A Desperate Rescue in Elliott Bay
A local man spots an overturned canoe in the freezing waters of the bay, pulling two people from a near-death encounter with the winter tide.
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.
Yesterday afternoon, just before dark, Mr. Will Lake, of Belltown, noticed an object floating on the bay about half a mile from shore, opposite the barrel factory. He immediately jumped into a skiff and rowing out, found it to be a canoe turned bottom up and having an Indian and a klootchman lashed to it. They were helped into the skiff and taken to the shore, and from what can be learned from the statements made by the Indian, they had been in the water for four hours, the canoe upsetting with them near the head of the bay. It is doubtful if the klootchman will recover. Mr. Lake deserves a great deal of credit for his prompt action in hastening to the rescue of these poor unfortunate Indians.
“He immediately jumped into a skiff and rowing out, found it to be a canoe turned bottom up and having an Indian and a klootchman lashed to it.”
This incident occurred in the waters off what is now the industrial waterfront of Seattle, an area once teeming with local maritime traffic and Indigenous canoe travel. Today, the same waters are reshaped by massive shipping terminals, but the treacherous, frigid nature of Elliott Bay remains a constant, recurring peril for those navigating its currents.
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