The Steamer Fanny Gets Stuck on a Wharf
A routine docking in Seattle goes wrong when the tide turns, leaving a steamer mangled and its captain scrambling for repairs.
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 Fanny came in late last night and tied up at Crawford & Harrington's wharf. By some oversight, she was left in a position where, when the tide raised, her stern guard caught under a piece of projecting timber in the wharf. As this was not sufficiently strong enough to raise the wharf, as a natural consequence, something had to give way. As the tide raised and the strain became greater, the guard finally broke down with a crash. But the damage did not end there. The whole stern of the boat was badly wrenched and the engines thrown out of line. Captain Hill had a number of mechanics at work on her yesterday repairing the damages, and he expects to be off again for the Skagit this morning at 7 o'clock.
“As this was not sufficiently strong enough to raise the wharf, as a natural consequence, something had to give way.”
Early Seattle was a city built on wood and water, where the massive tidal shifts of the Puget Sound made every wharf a potential hazard. Today's massive waterfront construction projects are vastly more sophisticated, yet the city remains at the mercy of the same natural cycles that once wrenched the sterns of steamers.
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