The Whidbey Island Smuggling Chase
Customs officials miss a boatload of undocumented Chinese immigrants by an hour, highlighting the cat-and-mouse game on the Puget Sound.
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 inability of the custom house and Chinese inspectors to cope with smugglers was well illustrated a few nights ago. Officials received news that a load of Chinese people would be landed at a point on Whidbey Island. With all haste, Inspector John J. Burns and others secured a tug and started for the rendezvous. The tug was pushed for all she was worth, but they arrived one hour after the smugglers had landed. At Everett the next day, the boat lay quietly at the wharf, but all evidence had disappeared. The officials have been keeping the trip a secret.
“One hour before the boat with the contrabands had been there. At Everett next day the supposed smuggler lay quietly at the wharf, but all evidence had disappeared.”
This story captures the era's aggressive and xenophobic enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act. It documents a moment where state power struggled to police the complex, porous geography of the Puget Sound, setting a precedent for a century of border-policy tension in the Pacific Northwest.
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