The 'Pirates' of Hood Canal Were Actually the Men Who Chased the Thieves
A Port Townsend dispatch mistakenly branded two Bangor residents as robbers; they were the ones who caught the real thieves and recovered a boatload of plunder.
On March 4 the Post-Intelligencer published the following dispatch from Port Townsend: "John Flynn and Timothy Ross, two pirates who have been robbing and pillaging ranches along Hood's canal for two or three weeks, have been arrested and held for trial in the superior court. A boatload of plunder was recovered. The thieves appropriated every article they could lay their hands on, and actually stole household articles devoid of value, except to the owners."
A very humorous blunder was committed in this item. John Flynn and Timothy Ross are residents of Bangor, on Hood's canal. They pursued the robbers—three men said to have hailed from Everett, who had crossed over in a Columbia River fishing boat and plundered farms near the canal. Flynn and Ross caught two of them, reported as Butler and Smith, at the Hamma Hamma river; "California Bill" escaped. In the boat was found $200 worth of stolen property. The thieves were taken to Port Townsend, tried, sentenced to one month in jail, and are now serving their term.
“John Flynn and Timothy Ross, two pirates who have been robbing and pillaging ranches along Hood's canal...”
A century before viral corrections, a newspaper's mistaken 'pirate' label had to be walked back: the supposed outlaws were the neighbors who chased the real thieves. The episode is a reminder that crime reporting has always been vulnerable to rushing a good story.
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