The Ghost of the Shannon
Seattle's waterfront welcomes a legendary British warship that fought in the War of 1812.
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.
A reporter recently visited the ship Shannon, now docked at the foot of West Seventh Street in Seattle. Although it was the same vessel that famously defeated the American ship Chesapeake off Boston harbor 71 years ago, it is now an aged merchant ship carrying chalk and oil. The first officer, a Englishman named Bines, spoke of the ship's transformation from a man-of-war to a 'lady' of the sea. The vessel still carries its original cannons and furniture from the 1812 battle, serving as a floating relic of history. While she now hauls cargo, the officer maintains that her iron-oak frame is as staunch as ever, ready for the next generation of sailors.
“She answers the call on her helm as a old wife would obey her husband. Is staunch and true, being built of English oak.”
The 'West Seventh Street' mentioned here has been long reconfigured by decades of landfill, regrades, and port expansion, moving the shoreline significantly westward. Ships like the Shannon are a reminder that Seattle's early waterfront was a place of global transit, where physical artifacts of 19th-century colonial wars were still being hauled into harbor by merchant crews.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.