The Tragic End of Ferryman Henry Smith
A lonely death on the Duwamish River captures the precarious reality of life in early Seattle.
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.
On Sunday afternoon, an Indian boy passing near the ferry on the Duwamish River, near the race course, saw the ferryman, Henry Smith, holding on to his boat with blood running out of his mouth. In a few moments he fell down and the boy went for help. Mr. Bigelow and Mr. Smith went to the place pointed out by the boy, but when they reached there, life was extinct. Dr. J. Settle, the Coroner, held an inquest on the body on Monday and found that the deceased was a native of Sweden, aged about 45 years, and that he came to his death by bleeding from the lungs.
“The boy went for help. Mr. Bigelow and Mr. Smith went to the place pointed out by the boy, but when they reached there, life was extinct.”
Henry Smith’s lonely death on the banks of the Duwamish mirrors the industrial isolation and hazards faced by workers in 19th-century Seattle. Today, the Duwamish remains a site of contested labor and environmental history, shifting from a vital transit artery to a Superfund site still grappling with the legacies of the city's rapid expansion.
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