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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, MARcH 17, 2022
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IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON
TO THE RESCUE
T
he U.S. Coast Guard Station Cape Disappoint-
ment was off to the rescue on March 11, as posted on
their Facebook page. The fishing vessel Ocean Beaut, a
familiar sight around Astoria, was 18 miles west of the
Columbia River Bar when the 65-foot trawler’s engine
failed.
“With approximately 60,000 pounds of assorted catch
on board, it was a very heavy tow for the 47-foot motor
lifeboat, requiring a second motor lifeboat to respond
and remain on scene as a safety escort,” the Facebook
post noted.
How they determine the length of the towline?
The answer: “Usually the more towline that’s let
out, the better the ride quality for the towed vessel.
Taking it further, there are math formulas available that
can be used to calculate safe towing speed.” Now you
know.
“Great job by the coxswain Boatswain’s Mate 2nd
Class Petty Officer Sillasen, executing sound judgment
and expertise maneuvering the vessel. The crew … did a
stellar job rotating duties on deck and handling the 750
feet of towline efficiently.
“Our commanding officer, Chief Warrant Officer
McCommons and surf trainer Boatswain’s Mate 1st
Class Petty Officer Senne provided safety insight from
the second motor lifeboat, leading to the vessel’s safe
moorage in Astoria close to midnight. Great job, team!”
Indeed.
SAVING HISTORY
ack in 1964, we moved to a dead end street on top
of Grand Avenue on the east end of Astoria,” Don
Kelly posted on his new Facebook group page, Stories
from the old dirt fisherman!
“The city was bringing up dirt at the end of the road,
and dumping it in piles down the steep bank. We would
always take that short cut down the bank to the neigh-
borhood below our street.
“One day, while sliding down that bank of dirt spoils
the city deposited there, my brother, Tom, yells out,
‘check this out!’ He pulls out of the dirt a weird-look-
ing chunk of metal that was all iron, and had no wood
attached to it.
“Research showed it to be a 1850s .31 caliber pep-
perbox pistol. This six-barrel pistol was used for
self-defense, and had to have powder and wadding and
lead packed down each barrel. Tom had a family friend
sand blast it, and he had wooden grips put on to make it
a beautiful wall piece.”
“Living in Astoria in the 1850s wasn’t as peaceful as
today,” he added, “so I’m sure many people back then
were carrying weapons of this sort. Gotta love fishing in
the dirt, and saving history!”
‘B
THAT’S SUPER
tidbit for North Coast car lovers, from Guinness-
WorldRecords.com: The new record for the world’s
longest car is a Cadillac “super limo,” a restoration of
a 1986 world record winner, coming in at 100 feet and
1.50 inches.
“The American Dream” is hinged in the middle to
accommodate “tight corners,” can be driven from both
ends, and can carry 75 people. It contains a waterbed,
swimming pool and diving board, jacuzzi, bathtub, TVs,
a refrigerator, mini-golf course and a helipad. No, it
can’t go out on the road.
“Everybody thought that I was out of my mind
for wanting to restore it,” owner Michael Manning
explained, “but I had a vision.” (Photos courtesy of
Guinness World Records)
A
FINDING ENDURANCE
haunting maritime mystery, the location of the 144-
foot three-masted wooden ship Endurance, has
finally been solved.
She sank during the problem-plagued British Impe-
rial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914 to 1916, led
by explorer Ernest Shackleton. His original plan was to
be the first to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. Daily-
Mail.com covered both the expedition and the discovery.
Unfortunately, the Endurance got trapped in the ice
in the Weddell Sea, off the northwest coast of Antarc-
tica, which left them drifting for 10 months. There was
no hoped-for warmer weather, and the ice began to crush
the ship.
The crew took off as many supplies as they could,
including the lifeboats, and set up camp on an ice floe.
Three weeks later, on Nov. 21, 1915, the Endurance sank
out of sight.
Finally, in April 1916, their ice floe drifted near unin-
habited Elephant Island, about 150 miles northeast of
Antarctica, so they loaded up their boats and headed
there — which took six freezing, grueling days. When
they finally arrived, it was the first time they had set foot
on land in 16 months.
Shackleton and five others left in a boat to bring help
and rescue the rest of the crew, which they did, after
many trials and tribulations. The stranded men all wound
up in Chile by September 1916. Incredibly, no one was
lost, but the Endurance was gone.
The Endurance22 Expedition (which provided the
ship photos), organized by the Falklands Maritime
Heritage Trust, found her using remotely operated
submersibles, concentrating on a 150 square mile area
around the location of where Capt. Frank Worsley,
using celestial navigation, placed the Endurance when
she sank in 1915.
She was only 4 miles from Worsely’s estimated posi-
tion, at 10,000 feet deep. She’s still upright, her name
clearly visible on her stern, “in a brilliant state of pres-
ervation,” Mensun Bound, the expedition’s director of
exploration, told the Daily Mail.
As an ironic little touch, the day the Endurance was
found was 100 years to the day since Shackleton’s
burial at an abandoned whaling station on South Geor-
gia Island. In 1922, at 47, he died of a heart attack —
never having achieved his original goal — at the start of
another Antarctic expedition.
A
RARELY SEEN
srael Knight was vacationing this weekend in
Rockaway Beach when he came across some-
thing he didn’t expect, a Pacific snake eel (Ophich-
thus triserialis),” the Seaside Aquarium posted on
Facebook March 8.
“They are typically found at depths of 25 to 500 feet
and feed on small clams, fish and shrimp … Native to
California and Mexico, they are rarely seen this far
north, especially alive!”
Israel contacted the aquarium, and asked what to
do; they suggested he find a container filled with sea-
water to put it in.
“It was a team effort!” Israel recalled. “My wife,
Maria, was frantically running around to differ-
ent houses trying to borrow or find a bucket, and a
passerby stopped and helped me collect ocean water
to keep pouring on the eel, and helped keep the birds
away.
“Then experts from Seaside Aquarium, Keith
Chandler and Tiffany Boothe, showed up to actually
rescue the poor animal, and put it in a holding tank to
give it a chance of recovery.”
“This is the third, live snake eel the aquarium has
seen in the last few years,” the aquarium post noted.
“… Interestingly, all three have been found in March.”
(Photos courtesy of Seaside Aquarium)
‘I
AROUND TOWN
idbits from The Daily Astorian, March 17, 1888:
• Men are wanted to work on the jetty at Fort
Stevens at 20 cents an hour.
Note: The South Jetty, built between 1885 and
1895, paying 20 cents an hour ($5.97 now)? It’s a
wonder it got built at all.
• The post office at Onion Peak, Tillamook County,
will be discontinued next Wednesday.
Note: When the Onion Peak post office was estab-
lished on Feb. 6, 1884, it was called the Nehalem post
office. In May 1883, the new postmaster, John M.
Alley, as was the custom, moved the post office to his
home near the county line. He then renamed the post
office Onion Peak, after a nearby mountain in Clatsop
County.
There was a service interruption from March 15 to
Oct. 23, 1888, but the Onion Peak post office didn’t
actually close until April 7, 1893.
• The Salvation Army has lost its cornet player, and
what is its loss is our gain.
T
SUFFICIENT REASONS
I
nteresting character: Clara Cynthia
Munson (1861 — 1938) was the first
woman mayor of Warrenton, and in Ore-
gon, for that matter.
According to OregonEncyclopedia.org,
she was a teacher at Fort Stevens. In 1908,
she was elected clerk of the Warrenton school
board, a position she kept for the rest of her
life. She was also Warrenton’s postmaster for
a short while.
By 1910, Warrenton’s population was 339.
In the November 1912 election, Oregon gave
women the right to vote. Soon after, there
were two candidates for mayor: Clara Mun-
son and J.W. Detrich, who ran in opposition
to having a woman mayor. Munson won, 38
to 22.
Oddly enough, she said she was “not very
much in favor of woman suffrage,” and only
served a one-year term, starting in January
1913, although she did believe that women
should “take an active interest in political
affairs and show they are able to make good
use of a ballot.”
And so she did, installing new wooden
sidewalks, getting a volunteer fire department
going, and adding a dike inspector position.
To cut the budget, she took over the duties of
both the city attorney and police chief herself.
Why didn’t she run again? “I have reached
the conclusion that mayorships are no posi-
tions for women,” she said in a Jan. 6, 1914,
UPI story. “I will not state my reasons, not
wishing to become involved in controversies
with those who believe differently, but they
appear good and sufficient reasons to me.”
Clara Munson never married, but stayed
active in the community after her mayoral
stint. She died Oct. 18, 1938, and is buried at
Ocean View Cemetery.
SLAINTÉ!
ince it’s St. Patrick’s Day, a few bits of trivia
are in order, courtesy of IrishAroundThe
World.com
The original St. Patrick’s Day color was blue. It
changed to green to honor the color of the uniforms
Irish soldiers were wearing during the Irish Rebellion
of 1878.
The world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade is 98
feet long, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, of all places; the
first parade was in the U.S. (not Ireland), in Boston,
in 1737.
St. Patrick’s birth name was Maewyn Succat,
but his pen name was Patricius, which is Padriac
in Old Irish, and Patrick in English. And, just so
you know, the diminutive of Padriac is Paddy, never
Patty.
On St. Patrick’s Day, 13 million pints of Guinness
are usually consumed worldwide, which is ironic,
since it used to be a dry holiday. Slainté!
S