The Midnight Kidnapping of the 'Wasco' Deckhands
A bitter labor dispute on the Seattle waterfront spills into open water as union men board a steamer to abduct non-union workers.
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.
The refusal of Captain Samuel Hoyt to discharge his non-union deckhands on the steamer Wasco led to a desperate movement on the part of some members of the union to kidnap them from on board the boat last night. About 6:30 o'clock, while most of the crew were at supper, about twenty-five or thirty men suddenly boarded the boat and, catching two of the non-union men, Murray and Brunn, carried them bodily and placed them in a ship's boat, which was pulled up alongside, manned by five men, who then rowed away as fast as they could. Captain Hoyt came aboard in the meantime, flourishing a wicked-looking gun that scared all the intruders off, but he was not in time to overhaul the men in the rowboat. The police department was telephoned to and in a few minutes the patrol wagon arrived with Chief Rogers, Lieutenant Sullivan and Detectives Phillips and Cave. It was decided to give chase with the steamer, but the rowboat was in plain sight when the steamer reached Smith's Cove, but before a boat could be lowered and the officers sent out, the fugitives had landed and all took to the woods. Captain Hoyt stated: 'I discharged the union men and secured men in place of them, who suited me very well, and I intend to employ whom I choose.' Dave Russell, the secretary of the union, countered: 'The whole affair is the result of Captain Hoyt's desire to cut down the wages of deck hands. If we allow him to cut down wages the result will be that other boats may soon try to do the same.'
“It is a question of doing this or tying up the boat and throwing all hands idle.”
This 1892 maritime standoff over wage cuts and non-union labor mirrors the ongoing tensions in Seattle’s gig economy and logistics workforce, where the right to organize remains a flashpoint. Smith's Cove, once a quiet spot where fugitives could melt into the woods, is today the site of the bustling Port of Seattle cruise ship and container terminals.
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