The St. Paul was a three-masted clipper ship built in Maine in 1874. She made several trips around Cape Horn to the west coast of the United States. By 1930, she was no longer a working ship and, in 1934, was turned into a museum docked on the shores of Ballard. Less than a decade later, the St. Paul was towed to Oyster Bay on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where she became part of a breakwater. The artist, Kathleen Houlahan (1887-1964), was born in Winnipeg, Canada, and grew up in Pasadena, California. She moved to Seattle in 1901 to attend the University of Washington. She also studied art in Europe, California, Washington, D.C., and New York. She had a love for the Pacific Northwest and, for her landscape paintings, she often went by pack horse into the Cascade range, and also visited other sites including the San Juan Islands, the Hood Canal, and the Neah Reservations. The Museum of History & Industry has several Houlahan works, including two children's portraits and one featuring the Bryant lumber mill in Seattle.