Tragedy at the Waterfront: A Drowning and a Desperate Rescue
A deckhand and a sailor attempted a harrowing, cold-water rescue of a drowning man near the construction site of the new Colman Building in Seattle, only to meet with heartbreak.
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.
At 11 o'clock this morning, a cry for help came out of the water on the east side of Railroad Avenue, near Main Street, in front of the new Colman Building, now in course of construction. William Ross, a deckhand on the Olympian, and a sailor named James Dunn, who were going on board the Olympian, heard the cry and rushed to the side of the dock. Ross jumped into the water and tried to save the drowning man; he caught hold of him and a desperate struggle ensued. Both were near drowning when Dunn also jumped in and the two caught the drowning man and tried to hold him up, but he slipped from their hands several times. The two men became benumbed from the long struggle in the cold water and shouted loudly for help. Their cry was heard by Officer Buswell, who hurried to an adjoining livery stable and got a long rope. This was thrown to the men in the water and was fastened around the body of the man in the water. Ross and Dunn had held him up while they clung on to piles. The rope broke when the man was halfway up the wharf, which is eighteen feet above the water, and he fell back. It took Ross and Dunn some time to fish him out and fasten the rope around him again. When he was hoisted to the surface, it was found that he was dead.
“The two men became benumbed from the long struggle in the cold water and shouted loudly for help.”
The waterfront of 1889—defined by construction, cold, and a lack of organized rescue—remains a place of high stakes. Today, the area near Main Street and the site of the original Colman Building is a heavily touristed stretch, yet the juxtaposition of rapid development and life-and-death struggle on the piers continues to define Seattle's maritime history.
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