Three Fishermen Drowned Off Port Angeles While a Witness Waited Until Morning
A fishing sloop capsized east of Port Angeles. One man clung to the wreck, then swam for shore and vanished; a neighbor had heard the crew shouting for help the night before but did nothing.
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.
PORT ANGELES, July 17.—[Special.]—Three men were drowned last night while sailing in a small sloop nine miles east of this city. J. H. Johnson, August Nelson and John Dippold left the Union Pacific dock yesterday afternoon in a fishing sloop, with the intention of doing work on the spit. As nothing was heard of them this morning a search party was dispatched. In a short time they returned and said that while riding down the beach they had seen the sloop on its beam ends, about 800 feet from shore, and Nelson was sticking to the wreck, endeavoring to push her ashore with a pole. The rescuing party shouted to him that they would secure a boat and come to his aid. Nelson did not reply, but took off his coat and sprang into the water with the evident intention of swimming ashore. He had not gone fifty feet before he sank out of sight. A man on horseback swam to the spot, but the body had disappeared. It is supposed that the others were drowned during the night.
The evening before, Henry Kriepel saw the party a short distance from shore and heard them shout for help, but did not go to their assistance and did not report the matter in town until this morning. Nelson and Dippold were single men and resided here. Johnson leaves a wife and two children and was a brother-in-law of C. E. Mabette, cashier of the First National Bank. Parties are now searching the beach for the bodies.
“He had not gone fifty feet before he sank out of sight.”
Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca remain among the most dangerous cold-water passages in the country. The detail that someone heard cries for help and waited until morning is the kind of bystander failure that still shapes maritime safety campaigns.
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