Tragedy on the Quillayute Coast
The Chilean bark Leanor strikes rocks in a fierce storm, claiming the lives of the captain, his wife, and four crew members.
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 first disastrous shipwreck in several years on the Washington coast occurred three miles north of the Quillayute River early Wednesday morning when the Chilean bark Leanor, of Valparaiso, went ashore and was totally wrecked. Capt. Meyer, his wife, and four seamen were drowned. The remainder of the crew floated ashore on wreckage and made their way to Neah Bay. The Leanor was caught in a westerly storm on Tuesday night, causing the captain to lose his bearings. When the bark struck the rocks, it broke into three pieces. Capt. Meyer caught his wife in his arms and attempted to swim ashore, but both were lost in the surf. A searching expedition later recovered the body of the captain's wife.
“The weather was bitter cold and the westerly storm drove frightfully big seas over the ill-fated vessel.”
Shipwrecks were a common, harrowing reality of life on the rugged Olympic Peninsula in the 1890s. Today, the Quillayute Needles and the surrounding coastline are part of the Olympic National Park, a protected wilderness that keeps this maritime history isolated from modern development.
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