The Violent Night at Port Blakely
A drunken dispute at a remote saloon leaves a man dead and a community reeling from the sudden eruption of gunfire.
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 drunken man came to Swan Anderson's saloon, near Port Blakely, on Sunday night, and discharged a shot gun at Anderson. A portion of the charge struck Anderson in the forehead, but a greater portion lodged in the back of the head of another man who stood between them. The offender was taken into custody and the wounded man, a half-breed, has since died. Anderson will recover, not being badly hurt.
“A drunken man came to Swan Anderson's saloon, near Port Blakely, on Sunday night, and discharged a shot gun at Anderson.”
Violence in and around saloons was a recurring theme in the 1870s, reflecting the volatile, rough-and-tumble environment of a town still forming its social order. Today, Port Blakely is a quiet, affluent residential area on Bainbridge Island, worlds away from the frontier-era saloon brawls that frequently filled the police blotters of the 19th-century Puget Sound.
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