The Steamship City of Seattle Runs Aground in Thick Fog
A dangerous collision with another vessel narrowly avoided, but the steamer finds itself high and dry on a Point Ringgold sandy beach.
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 steamer City of Seattle went ashore on Point Ringgold at 12:20 this morning during a dense fog. The steamer was on her usual trip from Seattle to Whatcom via Port Townsend, running under a slow bell when the signal of a passing steamer, the City of Puebla, was heard. To avoid a collision, the City of Seattle sheered toward the shore. Capt. Nichols, thinking he had cleared Point Ringgold, changed the steamer's course, only to have the vessel strike a sandy beach. The vessel did not strike with great force, but stuck fast. Passengers remained calm, and the Wildwood later brought them to Port Townsend. An inspection revealed the vessel uninjured, though listed to port at an angle of about 30 degrees.
“The passengers were calm and accepted the predicament with good humor.”
Marine travel in the Sound was fraught with danger long before modern navigation tech, as witnessed by the frequent grounding of ships in our notoriously thick fog. Today, ferry routes like the Seattle-Bremerton run utilize advanced radar to avoid the very fate the City of Seattle met on the shores of Point Ringgold.
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