Drowning and Smuggling in Port Townsend
Court business is quiet, but a sailor goes missing, a steward is drowned, and a smuggler is fined in the latest local update.
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.
Court adjourned this morning. Very little business has been done this term. Lawrence Kelly, found guilty of smuggling, was fined $500, the severest punishment inflicted on any one this session. Patrick Kane, steward of the surveying schooner Ernest, fell overboard from a boat at Irondale while going off to the vessel, and was drowned. He was a native of Ireland, and about 30 years of age. A sailor named Sweeney, belonging to the schooner Carrie Hayden, has been missing for some days, and it is supposed he is drowned.
“Lawrence Kelly, found guilty of smuggling, was fined $500, the severest punishment inflicted on any one this session.”
Port Townsend was a major maritime gateway in 1883, and its newspapers frequently carried the grim, routine hazards of life on the water. The contrast between the 'quiet' court session and the loss of life at sea reflects the precarious nature of early regional industry.
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