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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, FEbRuARy 17, 2022
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IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON
WATERLOGGED
he American schooner Frank W. Howe, home
ported in Port Townsend, Washington, was on her
way to San Pedro, California, with a heavy load of
railroad ties, when she got caught in a gale and became
waterlogged. Capt. Austin Keegan couldn’t cross the
Columbia River Bar in that state, so he headed north,
looking for a beach.
From North Head she was spotted flying distress
signals at 10 a.m. that morning, and about an hour
later spun in the breakers then grounded stern first at
Seaview, Washington, on Feb. 23, 1904.
Even though lifesaving crews got to the area as
speedily as possible, the roiling seas had already
started pounding the vessel to pieces. Life lines failed
to reach the foundering schooner at first, but eventu-
ally the captain and the six crew members were able
to make it to shore with great difficulty via breeches
buoys.
Built in Boston in 1891, the schooner apparently
did not generate much profit for her owners. One mis-
adventure happened on a trip to the Pacific North-
west via Honolulu, when the ship arrived with crew
members on board afflicted with scurvy, a debilitat-
ing condition caused by a lack of vitamin C. Con-
sequently, the captain and several of the sailors
sued the owners, and won $5,000 (around $132,000
now).
The schooner’s final journey was plagued with
bad luck. Two fatalities occurred even before run-
ning aground: A Norwegian sailor fell from the rig-
ging and was killed, and the cook, William Van Sant,
died instantly when he was hurled across the deck by
a heavy sea.
The schooner refloated at high tide, but grounded
again, and was declared a total loss. (bit.ly/fwhowe01,
bit.ly/fwhowe02, bit.ly/fwhowe03)
T
FISHY BUSINESS
COMINGS AND GOINGS
story in the Feb. 27, 1884 edition of The Daily
Morning Astorian offers a glimpse of several
celebrities who passed through Astoria:
“’How many people have you in Astoria?’ asked an
outward bound passenger of an Astorian reporter yes-
terday afternoon. ‘Something less than 6,000,’ was the
reply. ‘Indeed!’ said he, ‘it looks as if you had 60,000
from the crowd on the dock’ …
“Henry Villard, in his comings and goings, never
attracted much attention in Astoria. Gen. William Sher-
man and Henry Ward Beecher drew pretty well, but it
is seldom that a steamer … attracted such a gathering as
that yesterday afternoon …
“On board was the champion fighter of the world
John L. Sullivan, who goes back to aesthetic Bos-
ton with fresh scalps hanging at his girdle. Slade the
Maori, Taylor, McCoy and all the rest of the crowd were
along.
“At Astoria, William Muldoon, the champion wres-
tler of the world, got aboard, and if the passengers can
only get up some kind of a match between the two, they
ought to have fun enough for the trip.”
Henry Villard (1835 — 1900) brought the transconti-
nental railroad to the Pacific Northwest in 1883.
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 — 1891),
a Union Army general during the Civil War, scorched
the earth during his March to the Sea from Atlanta to
Savannah, Georgia, which helped the North win the
Civil War.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813 — 1887) was a nationally
known Congregational minister, abolitionist and orator.
His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.”
Boxer John L. Sullivan (1858 — 1918) was the first
gloved boxing heavyweight champion, aka the “Boston
Strong Boy,” and also the last heavyweight champion of
bare-knuckled boxing. During many exhibition tours, he
paid anyone who would fight him, and won more than
450 fights. He was boxing’s first superstar.
New Zealander Slade the Maori (1854 — 1913), aka
Herbert Augustus “Maori” Slade fought Sullivan, and
also toured with him.
William Muldoon (1845 — 1933) a wrestler who
learned his skills in the Union Army, became the world
champion in the Greco-Roman style of the sport. He was
also a trainer; Sullivan was one of his clients.
A
THE OREGON CONNECTION
rom Gary Henley, The Astorian’s sports reporter:
“In ‘East to the Dawn,’ a book on Amelia Earhart
by Susan Butler, when Amelia Earhart was young,
she ‘started to look for and clip newspaper and mag-
azine articles about women who had careers, and she
quickly had enough to paste into a scrapbook that she
called ‘Activities of Women.’
“‘Among the women she singled out included Miss
R.E. Barrett, who was city manager of Warrenton,
Oregon,’ the only woman in the country to hold the
office of city manager.
“Earhart, whose first flight lesson was just over 100
years ago on Jan. 3, 1921, eventually married George
Palmer Putnam, who was the owner/editor of the
Bend Bulletin from 1910 to 1917, and mayor of Bend
in 1912.” The Bulletin is now owned by EO Media,
The Astorian’s parent company.
Earhart was still married to Putnam when she and
her navigator, Pete Noonan, disappeared in 1937
during an around-the-world flight attempt.
Both The International Group for Historic Air-
craft Recovery and The Road to Amelia Earhart
have been searching for Earhart’s plane on or near
remote Gardner lsland, now Nikumaroro, in the
Republic of Kiribati. Nothing definitive has been
found so far.
F
WHERE’D IT GO?
oonies fans can rejoice, thanks to Joe Ramoni, a
Philadelphia writer and filmmaker, who has com-
plied “The Lost Version of the Goonies,” a 14-minute
video about “The Goonies” deleted scenes.
The red octopus attack was one such scene. Appar-
ently the 32-foot puppet, with all of its cables, was too
hard to manage, and the scene was deleted because in
the end, it just didn’t play well.
There was also a car-stealing gorilla scene that
director Steven Spielberg was fond of, but it just
didn’t make sense in the story, and was cut. And, of
course, there was an alternate ending, and other miss-
ing goodies.
Not Goonied-out yet? Check out “The Making of a
Cult Classic: The Unauthorized Story of ‘The Goonies’
(2010),” by Tad Crutcher, a retrospective documen-
tary made for the 25th anniversary of the iconic film.
Of special local note: The video also includes a short
interview with Astoria filmmaker Mick Alderman.
(Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.)
G
LOST AND FOUND
n March, it will be 11 years since the devastating
earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, but the effects of
the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant are still being felt.
Black rockfish caught off Fukushima in January
were found to contain “excessive levels of radioactiv-
ity,” according to Maritime-Executive.com, and ship-
ments have been halted. It’s not surprising, since in Feb-
ruary 2021, fish caught 4 nautical miles off Fukushima
contained five times the acceptable radiation level.
Even so, Tepco, the company that runs the plant,
wants to dump more contaminated water into the
ocean, claiming it’s perfectly safe to do that.
“If you insist on the safety of treated water, why don’t
you spray it in your garden,” one fisherman pointed out,
“or dump it in a river flowing into Tokyo Bay?” Good
question.
I
GONE RAFTING
un rerun: “We have been getting calls from locals
who are noticing sea lions engaging in an interesting
behavior, and are wondering what is going on,” Tiffany
Boothe of the Seaside Aquarium wrote. “Sea lions
have been seen congregating together, en masse, on the
surface of the ocean, just outside of the surf zone.” Her
photo of sea lions “rafting” is shown.
“When sea lions do not want to haul out of the water,
they use this tactic to sleep and rest,” she explained.
“The protection of the group provides safety … The
ocean temperature is much warmer than the outside tem-
perature at the moment, so the sea lions are probably
just trying to stay warm like the rest of us!” (In One Ear,
1/20/2017)
F
few weeks ago, this column ran a story about how
the packet ship Silvie (or Sylvie or Sylvia) de
Grasse sailed down the Columbia River with a cargo
of lumber, bound for San Francisco, and ran aground
on a rock ledge off Tongue Point.
She was so overloaded, she could not be refloated,
so there she sat. Everything was removed from the
ship, but it has been a mystery ever since as to what
happened to the medicine chest.
Until an item was spotted in The Daily Morn-
ing Astorian, dated Feb. 3, 1900, that is. The story
mentioned that the chest first became the property of
James A. Welch (1816 — 1876), a pioneer. His son,
John W. Welch (1846 — 1925), inherited it, and he
gave it to Dr. O. B. Estes, who gave it to the Oregon
Historical Society.
The story was confirmed by Kim Buergel, reg-
istrar for museum collections at the Oregon His-
torical Society, and yes, indeed, they do have the
long-missing medicine chest; the provenance was also
confirmed. The item is listed as “loaned by O. B. Estes,
M.D.”
There is a long inventory list of what the chest’s
exotic bottles contained, including: balsam captiva
(actually balsam kopiva, used for bladder and kid-
ney ailments), laudanum (tincture of opium for pain),
basilicon (an ointment for wounds and infections),
spirits of camphor (for aches and pains) and sweet
spirits of nitre (to reduce fever, muscle spasms and
treat cold sores).
There was also spirits of hart horn (aka harts-
horn, inhalant to wake someone after fainting), mer-
curial ointment (for skin irritation and to kill body
lice), tartar emetic (an expectorant, and used to treat
parasitic infections) and sambucus canadensis (to treat
colds).
Long story short: Mystery solved, the medicine
chest has been found.
A
MILLENNIUM WAVE
he most extreme rogue wave ever recorded,
detected by MarineLabs’ sensor buoys, occurred
off Canada’s Vancouver Island in November 2020,
NewAtlas.com reports.
Rogue waves are evaluated by their height
in comparison to the waves around them. In
this case, the accompanying waves were 19.7 feet
high; the rogue wave was 57.7 feet, almost three times
higher.
Terrifyingly unpredictable, rogue waves are caused
by currents, wind and storms. The largest one recorded
was 84 feet high, off the coast of Norway; the sur-
rounding waves were 39 feet high.
“Only a few rogue waves in high sea states have
been observed directly, and nothing of this magni-
tude,” researcher Johannes Gemmrich said of the
Vancouver Island wave. Because of the proportions,
“the probability of such an event occurring is once in
1,300 years.” (Image by Lynn Greyling)
T