A Plea for the Mariners of Seattle
Chaplain Thomas Reies appeals to the city for a waterfront sanctuary for the thousands of sailors who make the 'Queen City' their port of call.
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.
This is the annual report of Chaplain Thomas Reies of the Seamen's Friend Society of New York, to the board of trustees of the Seattle society. The board is as follows: Chairman, R. S. Greene; secretary, S. P. Borwell; trustees, Dr. Wood Capps, Col. W. H. White, G. Burkhart.
Number of services held in city jail, 9; on ships, 21. Visits made to ships, 10; to sick rooms and boarding houses, 45. Sailors in attendance at our meetings, 14; persons for prayers, 77; persons for conversions of sailors, 16; total, 87. Mr. and Mrs. Richardson, aided by the ladies of the W.C.T.U., to whom we have been deeply indebted, have been a help to hold our bethel services. We have had two converted. Tracts distributed, 1,353; Bibles, 11; Testaments, 31. Seamen cared for during the year, 41; in Grace hospital, 57. Deaths, 2; by accident, 2. Preached in various churches, 13.
If we add 400 to the number of ships and vessels given in the Puget Sound Maritime, which does not account for January nor December, we have a total of 831. If each vessel carries a crew of 12, which is a low estimate, it gives us a total, saying nothing of our local traffic, of 9,972 seamen. At the lowest estimate, we have between 2,000 and 5,000 men who frequent our fair Queen City each year, and this number is growing.
What shall we do for them to meet their moral and spiritual wants? Shall they, as in the past, be uncared for? Shall these, among all the incoming crowds, be left out in the cold? We have a waterfront of from seven to eight miles extent. Is there not in all this extended waterfront a place that some benevolent man or woman will give us, as a New Year's donation, on which to build or moor a bethel, afloat or ashore? Or would not someone lease us a place at a moderate rental, where we could build a neat little mariner's church, with a reading room in front where seamen might sit during their hours on shore and where they would be made to feel at home? I have, for the last three months, fought for a place of that kind but have failed. Especially do we hope in this way to reach the honorable mayor of Seattle and our city fathers, in hope that they may be able to secure to us some place at the foot of one of the streets near the shipping for this most worthy purpose.
“Shall these, among all the incoming crowds, be left out in the cold?”
Chaplain Reies' struggle to carve out a permanent, welcoming space for the city's transient maritime workforce on Seattle's rapidly privatizing waterfront resonates deeply with modern Seattle’s ongoing tension between industrial history, public access, and the pressure to house or serve vulnerable populations.
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