A Dugout, a Gunny-Sack Sail, and a Boy Lost on Lake Washington
Harvey Wehn was 15 when his makeshift sail capsized near Taylor's mill. A 4-year-old was the only witness.
Harvey W. Wehn, a 15-year-old boy, was drowned yesterday afternoon in Lake Washington. The lad had borrowed a small, cranky dugout and went sailing at a point on the lake about midway between Taylor's mill and the old Jackson Street trestle.
After paddling about 100 feet from shore he tried to improvise a sail with a gunny sack and some poles. The little craft capsized, and Wehn was thrown into the water and drowned. The only witness was a 4-year-old girl, who told her mother; the mother hailed a passer-by, who jumped into a boat and brought the body to the surface with a pike pole. It had been in the water no more than ten minutes, but resuscitation failed.
The body was taken to the residence of the boy's parents, No. 512 Yakima Street. His mother, Mrs. John C. Wehn, was almost beside herself with grief. His father, John Wehn, a molder in the Washington Iron Works, said the lad could swim but supposed the distance was too far for him, encumbered as he was with clothes. The little 4-year-old witness could not give a coherent account. Coroner Askam declared an inquest unnecessary.
Young Wehn was a bright and popular lad. He had been attending the Rainier school until it was given a vacation by order of the health board, and for a month had been a carrier for the Evening News.
“The little craft was capsized and Wehn thrown into the water and drowned. The only witness of the mishap was a little girl 4 years old.”
Lake Washington in 1895 was a working shoreline of mills, trestles and borrowed boats, with none of today's supervised beaches or life-jacket rules. Harvey Wehn's death is the kind of small, shattering accident that rarely entered official records beyond a coroner's note. It is a reminder that the city's recreational landscape was once a much more dangerous workplace edge.
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