The Pirate of Salmon Bay
A local captain confesses to scuttling his own schooner to collect insurance money, narrowly avoiding a death sentence due to a legal technicality.
An act of genuine piracy of the old-fashioned kind came to light yesterday when Capt. F. L. Bangs confessed that he sunk the schooner Mary L. Parker off Race Rocks on December 27, 1893, to obtain $4,500 in insurance on the vessel and cargo. Bangs, who was building a new schooner at Salmon Bay, sought the money to cover his debts. He hired a crew member to bore holes in the vessel's bottom, which were then plugged. Once at sea, he had the plugs knocked out, sinking the ship in 74 fathoms of water. The crew escaped in a rowboat, claiming the ship struck a floating log. An insurance detective from the Fireman's Fund Insurance Company eventually trapped Bangs and his accomplice into confessing by hiding a witness in their hotel room. While federal law mandates the death penalty for scuttling a ship, Bangs narrowly escaped by claiming the ship was owned by Neah Bay Indigenous people—who are not recognized as citizens—meaning the case fell under a lesser statute for conspiracy to defraud, carrying a maximum of ten years in prison.
“I was crazy when I did it. Oh, if I could only have it to do over, but if it was not for my poor wife I would not care.”
This insurance fraud case highlights the grifter culture that permeated the maritime industry in 1890s Seattle, when the city was still building its economic identity. It serves as a grim reminder of how the law was often applied selectively, using the legal status of Neah Bay residents as a loophole to commute a capital crime.
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