Tragic Accident at Heacock's Mill
A popular young man from Fairhaven loses his life while attempting to retrieve a hat.
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.
George Mellon, a 25-year-old resident of Fairhaven, drowned in Bellingham Bay on the morning of June 7th. While walking along the railway tracks near Heacock's mill with his cousin, W. J. McLean, Mellon's hat was blown into the water. In an attempt to retrieve it, Mellon climbed down a ladder to a log boom. As he reached for the hat, he slipped from the logs and fell into the bay. Despite his shouts that he could swim, he vanished immediately. Though his body was recovered within ten minutes by rescuers, medical efforts by Drs. Compton and McKinnon to revive him were unsuccessful.
“In reaching after his hat his feet slipped off the log on which he was standing and he fell into the water.”
This reflects the industrial danger of the era's waterfronts, where mill operations and deep water were common, unprotected public spaces. Today, these same areas in Bellingham have been largely redeveloped into parks and public access points.
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