Tragedy in Willapa Bay
A sailor vanishes into the wake of a schooner as the industry of the sea demands a heavy price.
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 lumber schooner Maid of Orleans, of San Francisco, lost one of her sailors overboard last Friday morning as she was being towed from the Sunshine mill to South Bend. The man was amidships taking in the fenders while the rest of the crew were forward. It is supposed that he reached over too far and lost his balance. The crew heard his cries, but the vessel was being towed at a rapid rate by the tug Coleman, and the man went down in the wake of the vessel before a boat could be lowered. Nothing is known of the man except that his name, according to the ship's books, was W. T. Mason, though it is suspected the name is fictitious.
“The man went down before he could be reached.”
Willapa Bay remains a hub for the timber industry today, though modern safety protocols for maritime workers are vastly improved from the era of wooden schooners. The anonymity of the victim, 'W. T. Mason,' speaks to the transient and often precarious nature of seafaring work that defined the early Northwest economy.
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