Mutiny on the Parthenia
A Norwegian ship captain enlists the help of neighboring vessels to suppress a crew revolt at sea.
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 Norwegian ship Parthenia, Captain Pedersen, arrived at Port Townsend on Friday, twenty-seven days from San Diego. The captain had quite a story to tell regarding the trouble he had with his crew. It appears that while at San Diego, five seamen deserted the ship, and on being arrested and returned on board, they refused duty and worked on the sympathy of the rest of the crew, so that when the captain gave the order to get underway they all refused and mutinied. But the inverted ensign soon brought assistance from the Norwegian barks Ingomar and Guiana, under the direction of the Swedish and Norwegian consul. The five deserters were placed in irons and confined below. The crew from the other vessels got the ship underway, and, in tow of a tugboat, she was soon at sea. Then the crew consented to go to work, and nothing unusual took place for the remainder of the voyage.
“The inverted ensign soon brought assistance from the Norwegian barks Ingomar and Guiana.”
This maritime confrontation reflects a time when Seattle's economy relied almost entirely on the volatility of deep-sea shipping and the labor relations of global crews. Today, the Port of Seattle remains central to our economy, though the scale of conflict has shifted from mutiny on the deck to modern logistical and labor disputes on the docks.
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