The Girl Who Danced on the Boom: A Seattle Near-Miss
In October 1876, a young girl’s reckless game on a floating log boom in Elliott Bay nearly ended in tragedy, sparking warnings about parental neglect and the dangers of Seattle’s waterfront.
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 little girl, about four years old, was walking along Front Street when she slipped and fell from the end of a wharf. Fortunately, she landed on a pile of logs in the dock rather than into the water below, which would have been a terrible accident. She escaped with only a few bruises.
A number of other little children were watching her hazardous exploit with juvenile wonder and admiration, and were about to vie with her in the feat, which had they succeeded in doing, would undoubtedly have seriously hurt or killed them. Another instance of the danger of this juvenile folly, which may be attributed to parental neglect, came to my notice yesterday. A little girl of six or seven years of age was seen over the boom of logs at Coleman Mill, when she slipped and fell through into the water. Fortunately, an Italian fisherman happened to be standing in Hammond's shipyard at the time, saw the little girl fall into the water, and rushed to her rescue.
We have had occasion to mention several accidents similar to this lately, and it has always luckily happened that someone was on hand to rescue the drowning child, but this is no guarantee that it will always be so. Unless greater vigilance is exercised over these thoughtless little ones, the time is not far distant when some fond parent's heart will be pierced, and the whole community shocked, over the accidental death of some bright-eyed child, that now calls about the city to find amusement wherever it can.
This 1876 account highlights how Seattle’s early waterfront was a perilous playground for children, lacking the safety barriers and regulations we take for granted today. The mention of an 'Italian fisherman' rescuing a child also subtly documents the presence of immigrant laborers in the city's maritime economy during its territorial days.
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