Fireboat Battles Blazing Mill on the Tide Flats
McMaster's shingle mill, a sprawling wharf-side structure, is lost to a massive fire as the city's fireboat struggles to maneuver through a congested waterway.
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.
P. H. McMaster's shingle mill and residence at the corner of Railroad Avenue and Water Street, south of the city, were burned last evening between 6:40 and 8 o'clock, involving a loss of about $13,000, with insurance of half that amount. The fireboat was the only piece of apparatus that could get near the fire, and in making the run she had to push the stern of a steamer away from the mouth of the fireboat's slip before getting under headway. The mill was a one-story, irregular building, covering the greater part of a wharf at the southern extremity of the network in the southern part of the city, built over the water. The mill had a capacity of 100,000 shingles a day. The fire was discovered at about 6:40 o'clock by Night Watchman Thomas Richards in the west drying kiln. The engineer and two shingle packers made an effort to control the fire with a small hose, but found the task hopeless. Capt. McAllep's fireboat had to push the big hull of the City of Seattle, which was coaling without steam, out of the way to reach the scene. From the time the fireboat stream was put on, the progress of the fire was checked, but the mill was then completely wrecked and McMaster's house was enveloped in flames. Chief Hunt tried to get on a good stream from the nearest water plug, but the line measured 1,800 feet, likely the longest ever laid in the city.
“The fireboat was the only piece of apparatus that could get near the fire, and in making the run she had to push the stern of a steamer away from the mouth of the fireboat's slip before getting under headway.”
The 'tide flats' of 1893, once home to these precarious, flammable structures built over the water, were eventually filled in to create the industrial SODO district we know today. The struggle to coordinate fire response among tightly packed maritime infrastructure mirrors the city's ongoing challenges with dense, interconnected urban development.
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