The Steamship That Got Lost in Plain Sight
A maritime mystery in the Puget Sound ends when a confused mate mistakes the entrance to Port Madison, leading to a grounding and a desperate, multi-vessel search.
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.
On account of the disappearance of the steamer Elias Anderson near Port Townsend on Thursday evening, it was supposed that she had broken down. The Anderson arrived here at 4 o'clock yesterday morning, and from Captain Brennan we learn the cause of the delay in her arrival as follows: The captain had been up all the previous night and all day Friday until after the steamer had passed Port Gamble, when he turned for a short nap, after telling the mate, whom he left in charge, to call him when the steamer reached Point Monroe, so that he could take her into Port Madison. The mate, it seems, was not very familiar with the Sound, as he missed the entrance to Port Madison and ran up to Eagle Harbor, where she ran aground and remained on the flats until the incoming tide in the morning floated her off, when she came over to Seattle and then left for Port Townsend. No word was received at the Oregon & Washington Company as to the whereabouts of the Anderson, and Secretary Jacobs started out on the Washington to look for her. After visiting Port Madison and learning nothing of the Anderson, the Washington continued on to Point-no-Point and thence to Port Ludlow. Still no word from the Anderson. At Ludlow, Mr. Jacobs took the steamer Cyrus Walker and went over to Port Gamble for the steamer Goliath to make further search for the Anderson. The Goliath proceeded to Marrowstone Point, and skirted the Whidbey Island shore down to Admiralty Head, and then over to Port Townsend, where Mr. Jacobs learned by telegraph from Seattle that the Anderson had been almost in sight and hearing of Seattle all the time. What made the searchers’ task the worse was the fact that the mate ran by Port Madison, and it was natural to suppose that she had broken down north of that place.
“What made the searchers’ task the worse was the fact that the mate ran by Port Madison, and it was natural to suppose that she had broken down north of that place.”
Navigational errors in the complex waters of the Puget Sound have a long history, though today's GPS technology prevents the kind of 'lost in plain sight' scenarios that were common for 19th-century steamer crews. The Elias Anderson incident highlights how quickly a lack of local knowledge could turn a routine commercial run into a multi-vessel civic panic.
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