Divers Hunting a Sunken Safe Find a Watchman in the Harbor
While searching Tacoma harbor for a Northern Pacific safe and $14,000, Seattle divers uncovered the body of William Hansen, drowned months earlier when the pump house went down in a Thanksgiving landslide.
Tacoma, May 16.—Special.—Divers Baldwin and Lien Stretch, of Seattle, who are conducting the search for the Northern Pacific freight office safe and $14,000 contents, now at the bottom of the harbor, made an unexpected find today. While Baldwin was at work in the depths of the harbor he came upon the body of a man half embedded in the sand. It proved to be that of William Hansen, night watchman at the pump house, who was drowned in the great landslide of Thanksgiving eve last. The pump house was located adjoining the freight office, and went down, machinery and all, in the slide. Hansen was inside the house at the time. Search was made for his body and for that of the 15-year-old Alger girl, who was also drowned in the slide, but nothing was ever seen of either until Baldwin stumbled on Hansen's body today. Naturally the body was decomposed almost beyond recognition. It will be raised and turned over to Coroner Parkes.
Baldwin made another find today that led him to think he is on the track of the missing safe. This was the freight office stove, which he discovered partly embedded in the sand. The stove stood in the freight office beside the safe. Some of the office supplies, including the waybill book, were discovered by Baldwin and brought up today. The search will be resumed tomorrow.
“While Baldwin was at work in the depths of the harbor he came upon the body of a man half embedded in the sand.”
The Thanksgiving landslide had already swallowed a freight office, a pump house and at least two lives; the search for the safe kept divers combing the same mud months later. It is a reminder that harbor fill and waterfront construction can bury—and occasionally give back—the city's dead.
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