The Captain Who Was Dredged for by Mistake
A tugboat captain vanishes for a night, prompting his concerned friends to begin dragging the bay for his body—only for him to stroll back into town while they were still at work.
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.
Capt. Bion B. Whitney, of the tug Queen City, who had been missing since Wednesday evening and was thought by his friends to have been robbed, murdered, and his body thrown in the bay, turned up last evening all safe and sound. He had merely been up White River showing a prospective buyer some property which he owns. When he returned, he found his friends mourning his demise and dredging the bay for his body, and he was also much surprised to read a lengthy obituary of himself in an evening paper. Capt. Whitney said last evening that when he left his friend, Capt. Edward Cantillion, Wednesday, he intended to go right down to the tug, but on the way he met a man who wanted to see about buying a portion of his ten-acre tract of land on White River. He went home with the man, spent the night, and yesterday morning they drove out to see the property. Capt. Cantillion had notified the police and superintended a crew of men dredging the bay near Stetson & Post's wharf. When Whitney walked into the Gordon Hardware Company store and found his friends in tears and a crew dredging for his corpse, his feelings can better be imagined than described.
“Whitney could not at first understand why his friends greeted him so demonstratively and affectionately, and when he arrived at his tug and found a force of men dredging the bottom of the bay for his corpse, his feelings can better be imagined than described.”
This mix-up underscores how dangerous the industrial waterfront was in the 1890s; men often vanished into the deep water of the Puget Sound, making the assumption of foul play or accidental death a reasonable fear for one's peers. Today, waterfront activity is heavily regulated and monitored, making a 'missing person' report less likely to escalate to a search for a body in less than 24 hours.
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