Same Streets
← All stories

The Ship Eldorado is Lost

A valuable Seattle coal vessel runs aground near Port Angeles, signaling a likely total loss.

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.

Capt. Burns received a telegram from Port Townsend saying that the ship Eldorado was ashore at Three Tree Point below Port Angeles. She had three feet of water in the hold and was filling. The belief was that she would be a total loss. The Eldorado left here last week with a cargo of coal for San Francisco. She was one of the most valuable of the Seattle Coal Company’s vessels.

“The belief was that she would be a total loss.”

— Printed in Puget Sound Dispatch (Seattle, Wash. Terr.) 1871-1880, 1880
Then · 1880146 years apartNow · 2026

The coal industry was the engine of 19th-century Seattle's economy; the loss of a vessel like the Eldorado would have been a significant economic blow to the maritime infrastructure that defined the city's early growth.

The original page

Puget Sound Dispatch (Seattle, Wash. Terr.) 1871-1880, 1880-07-12. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.

From readers

No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.

About this story

From
Puget Sound Dispatch (Seattle, Wash. Terr.) 1871-1880, JUL 12, 1880, Page 5
Rights
Public domain
Place
47.45030, -122.38200 · placed automatically
The paper in the Library of Congress catalog ↗