The Unheard-of Honesty of Captain Starr
In an era of public distrust, a Seattle steamer captain surprises the city by compensating a passenger for a stolen trunk without the threat of a lawsuit.
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.
Several weeks since, a trunk was broken open and robbed on board of the steamer North Pacific. After a search for the missing articles, which resulted in a failure to recover any of the stolen property, Capt. Starr, with a liberality unheard of by even the 'oldest settler,' promptly, and without even an intimation of a lawsuit, paid for the same. This being one of those incidents that probably has never occurred anywhere else, we attribute it to one of two things—the climate or the beautiful scenery that Capt. Starr has so often seen in his trips on Puget Sound. Captain Starr's course would be singular did not his passengers know that he was a liberal gentleman and a model Captain.
“This being one of those incidents that probably has never occurred anywhere else, we attribute it to one of two things—the climate or the beautiful scenery that Capt. Starr has so often seen in his trips on Puget Sound.”
In 1872, Captain Starr’s voluntary restitution was viewed as an anomaly of frontier ethics. Today, it highlights the perennial struggle for corporate accountability—a stark reminder of how unusual it still feels when a large carrier takes responsibility for lost goods without being dragged through the courts.
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