The Wharf, the Steamer, and the Grudge
A Puget Sound steamer damages Steilacoom's private wharf; the repairs are made, but the landings become a running feud between a steamboat captain and the town.
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 case has been pending some months, and we now propose to bring it fairly before the public and submit it for adjudication to that tribunal whence all others derive their existence—the people. Against the plaintiff in this case personally we enter with no feelings akin to malice. We shall proceed in the investigation with the determination to make a plain, unvarnished statement of facts; and, whatever the verdict, shall rest content with the consciousness of having performed our duty to our client. The facts are briefly as follow: Some time during the past year, one of the steamers of the P.M.S. Co. was unfortunate enough to run into the wharf at this place, causing considerable damage. In the adjustment of this matter with the proprietors of the wharf, a difference of opinion arose as to the amount of said damage; but it was finally arranged by the company agreeing to put the wharf in as good condition as before the accident, which they accordingly did. It is important to a clear and proper understanding of the case to observe here that the citizens of Steilacoom own no interest in the wharf—it is private property. Since that unfortunate event, the plaintiff has, whenever he happened to be in command of a steamer, persistently pursued a determined persecution against the citizens of this place. It is not considered out of the way to make a landing at Steilacoom, either in going to or returning from Olympia, and the best evidence which we can adduce in proof of this statement is the fact that all steamboats, with the solitary exception of those owned by the plaintiff (W. L. Dull), all have landed there.
“The citizens of Steilacoom own no interest in the wharf—it is private property.”
Steilacoom's waterfront depended on steamboat landings, and control of a private wharf could shape who got service and who got snubbed. The dispute is an early version of the infrastructure fights that still turn on access, private property, and public convenience.
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