The Steamship That Wouldn't Stay Put
A narrow, peculiar steamship, once a riverboat on the Columbia, arrives in Seattle to take on the Olympia-Seattle route.
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.
The steamer Gold Dust, which arrived in Seattle yesterday, is unlike anything else on the Sound. The boat was originally built to navigate the Upper Columbia river, but after the owner of a rival line, the O.R. & N. Company, bought out the opposition, the Gold Dust was idle. Two brothers from Olympia, O.A. and L.C. Smith, recently bought her and brought her around to the Sound. After repairs in Olympia, she came to Seattle yesterday to obtain the necessary papers to carry passengers on the Olympia-Seattle route. In appearance, the Gold Dust is quite striking; she is 110 feet over all but has a narrow beam of only 10 feet. She has but one cabin, which extends from stem to stern, on top of which is a pilot house resembling a vinegar cruet. She looks like a racer, and her owners expect to crowd 15 miles an hour out of her in fair weather.
“She looks like a racer, and her owners expect to crowd 15 miles an hour out of her in fair weather.”
Today, ferries are the backbone of Puget Sound transit, but in the 1880s, these independent, quirky steamships were the only way to hop between growing towns like Seattle and Olympia. The Gold Dust represents a time of fierce private competition before the rise of state-run ferry systems.
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