Lost at Sea in the Narrows
An electrician vanishes while attempting a dangerous crossing during a windstorm, leaving little hope for rescue.
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.
Daniel Buck, an electrician aged 40 who resided with Mr. and Mrs. George Lazier at 410 Seneca Street, Seattle, is missing and has undoubtedly been drowned in the Narrows, west of Tacoma. The Tacoma police were notified this morning to search for him, but there is slight hope of finding him alive, as he disappeared while crossing the Narrows in a rowboat during a severe windstorm that raged throughout the Sound country Monday afternoon. Buck had been to his ranch on Fox Island and was attempting to return to Higgins Beach, where he had rented the boat, when he was driven north by the high wind and dropped out of sight behind Point Foslick. Where the electrician attempted to cross, the inlet is about three miles wide, and the waves were rolling so high that friends had attempted to dissuade him from making the trip. His uncle, Mr. Baker, watched him with a spyglass until he disappeared. Friends in Seattle, worried by his failure to return, contacted the firm of Boardman & Newell in Tacoma, leading to the police search.
“There is only one chance in a thousand that the man is still alive.”
The treacherous currents of the Tacoma Narrows remain a hazard for boaters today, though modern weather forecasting and Coast Guard communication have replaced the desperate visual monitoring with spyglasses practiced in 1909.
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