The Deadly Foggy Collision at Point No Point
A $126,000 maritime lawsuit pits victims against a coal-carrying steamer after a fatal 1892 collision in the fog.
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.
Responsibility for the Premier-Willamette collision of October 1892, by which four lives were lost, is under consideration by Judge Hanford of the United States court. The case is a libel by Jacob Nelson against the steamship Willamette, owned by the Oregon Improvement Company. The collision occurred on the morning of October 23, 1892, off Point No Point, during a heavy fog. The Willamette ran her bow into the port side of the Premier, killing four people and injuring others. At the time of the accident, the Premier, a passenger boat plying between Victoria and Seattle, was coming from Port Townsend at a speed of fifteen knots despite the dense fog. The Willamette, with 900 tons of coal, was on her way to Tacoma, going at two-thirds speed. The Willamette had sounded a fog signal, but the Premier had not. The total claims filed by the victims and families of the deceased amount to $126,000.
“The Premier had not sounded any fog signal, as it had only a short time before entered the fog bank.”
Maritime collisions were a constant danger for the Puget Sound 'Mosquito Fleet,' the network of steamboats that acted as the region's primary transit system before modern highways. Today, the water is still crowded with ferry and commercial traffic, though radar and modern navigation systems have largely relegated such fatal fog-blind crashes to the history books.
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