Ice-Cut Canoe Tragedy on the River
A dark night and floating ice claim two lives near Langley in a failed river crossing.
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.
Last Saturday night, Alex Murray, Joseph Morrison, Sam Walker, Lawrence Allard, and Peter Belergo started from Langley to go in a canoe from Mr. Morrison's to Mr. Cromarty's. At about 7 o'clock, the party was nearly opposite Koossan's barn. It was dark, and the canoe ran against a thin sheet of floating ice, which cut the frail craft in two and left the whole party struggling in the ice-cold water. Belergo managed to reach the shore, and Morrison and Walker got hold of the broken canoe. Allard was beyond reach, and Murray made an attempt to save him. The two men seem to have got hold of each other and were drowned together. Morrison and Walker clung to the remains of the boat and shouted. Fortunately, their cries were heard by some persons on the opposite side of the river, who rescued them in a very exhausted state. The bodies of Murray and Allard were found on Sunday morning quite close together and both will be buried at Langley today.
“The canoe ran against a thin sheet of floating ice, which cut the frail craft in two and left the whole party struggling in the ice-cold water.”
Travel across Washington's waterways remains a central facet of life in the region, though modern safety standards and infrastructure have moved far beyond the dangerous, informal crossings common in 1884. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the volatile, lethal nature of the river systems that settlers navigated daily.
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