Seattle's First Direct Cargo to Honolulu
The bark Oakland sails for Hawaii with flour, lumber, cattle, horses, mules, farm machinery—and 12,000 gallons of water for the livestock.
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 bark Oakland, which sailed Wednesday night for Honolulu, took the first direct cargo ever shipped from this port to Hawaii. In the hold was stored flour, wheat, oats, bran, middlings, lumber, farm machinery and sundry other articles, and amidships were the polled Angus cattle, horses and mules, seventy head in all, and on deck was piled hay and three casks containing 12,000 gallons of water for the stock. The vessel is under charter to George J. Willey and the cargo is consigned to T. J. King and L. L. McCandless.
The latter gentleman took passage on the bark, and Mr. King and Mr. Willey will sail from San Francisco in a short time. Mr. and Mrs. Fred Carter also sailed on the bark. Mr. Carter took down a number of fine chickens, which he will introduce on the islands.
A. Feek, who has the contract for extending the railroad line of the Oahu Company, shipped all his paraphernalia and twenty-one head of mules and horses.
“The bark Oakland ... took the first direct cargo ever shipped from this port to Hawaii.”
Seattle's economy has always depended on what it can ship out. The Oakland's mixed cargo—flour, lumber, cattle, machinery—reads like an early version of the port's export ambitions, now central to the region's trade with Asia and the Pacific.
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