The Unlucky Wishkah Chief Surfaces
After sitting on the river bottom, the salvaged steamer proves surprisingly resilient, though its boiler remains missing.
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.
Captain L. L. Darling, owner of the Wishkah Chief, has succeeded in dragging the wreck of the unfortunate steamer from the river depths to the beach. William Graham, the diver who was here last week, made fast several ropes to the hull and machinery, which were made taut to barges at low tide. The rising tide raised the wreck, but in some manner the boiler was pulled from its place and remains at the bottom of the river. By degrees with each succeeding tide the ropes were tautened and the wreck finally dragged high and dry on the mud flats west of Miner's foundry. The cost of getting the vessel out was $140. Captain Darling says the machinery is not injured to speak of and estimates it to be worth, with the boiler (which he expects to fish up), $1,000 or $1,100.
“The rising tide raised the wreck, but in some manner the boiler was pulled from its place and remains at the bottom of the river.”
Salvage operations on the Wishkah River were a routine part of maritime life in the 1890s, where wooden hulls were prone to grounding. Today, the mud flats near Miner's foundry are a reminder of a time when the river was the central industrial highway for Aberdeen's logging economy.
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