A Steamship Crashes Into the City Dock
Mechanical failure aboard the 'Umatilla' causes a messy collision with the warehouse at the city's waterfront.
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, as the steamer Umatilla was steaming from the coal chutes around to Ocean dock, her machinery became unmanageable for a moment just at a critical time, so that the engineer was unable to back her when signalled to do so by Captain Wyatt, and the consequence was she ran into the City dock, cutting the wharf and warehouse half in two. Great timbers snapped in twain at her touch. The steamer was not injured in the least. The floor of the wharf was torn off, the roof of the warehouse crushed in and the foundation twisted out of plumb. The damage is estimated at $1,000, which will be paid by the ship. However, it will be like taking money out of one pocket and putting it into another, as the damaged wharf belongs to the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad, which is the property of the Oregon Improvement Company, and the ship belongs to the Pacific Coast Steamship line, which is also owned by the Oregon Improvement Company.
“Great timbers snapped in twain at her touch, just as though they had been so much chalk.”
This collision highlights the monopolistic nature of Seattle's early maritime infrastructure, where a single parent company owned both the ship and the wharf it destroyed. Today, the modern Seattle waterfront reflects a similar consolidation of industrial and corporate interest, though now tempered by public port authority and planning.
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