The Sailor Who Sold the Editor
A seafaring impostor weaves a tale of tragedy and shipwreck to con a meal out of local journalists, exposing the desperate vulnerability of the early Seattle news beat.
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.
The Victoria Colonist tells the following good one: A seafaring-looking man came to the Colonist office yesterday and told a pitiful tale of shipwreck and death on the coast of Washington Territory about 120 miles south of Cape Flattery. He reported that he sailed in a four-masted vessel called the Corona or Corunna, wheat-laden from Tacoma, some days ago; that on passing outside the Cape a gale sprung up, the vessel was thrown on her beam ends and the mainmast 'busted' her sides out and she sank, the captain, first and second mates, and five others going down with her. The narrator and seven others saved themselves in a boat, and with the aid of some loose boards which floated about after the wreck sank, paddled into the Straits and landed at Metchosin on Tuesday night, whence he walked into town. He 'sold' the usually wide-awake editor of the Adelphi Bulletin, and got a square meal from one of our staff, who thought he had a good item; but a few questions put to the man by our nautical interviewer developed the fact that he was an imposter, and after confessing that he was a deserter from a British merchantman now loading at a Puget Sound port, he ran off up Yates street and was seen no more.
“He 'sold' the usually wide-awake editor... and got a square meal from one of our staff, who thought he had a good item.”
This 1877 anecdote captures the perennial tension between the 'first draft of history' and the sheer absurdity of life on the frontier. Much like modern digital misinformation cycles, 19th-century editors were constantly balancing the pressure to scoop competitors with the reality that a good story—like a free meal—was often too tempting to verify.
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