The Dogfish Oil Smuggling Ring
Federal authorities launch a crackdown on an illicit trade network that attempted to pass foreign-sourced dogfish oil as local Washington production.
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.
For some time it has been surmised by thinking people that all the dogfish oil shipped from Neah Bay was not produced at that place, but that a portion of it had been smuggled into the Territory by North Indians or other persons and sold to Baxter or his agents at Neah Bay, and brought here and sold, or shipped about the Sound as American oil. How long this has been going on, if these surmises are well founded, is not known, but that the custom authorities have concluded to stop it is attested by the fact that the schooner Leader, which arrived here Saturday with her cargo of 4,000 gallons of dogfish oil and a lot of furs and skins, was seized by Inspector Frank Winslow, under orders from Collector Beecher, to have her towed to Port Townsend at once. The steamer Eliza was chartered and the schooner, with her cargo, was safely anchored in Port Townsend bay Sunday morning. Collector Beecher seems determined to put a stop to smuggling, and if a clear case can be proved against the vessel, she will be made an example of by condemnation, and her owner, S. Baxter, by prosecution, as he is a man of business experience, and knows, or should know, that smuggling is against the laws of the United States.
“Collector Beecher seems determined to put a stop to smuggling, and if a clear case can be proved against the vessel, she will be made an example of by condemnation.”
Resource extraction and the smuggling of goods across regional borders have been persistent themes in the Pacific Northwest economy for over a century. Just as the 1885 authorities struggled to police the legitimacy of fish oil, contemporary regulators continue to face challenges in tracking the origin and legality of complex supply chains across the Salish Sea.
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