The Smallpox Ship at the Wharf
In September 1876, Port Townsend citizens met at the Old Court House to demand accountability after the steamer Dakota brought smallpox into their port.
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.
A public meeting was held at the Old Court House in Port Townsend at 11 a.m., organized by the election of F. Pettygrove as chairman and U. W. Philbrick as secretary. The chairman stated that the object was to consider the landing of an Indigenous person with smallpox from the steamer Dakota while she lay at the wharf in this town, and also the conduct of the steamer's agent and officers. Several speakers criticized the health officer and the steamer's agent and officers. A committee of six—A. F. Learned, D. L. Rothschild, John L. Butler, G. Eisenbeis, J. J. H. Van Bokkelen, and J. G. Clinger—was appointed to draft resolutions expressing the sense of the meeting. The meeting adjourned to the same place at 7 p.m.
When it reconvened, A. F. Learned, chairman of the committee on resolutions, reported. The resolutions condemned the captain of the steamer Dakota and the agent of the Mill Steamship Company for leaving Seattle on September 19, 1876, with concealed smallpox on board and some three hundred persons bound for this port, calling it a gross disregard for crew and passengers. They declared that allowing the vessel to come alongside the wharf knowingly with smallpox aboard, and permitting communication between residents and the steamer, was a direct violation of the health laws of the Territory and endangered the community. The resolutions praised the doctor who promptly reported the smallpox on board, condemned the removal of the infected person from the steamer into town as a flagrant violation of the health laws, and called for the person who had charge of the infected individual to be quarantined for ten days. The resolutions were adopted and ordered published.
“Allowing said vessel to come alongside the wharf at this place knowingly with the smallpox on board ... was a direct violation of the health laws of this Territory.”
Then as now, a community confronted a deadly infection arriving by ship and argued over whether commerce or public safety should govern the waterfront. The meeting's anger at a health officer and a steamship agent echoes modern fights over quarantine, disclosure, and who bears the cost of an outbreak.
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