She was the real-life person on which the fictional character "Tugboat Annie" (originally portrayed on film in 1933 by Marie Dressler) may have been very loosely based.
Thea Christiansen was born on June 8, 1858, in the village of Eidsberg, Østfold, Norway.
[1] She moved to Kristiania (Oslo from 1926) when she was 14 where she met her sister's brother-in-law, Andreas Olsen, a ship's carpenter.
[2] Thea Foss launched the future tugboat firm on the Tacoma waterfront in the summer of 1889.
She started the Foss Launch Company, when she began fixing up rowboats to sell.