The Child Who Vanished: A Tragedy on the Columbia Bar
A two-year-old girl was swept overboard from a steam tug in the Pacific Northwest, becoming one of the many unnamed victims of the region's treacherous waters.
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.
Asotin, Dec. 3.—The steam tug Gen. Canby, returning from Shoalwater Bay yesterday, while crossing the Columbia river bar at about one P.M., was struck by a breaker, putting out her fires. The water in rushing through her cabin swept a little two-year-old daughter of Mrs. J. W. Jordan, passenger, of South Bend, out through the cabin window and overboard, and it was never seen afterwards.
A child of Sydney Smith was caught while being washed out through another window. Ed. Callahan, a deck hand, was washed overboard, and after getting several yards away found a rope tangled around his foot, and catching it with his hands drew himself on board again.
As soon as possible, Capt. Whitcomb set the jib, which put her head seaward. In attempting to set her mainsail, it was washed overboard and lost. The ebb tide and east wind then drove her out to sea. At about 10 o'clock P.M., when about ten miles off the bar, she fell in with the bark Whistler, from San Francisco, which took her passengers and kept her in tow until noon today, when the bar tug Astoria towed her into this port.
This 1876 account of a child drowning on the Columbia River highlights the perilous nature of Pacific Northwest waterways long before modern navigation aids. While maritime safety regulations have improved drastically since the era of wooden steam tugs and open cabins, the river remains a powerful force that demands respect, reminding us that the boundary between travel and disaster is often just one wave away.
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