Tragic Drowning in the Harbor
A fisherman perishes after his overloaded, flat-bottomed boat is swamped by swells near the city docks.
Joseph Pasquerelle, an Italian fisherman, was drowned about 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon in the harbor near Budlong's boat house, as the result of a stiff breeze that caused the swamping of an old boat which he and two other men were paddling along. His companions, George Legg and A. D. Nunnally, were saved, the first by swimming about one hundred feet to the stern wheel of the Henry Bailey, lying at the end of Yesler's wharf, and the other by turning the submerged boat over and clinging across the bottom until rescued by the tug Little Giant. The accident happened within plain sight of scores of people and all say that Pasquerelle, when the boat filled, appeared to be paralyzed and went down without a word. He never came to the surface again.
“It flashed through my mind that I was going to drown, and I looked back in time to see poor Joe with his arms raised in the air go straight down without a movement.”
This tragedy occurred near the bustling waterfront of 1895, where precarious, makeshift watercraft were common tools for the city's working poor. It serves as a stark reminder of the dangers inherent in the maritime labor that built Seattle's early economy.
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