THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2017
COMMUNITY
1B
FAKE NEWS, 1886
A MESSAGE FOR CARLOTTA
THE ILL-FATED GENERAL
F
ake news isn’t new. Case in point, this squib from the Satur-
day, Feb. 6, 1886 edition of The Daily Morning Astorian:
“On the 29th of January, the East Washingtonian got out the fol-
lowing ‘extra’ with big black scare heads: ‘Friday January 29th. A
steamer supposed to be the Columbia sunk off Tongue Point yes-
terday. 160 lives are reported lost.’”
The only steamer named Columbia that seems to fit the time
frame is the iron-hulled vessel built in 1880 — an elegant and
speed record-breaking vessel used for passenger runs between
Portland and San Francisco, according to ShipwreckWorld.com
(http://tinyurl.com/columbulb). Distinguished by being the first
“true electric ship,” outfitted with more than 100 light bulbs, the
332-foot long Columbia could carry 850 passengers plus cargo. It
is pictured, courtesy of ShipwreckWorld.
And no, the Columbia didn’t sink off Tongue Point in 1886. In
1907, recklessly cruising at full throttle in a heavy fog out on the
Pacific, the Columbia was hit broadside by a schooner that was also
moving at full speed. Eighty-eight of the Columbia’s 200 passen-
gers and crew were rescued, and brought to Astoria. The rest went
down with the ship, which sank in an astounding 8 1/2 minutes.
The Astorian indignantly huffed that the East Washingtonian’s
report was the worst “lying dispatch” received since the whopper
that arrived in July 1883 declaring, “Anarchy prevails in Astoria,
and 1,000 armed men are in Uppertown preparing to march on the
city.”
CRAB POT SURPRISE
S
crolling through Facebook, the Ear happened on a photo
(shown) of Mark O’Neil holding an 8-inch “albino” Dunge-
ness crab he caught Jan. 28 while working on the fishing vessel
Norska out of Newport. Josh Osborn is pictured with him. “This
is a first for me,” Mark said.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife proclaims that
white Dungeness crabs are not “true albinos,” and a “couple”
of them “are found each year in the fishery” (http://tinyurl.com/
oddcrab). Several crab fishermen responded to Mark’s post, say-
ing they had caught white crabs over the years, as well. Mark’s
research showed the odds are 1 in 150,000 of catching one.
Several fishermen thought he ought to have the crab stuffed —
not for dinner, but by a taxidermist. Luckily for the crab, the Ore-
gon Coast Aquarium in Newport was happy to give him a home.
After a 30-day quarantine, he’ll go on display.
“It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever caught in a pot,” Mark
declared.
I
T
his week was the 165th anniversary of the wreck of the
passenger/cargo steamship General Warren, a disaster
both financially, and in terms of lives lost (42 out of 52),
according to Lewis & Dryden’s Maritime History of the
Northwest (http://tinyurl.com/Gen-Warren). The steamship
Pacific is shown.
The ship sailed from Astoria on Jan. 28, 1852, assisted
by bar pilot Capt. George Flavel. The venture seemed ill-
fated from the start. And around midnight the wind blew the
foretopmast away, and the overloaded vessel was taking on
water — the grain cargo had scattered, blocking the pumps.
It was a losing battle.
The captain decided to return to the Columbia for help.
The next afternoon Capt. Flavel reboarded the Gen. War-
ren, but initially refused to take the vessel back across the
bar because the conditions were too dangerous. The passen-
gers, terrified of dying on the leaking ship, implored him to
take them to Astoria.
Flavel gave in, and made it across the bar. But between
the ebb tide and the hold filling with water, they weren’t
making any headway, so he ordered the captain to lower the
anchor. The captain insisted Flavel beach it, instead. Which
he did, on Clatsop Spit. So far, no lives had been lost.
At 3 a.m., the situation was dire on the disintegrating
ship, and the captain asked Flavel to pick 10 stalwart vol-
unteers from the crew and passengers to take a boat and get
help. Most of the passengers preferred staying on the wreck
to taking their chances braving the breakers in a small boat.
The group in the boat, against all odds, made it to Asto-
ria and brought a large whaleboat back to the wreck to save
those left aboard. But it was not to be.
“When they reached the spot where the doomed vessel
had been the night before, she had disappeared from view,”
Lewis & Dryden’s reports, “and the bloated corpses of the
unfortunate passengers and crew, which drifted ashore on
Clatsop Beach, were the only evidences of the disaster.”
FLAVEL FOOTNOTE
n mid-January 2016, a friend brought a message in a bottle he’d
found in the sand in Rockaway Beach to RahNell and Richard
Seward’s house. They had to break the bottle to get the message
out, which was covered with sand and seaweed. But was still legi-
ble, as it appeared to have been written on oilskin.
The undated note expressed deep grief over the loss of a loved
one, and anger that they wouldn’t be able to watch their dreams
come true together. At the bottom were the letters (initials?)
WGGD. RahNell added her contact information to the back of the
note, put it into a new bottle and sealed it. A fisherman dropped it
back into the ocean about three miles out off Cape Lookout.
About two weeks later, a woman in Long Beach, Washington,
found the bottle, and called RahNell. The woman’s brother was a
fisherman, and she agreed to have him drop it back in the ocean to
continue its journey.
In June, RahNell, received a call from a woman named Car-
lotta from Oklahoma. She had found the bottle in May at Ocean
Shores, Washington, on her very first visit to the ocean, while look-
ing for sand dollars.
“I want to believe it was meant for me to find this treasure … It
was a message for me,” Carlotta explained to RahNell in Decem-
ber. “I lost my husband in November 2014, not a day goes by that
I don’t think of him … Yes, I feel the same (as the note-writer) …
Hopefully, one day, I will get the chance to throw it back in the
ocean and see how far it goes. I have never been on a cruise, so that
may be my next adventure.”
“I felt that she was the one who was meant to find that bottle
with the note inside,” RahNell observed. “I feel it is a story that
needs to be told, and that hopefully the writer of the note will see
that it has had an impact.”
FROZEN
‘A
n interesting phenomena
occurred during our last
blast of cold weather,” Tiffany
Boothe of the Seaside Aquar-
ium wrote. “Did you notice the
‘dead’ mole crabs along the tide
line? Most of these seemingly
dead crabs were simply cold-
stunned. The outside air tem-
perature had been much, much
cooler than the local ocean tem-
perature, with local air tem-
peratures around 28 to 34F and
ocean temperatures around 48 to
50F.” Her close-up photo is shown.
“These poor little crabs, when uprooted by heavy surf and
stranded on the beach, got too cold to burrow down into the sand,”
she added. “Frozen in time, the mole crabs had to wait until the
next wave, hoping it would warm them up enough so that they
could try to bury themselves in the sand again.”
DELICIOUS?
WRONG WAY RIBS
S
uper Bowl nostalgia from 2012: Bruce McBride, pictured in
a photo by Bob Sharp, is the owner of Rollin’ Thunder BBQ.
A woman named Caroline called him with a big order of two racks
of ribs and a dozen pieces of cornbread for her Super Bowl party.
She would pick the goodies up at 4 p.m. Sunday.
On Super Bowl Sunday afternoon, Caroline called him at 1:15
p.m. “Where are you?” she asked. “I’m lost. I can’t find you.”
He explained that he was at the foot of 11th Street, near the
river, and wondered why she was calling so early. She was on Dit-
mars Boulevard, she told him. “In Astoria?” he asked. “Yes, Asto-
ria, Queens,” she answered. As in New York. She was near a body
of water, all right, but the wrong one.
Fortunately, Bruce sold all of the extras he’d made for his
almost-customer. And a good time was had by all — except per-
haps, the hungry woman lost in Queens.
T
he sinking of the General Warren has a “rest of the
story” footnote in the Lewis & Dryden account of the
event (http://tinyurl.com/Gen-Warren), concerning the rela-
tionship of one of the survivors, Gen. J. G. Wall and bar
pilot Capt. George Flavel (pictured).
Gen. Wall had worked at sea from the time he was 14
until 1850. Because of this experience, he was one of the
passengers Flavel chose to man the boat they took in search
of help for the foundering General Warren. The footnote
tells the tale:
“Their mutual good fortune in surviving the terrible
disaster caused a strong friendship to spring up between the
‘pilot king’ and General Wall, and nearly every year until
the death of Captain Flavel (in 1893) they would meet and
rehearse the stirring scenes in which they first met. Wall
would sometimes go to Flavel’s Oregon home (picture), Fla-
vel repaying the visit the following year to California.”
T
his season of the Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods” is a
cross-country road trip with host Andrew Zimmern. The
journey starts in Oregon, with stops along the Lewis and Clark
Trail to sample nasty-face-making things like Pacific lampreys.
Zimmern is pictured courtesy of the Travel Channel.
You can catch the episode Saturday at noon, Monday at 9 p.m.
and midnight, and Tuesday at 6 p.m.
The Oregonian posted a little snippet of the show at http://
tinyurl.com/zimpousse featuring Zimmern and two chefs at an
Oceanside inlet, prying crustaceans chefs call pousse pieds off a
rock. “(In English) they’re called gooseneck barnacles …” Zim-
mern noted, “or, as I like to call them, delicious.”
“Reading the journals that Merriwether Lewis wrote, you know,
they were always starving, right, until they meet native people who
show them that there’s all kinds of food,” he explained, staring
adoringly at a barnacle. “I mean, this could keep you alive forever.”
“If you weren’t terrified to eat it,” one chef quipped.
COMMUNITY NOTES
SATURDAY
Beach Cleanup — 9:30 a.m.,
volunteers needed to show up at
any one of the seven Long Beach
(Washington) Peninsula beach
approaches. Supplies provided. A
soup feed follows cleanup at the
Peninsula Senior Center, 21603 O
Lane, Ocean Park, Washington, at
about noon. For information, go to
http://ourbeach.org
Sit and Stitch Group — 11
a.m. to 1 p.m., Custom Threads,
1282 Commercial St. Knitting, cro-
cheting and needle work. For infor-
mation, call 503-325-7780.
Detachment
1228
Ma-
rine Corps League — noon,
Uptown Cafe, 1639 S.E. Ensign
Lane, Warrenton. For information,
contact Lou Neubecker at 503-717-
0153.
Columbia Northwestern Mod-
el Railroading Club — 1 p.m., in
Hammond. Group runs trains on
HO-scale layout. For information,
call Don Carter at 503-325-0757.
Spinning Circle — 1 to 3 p.m.,
Astoria Fiber Arts Academy, 1296
Duane St. Bring a spinning wheel.
For information, call 503-325-5598
or go to http://astoriafiberarts.com
SUNDAY
Line Dancing — 5:30 to 8 p.m.,
Seaside American Legion, 1315
Broadway. For information, call
503-738-5111. No cost; suggested
$5 tip to the instructor.
Scandinavian Workshop —
10 a.m., First Lutheran Church, 725
33rd St. Needlework, hardanger,
knitting, crocheting, embroidery
and quilting. All are welcome. For
information, call 503-325-1364 or
503-325-7960.
Senior Lunch — 11:30 a.m.,
Bob Chisholm Senior Center, 1225
Avenue A, Seaside. Suggested do-
nation $3 for those older than 60;
$6.75 for those younger than 60.
For information, call Michelle Lew-
is at 503-861-4200.
MONDAY
Columbia Senior Diners —
11:30 a.m., 1111 Exchange St. Cost
is $6. For information, or to have a
meal delivered, call 503-325-9693.
Chair Exercises for Seniors
— 9 to 9:45 a.m., Astoria Senior
Center, 1111 Exchange St. For in-
formation, call 503-325-3231.
Warrenton Senior Lunch
Program — noon, Warrenton
Community Center, 170 S.W. Third
St. Suggested donation of $5 for
seniors and $7 for those younger
than 60. For information, or to vol-
unteer, call 503-861-3502 Monday
or Thursday.
Astoria Rotary Club — noon,
second floor of the Astoria Elks
Lodge, 453 11th St. Guests always
welcome. For information, go to
www.AstoriaRotary.org
Knochlers Pinochle Group —
1 p.m., Bob Chisholm Community
Center, 1225 Avenue A, Seaside.
Cost is $1 per regular session per
person. Players with highest and
second highest scores split the
prize. Game is designed for play-
ers 55 and older, but all ages are
welcome.
Mahjong for Experienced
Players — 1 p.m., Astoria Se-
nior Center, 1111 Exchange St.
For information, call 503-325-
3231.
they might have depression or
bipolar disorder. For information,
contact Patricia Fessler at 503-325-
8930.
Line Dancing for Seniors — 3
to 4:30 p.m., Astoria Senior Center,
1111 Exchange St. Not for begin-
ners. For information, call 503-325-
3231.
World War II Warbirds — 8
a.m., Labor Temple Diner, 934
Duane St.
Astoria Toastmasters — 6:30
p.m., Hotel Elliot conference room,
357 12th St. Visitors welcome. For
information, go to www.toastmas-
ters.org or call Christa Svensson at
206-790-2869.
Stewardship Quilting Group
— 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., First Lu-
theran Church, 725 33rd St. All are
welcome. Donations of material al-
ways appreciated. For information,
call Janet Kemp at 503-325-4268.
Depression and Bipolar
Support Alliance — 7 to 9 p.m.,
Room A, Columbia Memorial Hos-
pital, 2111 Exchange St. Open to
all those diagnosed with a mood
disorder, or have a family member
or friend diagnosed, or who think
Do Nothing Club — 10 a.m.
to noon, 24002 U St., Ocean Park,
Wash. Men’s group. For informa-
tion, call Jack McBride at 360-665-
2721.
TUESDAY
See NOTES, Page 2B