The Bank Gave Way: An 11-Year-Old Fishing for Minnows Is Carried Into the Ship Canal
Harold Conselyea was three blocks from home, catching bait for his kitten, when the soft earth under him slid into the water between Lake Union and Salmon Bay. Only a bait can and finger marks in the mud were left behind.
SEATTLE, Feb. 9. — No trace has yet been found of the body of little Harold Conselyea, 11-year-old son of Charles Conselyea, a motorman, who yesterday was carried into the swift waters of the canal between Lake Union and Salmon Bay by the caving of the bank. The child was endeavoring to catch some small fish for his kitten in the canal, which is about three blocks from his home. When the boy failed to return a search was instituted, and a can of bait and finger marks in the soft earth where a portion of the bank had caved in bore evidence that the boy had met his death in the water.
“A can of bait and finger marks in the soft earth where a portion of the bank had caved in bore evidence that the boy had met his death in the water.”
The 'canal between Lake Union and Salmon Bay' is today's Fremont Cut, where the Lake Washington Ship Canal runs through some of the most expensive real estate in the city — and children still fish those banks. The story is a plain account of a small boy doing what kids do on a soft-banked urban waterway, and of a family's ordinary afternoon turning into a search with no answer. The finger marks in the mud are the detail the reporter could not leave alone, and neither can we.
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