The Perils of the Snohomish Slough
A grain-laden schooner runs aground in the treacherous river mud, highlighting the risks of shipping in the early days of Washington Territory.
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 schooner Mary Parker, which we mentioned yesterday as being likely to arrive here some time during the day with 1,600 sacks of grain for the Dakotas, will probably not reach here in time to ship her cargo on that steamer. In coming down the Snohomish slough, we are informed, she ran aground. The water was very high at the time, and in beating down, the schooner ran full out of the channel and stranded on the bank of the slough. The water was falling rapidly at the time, and she was soon hard and fast. At the time our informant left, they were taking the grain out as fast as possible, and making every effort to get her off before the water fell any more, but he is of the opinion that they will not succeed, and that the schooner will be detained several days, if not longer.
“The water was falling rapidly at the time, and she was soon hard and fast.”
Long before the modern shipping channels of the Snohomish River were fully engineered, early vessels were at the constant mercy of the tides and shifting river mud. This historical struggle with the 'slough' mirrors today’s persistent challenges of managing complex, ever-changing maritime transit routes in the Puget Sound.
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