The Somali Rescued from the Sea
Long feared lost, the British ship Somali is discovered adrift and starving near the Pacific Coast, saved by an encounter with the ship Kennebec.
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 British ship Somali, missing since leaving Hongkong on November 3, was found by the ship Kennebec on March 23. The crew of the Somali had been living on nothing but rice and tea since Christmas after their provisions were exhausted. Capt. Sawyer of the Kennebec provided the starving crew with enough supplies to reach port. The Somali had been given up for lost by insurance underwriters in San Francisco, as she had been battered by adverse winds and monsoons for over 140 days. The rescue is considered a miracle of the sea.
“The crew had eaten the last of the ship's provisions on the day before Christmas and had subsisted since that time on rice and tea.”
Maritime news once dominated Seattle papers as the city was a critical node in a global, wind-driven trade network. The survival of the Somali serves as a reminder of the physical perils faced by the merchant crews who connected Washington to the rest of the world before the age of instant communication.
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