Mourned as Dead, He Came Home From Australia
C. W. Ellsworth vanished from Everett last September. His wife and little daughter on a ranch near Machias had given him up for dead — until he walked back in, with a story about a waterfront saloon, a drugged drink and a schooner bound for the Antipodes.
EVERETT, Feb. 12 — For months mourned as dead by his wife and little daughter, who live on a ranch near Machias, Wash., C. W. Ellsworth, who disappeared from Everett last September, has returned home.
He says he took a drink with a chance acquaintance in a waterfront saloon and knew nothing more until he found himself aboard the schooner Morande, bound for Australia. He does not know where he was put aboard the craft. He worked his way back to San Francisco and took a train for the north.
“He took a drink with a chance acquaintance in a waterfront saloon and knew nothing more until he found himself aboard the schooner Morande, bound for Australia.”
Shanghaiing was an open secret on the Pacific coast in this era: a drink, a blow on the head, and a man woke up on a ship with no wages and no way off. Ellsworth's family had already held his funeral in their minds, which is what makes the story land — the waterfront economy of 1909 could simply swallow a man, and the only way back was to work his passage home.
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