Boiler Explosion Wrecks Steamer Josephine Near Port Susan
A local steamer bound for the Skagit River suffers a boiler explosion near Fort Susan, leaving several dead and the vessel a total wreck.
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.
Yesterday morning the steamer Josephine left Seattle for the Skagit, having a full freight and about twenty passengers. Nothing was heard of her until 7 o'clock last evening, when a dispatch from T. S. Adams, the telegraph operator at Port Susan, arrived: 'The Josephine blew up today, and is a total wreck. Some lives lost. Turner, Bailey, the steward, fireman and some passengers, but cannot tell how many.' According to Frank Murray, a deck-hand on board at the time, the disaster occurred while the boat was about a mile from shore near the 'potlatch house' at Fort Susan. The boiler exploded with a sound like 'forty-nine cannons,' the crown-sheet passing through the pilot house and carrying the wheelman into the air. The steamer split in two and the boiler-containing section sank in 80 feet of water. The wounded were rescued and transported to the steamer Politkofsky, which arrived shortly after to bring them back to Seattle.
“The scene was terrible and indescribable. The wounded women and men were groaning and crying, and the uninjured were rushing frantically around the wreck.”
Steamboat disasters were a hauntingly common risk of the early Puget Sound maritime economy, often resulting from aging, repurposed boilers and lack of strict oversight. This tragedy at Fort Susan mirrors modern debates over industrial safety and infrastructure maintenance in the Pacific Northwest's growing transit networks.
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