davi as Joseph Picartus (2 episodes, 1982–1984)
• Mickey Jones as Dave Bowman (2 episodes, 1982–1984)
• Jim Brown as Detective Jim Cody (2 episodes, 1983–1984)
• George Cheung as Dr. Coe (2 episodes, 1983–1984)
• Peter Brown as Lt. Drummer (2 episodes, 1983)
• James Hong as Dr. Hong (2 episodes, 1983)
• Alex Rocco as Capt. C. Danza (2 episodes, 1984–1986)
• Scott Marlowe as Marty Lathon (1 episode, "The Ransom", 1985)
• Savannah Smith Boucher as Eadie Morgan (1 episode, "The Two Faces of Betsy Morgan", 1984)
• Mary-Margaret Humes as Lisa Temple (2 episodes, 1985–1986)
• Jerry Lee Lewis as himself (1 episode, "Deadly Ambition", 1982)^[5]
• David Caruso as Jennings (1 episode, "Requiem for a Cop", 1983)
• Trisha Noble as Lorraine Daggert (1 episode, "Carnal Express", 1983)
• Cynthia Cypert as Alice Crane / Grace Tibbetts (2 episode, 1984)

Episodes[link]

William Shatner is the only actor to appear in every episode of the series. Heather Locklear appeared in the second highest number of episode, appearing in 84 of the 90 episodes, after joining the cast's second season.^{[citation needed]}

DVD releases[link]

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released the first two seasons on DVD in Region 1 and 2. No plans have been announced for DVDs of further seasons after the first volume only had moderate sales.

Film[link]

In July 2009, it was announced that T. J. Hooker was set to be adapted into a film. Chuck Russell was said to be in talks to direct, and writing team Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson would script.^[6]

High Definition[link]

Beginning on October 1, 2010, the series was rebroadcast on Universal HD. The original film elements were mastered for high definition, but the program was cropped to a 1.78 aspect ratio to fill the screens of modern televisions.

References[link]

External links[link]

• T. J. Hooker at the Internet Movie Database
• T. J. Hooker at TV.com
• T. J. Hooker at epguides.com
• T.J. Hooker.com