The Dark of Night Smuggling Ring in Puget Sound
A steamship captain fingers a local agent in a brazen operation to sneak mysterious trunks onto a vessel under the cover of darkness.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
San Francisco, August 2.—There was published today a statement made here recently that interesting and important disclosures, which will lay bare operations of open smugglers alleged to be working through the district around Puget Sound, are expected to be made in the course of the investigation of Captain James Sloan, of the bark Arcturus. When Sloan was arrested, he maintained with great vehemence that the two trunks seized were put on his vessel just before putting to sea. Sloan was examined by a United States Commissioner this morning, and the seizing officers testified, as well as Sloan and one of his personal friends. Sloan has made an affidavit that Alfred Bartlett, the Puget Sound agent for W. J. Adams, the lumber merchant and the manager of a line of tow boats, was the man who shipped the trunks. With two other men, he came alongside of the Arcturus at dead of night and slipped both trunks on board, saying that they would be called for in San Francisco. Sloan is keenly alive to the danger of his position and has telegraphed to Bartlett for him to come forward with an explanation. That gentleman, however, has not sent any reply to the question as to whom the trunks were sent to.
“Sloan is keenly alive to the danger of his position and has telegraphed to Bartlett for him to come forward with an explanation.”
The illicit movement of goods across Puget Sound is a story as old as the territory itself. While the 1880s saw smugglers sneaking trunks onto lumber vessels, today’s headlines focus on the modern echoes of maritime trade, port security, and the persistent struggle to monitor the labyrinthine waterways of the Pacific Northwest.
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