The Collector’s Trap: A Seattle Customs Scandal

It will be recollected that when Mike Drew was Collector at Port Townsend, the schooner Anne Beck was seized and fined a thousand dollars for violating the revenue laws by not reporting at the custom house within twenty-four hours after her arrival in that port. The captain of the schooner was sailing under a fishing license, which he supposed was sufficient to permit him to lie in any port, as well as to go in and out, without reporting to the custom house. Boscowitz, the owner of the schooner, took an appeal to the Court and the suit is still pending. The owner knew that the judgment was certain, but had reason to believe that the violation of the law being merely technical and committed through ignorance, the Secretary of the Interior would remit the fine whenever judgment was rendered. To guard against this contingency, whereby he would lose his half of the forfeiture, he reported the fine paid, and it accordingly was passed into the public treasury from which it can only be released by act of Congress. He expected to reimburse himself and clear five hundred dollars by the operation, when remission was obtained. When Leander Miller went out of office, he made a report to the Department of the U.S. as to what was pending, among which was that suit of the Anne Beck. On Saturday last, Mr. Wingard received a report by telegraph from the department that the fine had been paid. The owner, by his sharp practice, is now out five hundred dollars, and Boscowitz has nothing to show for that sum but his receipt for that sum on the official records.