The Coffin Captain: A Father, a Son, and the Wreck of the Lily and Maud
Ship carpenters warned Captain Robert Jack he was building his own coffin. Last Sunday night the frail schooner capsized in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the captain and his 23-year-old son went down with her.
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.
A letter was received last night from Lighthouse Keeper C. P. Dyer at Smith Island, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, saying that the sloop Lily and Maud, which capsized last Sunday night at Deception Bay pass, drowned Captain Jack and his oldest son John, who was on the sloop with his father. It was John, not William Foley as was first thought, who had been found on the beach at the island.
The letter was as follows:
"I write to inform you and your readers of the loss of the schooner Lily and Maud of Ballard. Yesterday morning we sighted her close to the southeast side of this island, where she now lies, in three fathoms of water, with just a few feet of her stern out. Her forward portion is on the bottom and she stands at an angle of 18 degrees, her cabin being entirely under water. It is impossible to know yet whether it contains any bodies or not. I have run a line from her to the beach and hope to work her into shallower water, which, if we do, may allow us to reach her cabin at low water tonight.
"Her ballast has shifted, having gone to one side and forward, which holds her head down. She was seen Saturday evening in the straits south of here and probably met with her mishap some time during the severe blow of that night and Sunday. Her anchor went overboard when she capsized, and the cable being fast brought her up when she drifted into shallow water. The top of her mainmast, with the topmast gone, shows out of water a few feet. Her mainsail having worked up to the masthead, we were able to cut it adrift and bring it ashore. We found it double reefed."
It was Capt. Robert Jack and his oldest son John, aged 23, who were drowned in the schooner Lily and Maud; for Foley went only a short distance, got off at Meadow Point and returned to Ballard.
The schooner Lily and Maud was named by Capt. Jack after his two young daughters. It is said that the boat was not strongly built, and some ship carpenters are said to have told Captain Jack he was building his coffin. She was such a frail craft that many thought she was built for sale and not to sail, but Capt. Jack must have considered the boat a staunch one or he would not have gone to sea in her.
“Some ship carpenters are said to have told Captain Jack he was building his coffin.”
The Strait of Juan de Fuca remains one of the most treacherous stretches of water on the coast, and the loss of small working craft was a grim routine of Puget Sound life. The Lily and Maud — named for the captain's own daughters — was a family venture in every sense, and the carpenters' warning that he was 'building his coffin' gives the wreck the weight of Greek tragedy. Today the same waters carry ferries and container ships past Smith Island, still notorious for weather.
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