The Midnight Landing at Smith's Cove
When dozens of Chinese laborers were smuggled into Seattle via a frigid landing at Smith’s Cove in 1892, a frantic, city-wide pursuit ensued.
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.
Eighteen Chinese men, smuggled into Seattle from British Columbia on Friday night, were captured Saturday and placed in the county jail. It is believed they were part of a group of nearly forty who landed on the sand spit at the mouth of Smith's Cove from a sloop manned by white smugglers. A local man living near the cove encountered the group at daybreak and was frightened by the sudden appearance of the men, who fled into the underbrush.
By Saturday morning, the news had spread. Deputy United States Marshal Mudgett and Lieutenant Sims searched the sand spit, finding only abandoned cabins and heaps of clothing and baggage. A bearded man in a yellow oil coat reported that the smugglers forced the men to jump overboard into ice-cold water up to their waists to wade ashore.
As the search intensified throughout North Seattle, police began arresting individuals who appeared wet and muddy. Officers intercepted men wandering aimlessly near Third Street and even met a car from Ballard to apprehend a man who had jumped off. One captured individual was found wearing seventeen shirts and eleven coats—his entire wardrobe carried on his back. By noon, after a raid on a laundry at the corner of West and Lenora streets, ten more men were secured. The detainees, possessing addresses for Chinese firms across the U.S., were held for a hearing before a United States commissioner.
“One of them had on seventeen shirts and another guarded against wintry blasts by wearing eleven coats and seven pairs of trousers. They had their wardrobes on their backs.”
This 1892 report highlights the brutal reality of the Chinese Exclusion Act era, where laborers were forced into dangerous, clandestine entry methods while authorities utilized local informants and street-level policing to criminalize them. The 'Smith's Cove' location mentioned is now a major industrial and transit hub in Seattle, a stark reminder of how the geography of labor and immigration has been reshaped over the last 130 years.
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