The Steamship San Pedro’s Wharf-Crushing Accident
A steamship failed to stop at its Seattle wharf, plowing into the structure and causing thousands of dollars in damage.
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.
The steamer San Pedro, after completing her cargo yesterday, started for the other wharf, going under a slow bell. By some blunder she did not stop, but went head foremost into the wharf, until she brought up in the mud. She cut into the wharf a distance of seventy feet, tearing up the tracks and doing damage that will take $5,000 to repair. A car standing on the track was overturned, and the Welcome narrowly escaped sharing in the wreck. The San Pedro, the steamer that she is, with its hundreds of tons on board, was simply irresistible by anything less solid than the earth itself.
“The San Pedro, with its hundreds of tons on board, was simply irresistible by anything less solid than the earth itself.”
Accidents involving large vessels on Seattle’s industrial waterfront were common in the 1880s as the city frantically built out its maritime infrastructure. Today, while the waterfront is modernized, the intensity of shipping traffic remains a defining, albeit safer, element of the city's economy.
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