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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 13, 2020)
B1 THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2020 CONTACT US ewilson@dailyastorian.com (971) 704-1718 COMMUNITY FOLLOW US facebook.com/ DailyAstorian IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON A LETHAL PREDICAMENT I n the Friday, Feb. 13, 1885 edition of The Daily Asto- rian, this grim little notice: “J. W. Murray hangs today at Portland for the murder of his brother-in-law, A. Yenke.” An account of how Mr. Murray found himself in this lethal predicament was discovered in the Friday, Dec. 5, 1884 edition of the Sacramento Daily Union (bit.ly/ SDUmurray). Mr. Murray and his wife were separated, and she would not come back to him. Incensed, he threatened to kill any- one he found in his wife’s company. She ignored his threats, and attended a ball, anyway. Her brother, Alfred Yenke, also attended the festivities, and performing his brotherly duty, walked her home. Mr. Murray, who was extremely inebriated at the time, not to mention insanely jealous, shot and killed his broth- er-in-law after drunkenly mistaking him for being his wife’s potential suitor. He was arrested immediately, charged with fi rst degree murder and sentenced to death. Judicial appeals were made, and lost. He was doomed. “As the sentence of the Circuit Court has been sus- tained,” the Sacramento newspaper reported, “nothing now can save Murray from the gallows but death or exec- utive clemency.” Neither reprieve occurred, and he was duly hung on Feb. 13, 1885 (bit.ly/jwmurray). A little research revealed that the death penalty for fi rst degree murder became a statute in 1864. Oregon had already moved from territory status to statehood in 1859, and settlement was well under way. County sheriffs were in charge of handling executions from 1864 to 1903, when the Oregon Legislature felt the need to curb attendance at public hangings by moving all executions to the penitentiary in Salem. James E. Kingsley, who killed a police offi cer, was the last person to be executed by hanging in Oregon on Oct. 30, 1931. After his death, the state retired the gallows and began using lethal gas. While the death penalty still exists in Oregon, accord- ing to the Oregon.gov website, the last person executed was convicted murderer Harry Charles Moore, who was given a lethal injection on May 16, 1997. EMILY REED’S DEMISE he 215-foot windjammer Emily G. Reed ran hard aground on Rockaway Beach at 1:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 14, 1908. She is pictured, courtesy of the Nehalem Valley Historical Society o nline a rchive. According to the Barrier Miner of New South Wales (tinyurl.com/reed-wales), here’s what happened: Heavy weather didn’t help, but the wreck was mainly caused by the inaccuracy of the vessel’s chronometers. It was too late by the time the captain realized he was too far east; the ship went in bow fi rst, and started to break up. The fi rst mate, two seamen and the cook set off in a steel lifeboat, which was immediately swamped; they were presumed drowned. Horrifi ed, the captain ordered his wife and the remaining crewmen to stay aboard the ship. A very low tide the next morning enabled the sur- vivors to wade ashore, where the captain, a tad hastily, reported 12 deaths. The crew in the steel boat, unable to return to the wreck, sailed out to sea, hoping to cross paths with a steamship. Although the boat was leaking heavily, they improvised a baler, but they had no food or water. On the second day, the cook broke down and drank sea water. He soon became delirious, and lay down in a pool of water. A steamer was spotted, so the cook got up, but their hopes were dashed — the ship passed them by. “Then the cook gave up the fi ght,” the fi rst mate recalled. “He lay down to die. Half an hour later we found his body cold; his heart had stopped beating.” “All Sunday we kept seeing all sorts of vessels,” he added, “but none would answer our hails.” They headed for Neah Bay, Washington, where the watchman on the sloop Tesla, heard a “feeble hail.” After 78 hours at sea, and more than 200 miles north of Rock- away Beach, the three survivors were found “in a piti- able condition,” delirious, tongues swollen from thirst and suffering from exposure — but they all recovered. To this day, what remains of the Emily Reed peeks out of the sand every so often, and her story gets told once again. T WHAT’S YOUR NAME? story about the MV Astoria, purported to be the old- est cruise ship at sea, was posted on AzCentral.com, in the travel section. The bad news is that the Astoria is retiring, after a long and convoluted history. As the MS Stockholm, launched in 1946 and the largest cruise ship built in Sweden, she collided with the Andrea Doria in heavy fog off Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1956, almost slicing the Andrea Doria in two. Forty-six were killed on the Andrea Doria, which sank; fi ve died on the Stockholm. Rebuilt in the 1960s, the Stockholm was sold to East Germany, renamed Volkerfreundshaft, and used by Com- munist party offi cials for leisure cruises. By 1985, another name change had come about: She was called the Volker. But then she was bought by the Swedish government in 1986, and renamed Fridtjof Nansen. The ship kept moving, and the name kept changing: Italia I, Italia Prima, Valtur Prima and Caribe. As the MS Athena, she was attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia in 2008, and later renamed Azores. By then the ship must have had a full-blown identity crisis, but in 2015, Cruise and Maritime Voyages (who provided the photo shown) contracted to use the ship, and she was renamed Astoria — at last! — in 2016. She even has an on-board historian to explain her long and multi- named time at sea. But not for long. Cruise and Maritime Voyages will not be renewing the 550-passenger ship’s contract, as they’ve ordered larger vessels. MV Astoria’s farewell cruise is from Hull, England, to Norway in October. Want to go? Put your name on the waitlist at bit.ly/LastAstoria Sadly, after Astoria’s October adventures to the “Land of Northern Lights,” her future is uncertain. (bit.ly/MVAs- toria1, bit.ly/MVAstoria2) A CRUISIN’ ALONG MONOPOLIZING THE GOONIES ‘SO NEAR YET SO FAR’ K, so you can’t afford to go on a cruise to Norway. No problem. Believe it or not, you can now cruise vicari- ously … and virtually … MaritimeExecutive.com reports. Norway’s national broadcaster NRK TV streamed (and then archived) live footage 24 hours a day from Hurti- gruten’s MS Spitsbergen’s nine-day recent Arctic Expe- dition Cruise around Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. The venture is appropriately named Slow TV. A screenshot from one of the videos is shown, courtesy of NRK TV. The fi lming is broken up into two-hour segments, and can be seen at tinyurl.com/NRKstream. So pull up your deck chair, grab your favorite beverage and watch the scenery fl oat by, or as they venture onshore — without worrying about chil blains or frostbite. The only drawback is that the dialogue is all in Norwegian, but hey, you might learn something. Hurtigruten said the feat was accomplished using 17 cameras. “This is the closest and most sustainable way,” Thomas Hellum of NRK noted, “you could possibly get to the real deal.” And it doesn’t cost anything, either. O F rom the Wednesday, Feb. 13, 1884, edition of The Daily Astorian, this little gem, “So near and yet so far”: “On a recent slippery morning an elderly and corpu- lent citizen was carefully picking his way down the street, when he noticed a small boy with two front teeth gone industriously sprinkling ashes on the icy walk. The elderly citizen’s heart bounded and his eyes glistened. “With a muttered word of approval he impulsively pulled off his glove and shot his hand down deep into his pocket. The boy saw the movement, heard the jingle of sil- ver, and smiled expectantly. “The elderly citizen recovered his band, looked fi xedly at the boy, fi tted the lingering remains of a plug of tobacco into his mouth, and passed cheerily on, while the boy sat down on the hard, cold sidewalk — with a dull and pas- sionless thud. “It is things like these that cover our oceans and creeks with boy pirates.” n case you somehow weren’t aware of it, this year is the 35th anniversary of the iconic movie “The Goonies.” Perhaps to commemorate this momentous event, Usa- opoly (The Op), a tabletop games publisher, partnered with Warner Bros. Consumer Products to bring you Monopoly: The Goonies (pictured). According to The Op website (bit.ly/MonopGoon): “Goonies never say die!,” Maggie Matthews of The Op proclaims. “That’s why we’re so excited to bring back all the favorite moments of the beloved classic as fans buy, sell and trade iconic properties throughout Goon Docks and the small town of Astoria, Oregon.” The game pieces include a Gold Doubloon, the Statue of David and Skull & Cross Bones. Monopoly: The Goonies will be available for $39.99 in the late spring. You must, must know when it is released? Sign up at the link above for the newsletter. I SHIP SHAPE HISTORY SNIPPET ostalgic rerun, since presidential cam- paign season is upon us: Jim Hendrickson sent in the photo shown of Robert F. Kennedy, taken by his mother, Jo Hendrickson. Kennedy came to the North Coast while running in the Ore- gon Democratic Party presidential primary, which he lost to Eugene McCarthy. “Rumbling through old pictures, I stum- bled upon this one my mother took back in May 1968 in downtown Astoria when Bobby Kennedy was campaigning down- town by city hall. “She said she was working at city hall, and she rushed out to take the picture. Then later he came in and used the facilities and had a little meet and greet.” What a lovely little Astoria history snippet. (In One Ear, 8/19/11) N indblad Expeditions, the cruise operator for National Geographic Expeditions, announced recently that it has become “the fi rst self-disi nfecting fl eet in the cruise industry” (bit.ly/byebugz). How? By applying ACT CleanCoat. Created by Dan- ish company ACT.Global as part of their Premium Purity program, the coating will banish bacteria, viruses, mold and airborne allergens. One of the ships is shown, courtesy of Lindblad Expeditions. Lindblad’s press release says “the antibacterial spray is transparent, odorless, and activated by light, and pro- tects a room like an invisible insulation — plus purifi es and deodorizes the air for up to one year.” Fabulous or scary? You decide. L
