Streetcar Plunges into Seattle Waterfront
An electric car derails on the North Seattle waterfront, sliding into the tide flats and impaling a passenger on pier pilings.
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.
A car on the West Street and North End Electric road jumped the track on the boulevard on the North Seattle waterfront about 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon and rolled over into the tide flats with its twenty-three passengers, the motorman, and conductor. The car, No. 5, was going toward Ballard in charge of C. E. Dill, the motorman, and W. J. Peters, the conductor. It had just reached the switch near the former site of Johnson mill when it was backed down to a sidetrack on the side of the trestle nearest the water. On reaching the switch, the crew took the trolley off the wire and pushed the car into the side track. Dill was about to put the trolley back on, but the switch seems to have been clogged; the front wheels remained on the main track while the rear wheels went on the side track. The car rolled over sideways, broke through the fence, and fell into the bay, which was about fourteen feet below the boulevard and covered with six feet of water. David Darville suffered the most serious injuries, as one of the piles from the bay floor crashed through the window and crushed in every rib on his left side. His recovery is doubtful. The other passengers, including three women, smashed the windows to escape, and were rescued by the crew.
“Without giving a thought to their own injuries, Dill and Peters set to work to rescue the prisoners.”
This accident occurred during the era when Seattle's streetcar lines were rapidly expanding across the city's treacherous, re-graded, and pile-supported waterfront. Today, the Seattle waterfront has been transformed from an industrial rail-and-timber landscape into a massive public promenade, but the danger of commuting in a city defined by its steep hills and shifting shoreline remains a recurring theme in local transit history.
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