The Devil-Fish of the Chehalis
Two local fishermen survive a terrifying encounter with a massive, tentacled monster in the waters of Grays Harbor.
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 monster octopus or devil-fish, one of those sea monsters so graphically described by Victor Hugo in his 'Toilers of the Sea,' adorns a hook in Brown's fish stall on the Washington-street wharf. Some of the arms have cup-like suckers which, once fastened onto an object, have bulldog-like tenacity and are most difficult of removal. The fish weighs forty-five pounds, and its arms measure ten or twenty feet from tip to tip. It is being kept until some Chinese, who consider the meat of the fish a great luxury, come along and purchase it. The captors were fishermen August Dupont and Joe Michael, who had a hard battle before they succeeded in killing it. The men were coming up the bay Tuesday afternoon with a boatload of fish, pulling lazily on the oars, when Dupont's blades fouled something in the water. That something proved to be the devil-fish. As it was raised above the surface, one of the monster's long arms fastened onto the boat and it was half way into the craft, striking wildly at the occupants. Michael was struck on the arm by the monster, but he whipped out a knife and cut the tentacle off. In the meantime, Dupont seized a club used for knocking salmon on the head and killed the monster.
“As it was raised above the surface one of the monster's long arms fastened onto the boat and in an instant it was half way into the craft and striking wildly at the occupants.”
While giant octopuses (Enteroctopus dofleini) are common in the deep, cold waters of the Pacific Northwest, they rarely make the front page today. This account reflects both the rugged, perilous reality of early Aberdeen fishing and the era's casual, yet pervasive, racial stereotyping regarding the local Chinese community's diet.
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