The Funeral Boat on the Black River
A funeral party's journey home from Renton to Seattle is upended when their steamer breaks down, forcing a mud-caked, cross-country trek by wagon.
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 steamer Otter broke down last Friday with a load of passengers for the Tacoma and points on the way, intending to run up as far as the Renton dam on the Black River. It met there the funeral party from Renton that was coming down to attend the funeral of the deceased child of Mr. and Mrs. Williams, to have been held in this city yesterday. Arrangements had previously been made with the Captain of the Otter to meet with the funeral party at Steilacoom Landing on her return trip, where the funeral party would be transferred to that boat and proceed to Seattle. But the Otter had only traveled about four miles on her trip when one of the paddles was blown off the steamer, and the fleet disabled. The Otter was helped shortly afterward, and the boat's passengers proceeded on to Seattle, and the disabled boat returned to town. Upon arrival, a word was sent in to Renton of the accident, and the funeral party, 30 in number, started out on the Bluff road to the landing; by this means they were belated and the party did not reach here until after 4 o'clock. The funeral therefore had to be postponed until this morning.
“The Otter had only traveled about four miles on her trip when one of the paddles was blown off the steamer, and the fleet disabled.”
In the 1880s, transit between the Black River, Renton, and Seattle was a fragile web of steamboats and dirt roads, where a single mechanical failure could collapse a community's plans. Today, Renton and Seattle are seamlessly linked by concrete and rail, but the region’s reliance on water and geography remains a constant, if less dramatic, factor in our daily commute.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.