The Waterfront War of 1893
Sailors and vessel owners clash as labor unrest cripples Grays Harbor shipping.
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 war between the sailors' union and vessel owners is being waged hotly, and four vessels are at present without a crew. The men from the barkentine Catherine Sudden deserted in the fore part of the week, as well as a part of the crew of the barkentine Arago. The non-union crews from the schooners Fanny Adele and Webfoot were kidnapped Saturday morning and no traces of them can be found. The steamer Point Loma, for San Francisco, left early in the morning, and it is supposed that the crews were stowed away on her. The Fanny Adele has two of her crew in the city jail for refusing to obey orders while lying at anchor in the stream waiting dock room. They are supposed to be union men, who shipped to cause trouble and cause the crew to desert. Their plans were nipped in the bud, and they will be obliged to return with the vessel. Resolutions were passed by the local assembly of the Knights of Labor, extending sympathies to the Sailors' Union, and the captains believe that aid more substantial than resolutions emanated from the same source.
“The war between the sailors' union and vessel owners is being waged hotly.”
This 1893 account of labor disputes over union vs. non-union crews illustrates the intense, often physical, struggle for labor rights in the Grays Harbor maritime industry, a struggle that fundamentally defined the region's early industrial identity.
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