The Beachcomber and the Princess
A Canadian man is jailed after a gruesome discovery near Victoria harbor, linked to an elopement with a Tahitian princess.
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.
Jack Boyd, a Canadian beachcomber, is in the Port Townsend city jail under suspicion of the murder of Edward Hesse, a young bricklayer who eloped from the city last summer with a South Sea Island princess named Louise, daughter of a Tahitian king. Last winter, a cabin near Evans' slaughterhouse was robbed, and a large nickel-plated .41-caliber pistol was taken; suspicion pointed to Hesse, who left the city in a sloop. Boyd later reported Hesse had accidentally drowned near Marrowstone Point. Police Chief Hickman, however, discovered Boyd sold the stolen pistol to a storekeeper named Fisher; the weapon's chambers were empty and showed fresh powder burns. On June 12, a corpse in an advanced state of decomposition, with its throat cut and three bullet holes in its back, was found near the entrance of Victoria harbor. The pistol has been positively identified as the one stolen from the cabin, and Chief Hickman believes the body to be that of Hesse.
“The face and limbs were badly disfigured. From remnants of the clothing, height and weight, Chief Hickman believes the corpse was that of Hesse.”
Port Townsend and the surrounding waters have long been home to stories of maritime isolation and illicit departures. This case, blending international intrigue—the 'Tahitian princess'—with local labor-class crime, captures the transient, often dangerous nature of life in the Puget Sound basin during the 1890s.
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