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THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2022
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IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON
MARITIME JOTTINGS
T
idbits from The Daily Astorian, Saturday, April
23, 1881:
• The resurrected Clatsop Chief is again ready
for business. Who’ll say now that dead things never
crawl.
Note: If ever there was an unlikely resurrection, it
was this one, as the Chief, while towing a barge, had
been cut in half on the Columbia River by the steam-
ship Oregon on March 2, 1881, and quickly sank.
On March 16, the Clatsop Chief was raised. She’d
been lying bottom up, with her bow and boilers miss-
ing. Her engines were fi ne, though, so a bow and new
boilers were added, and she was “in splendid condition
to return to her labors.”
• Cooks’ mess house was got off the beach and
towed to a safe place under shelter of Cape Hancock
(later known as Cape Disappointment), yesterday.
Note: The J. W. & Y. Cooks’ scow had bro-
ken loose from her moorings on Thursday at Sand
Island, and pandemonium ensued, as the crew was
terrifi ed the river would take them out over the Colum-
bia River Bar. The scene aboard at the time was
deemed “indescribable,” yet an attempt was made,
nonetheless.
“Everything breakable on board was broken by the
wild pitches which the boat made, and the men, fear-
ing that they would go to sea, were in a furious state
of excitement. It is said that it was one of the largest
prayer meetings ever assembled on board of a scow in
the Columbia River …”
GRAND PLANS
HE WOULDN’T LISTEN
T
he 380-foot steamship Great Republic, proba-
bly the largest U.S.-built commercial vessel at the
time, with about 1,250 passengers aboard, became,
instead, one of largest shipwrecks on the lower Colum-
bia River, on April 16, 1879. Why? Because of a stub-
born pilot.
“I gave the steamer over to p ilot Thomas Doig
at the automatic buoy at 11:30 Friday night,” Capt.
James Carroll, the ship’s master, said in his state-
ment, which appeared in The Daily Astorian on April
22.
“… The fi rst and third offi cers, freight clerk and
myself were on the lookout. I had a pair of glasses,
and was the fi rst to discover Sand Island, and found
the bearing all right. I reported Sand Island to the pilot;
he had not seen it.
“We ran along probably two minutes. I told the pilot
(I) thought he was getting too close to the island, and
he had better haul her up. He replied, ‘I think we are
not in far enough.’
“A minute after, I told him to port his helm, and put
it hard a-port, as I think you are getting too near to the
island. He made no reply, but ran along about fi ve min-
utes then he put his helm hard a-port.
“The vessel was swinging up, heading toward Asto-
ria, but the ebb tide caught her on the starboard bow,
and being so much nearer the island than expected, set
her on the spit …
“We had no chance to get the vessel off that night.”
Or at any other time, for that matter, despite the best
eff orts of several tugs, and the heavy seas broke her
up.
No passengers were killed in the incident, but 11
crew members drowned who were in the last boat to
leave the ship; pirates looted the stranded vessel before
soldiers could arrive to guard it; and luggage fl oated
off and was found as far away as Oysterville, Washing-
ton. The ship’s treasure of millions in silver and gold
from mines and mints is still lost.
And all because the pilot wouldn’t listen.
BASE INHUMANITY
T
A
bit of local history is available online: A report
prepared for the 1920 National Foreign Trade
Convention in San Francisco to attract business to the
Port of Astoria.
The Port was bustling with commerce then. The
waterfront had two railroad terminals, at 20th and 14th
streets, and three privately owned wharves: the Ninth
Street Dock (Eighth through 11th streets), the Elmore
Dock (Third and Fourth streets), and the Callender
Dock (14th Street).
The Port had p iers 1, 2 and 3, and commercial
wharves abounded, consisting of fi sh canning and cold
storage, oil companies, grain and fl our mills, coal bun-
kers, warehouses, marine repair plants, lumber mills
and more.
The Port’s fi nal selling point was wanting to build
a Belt Line Railway to “touch every industrial site”
for 20 miles of water frontage. It was a grand plan,
indeed.
BESIEGED BY BOVINES
T
he residents of Gearhart may have their elk,
but the folks living in Peoria, Arizona, have
been besieged by bovines for about a month now,
Fox10Phoenix.com reports.
“We just have cows everywhere,” Julie Caputo said.
“Yesterday, I counted 14 of them at the new clubhouse
in Northpointe. They like to walk along this dirt road
along Vistancia Boulevard. We’ve had police offi cers
out here trying to get them out of the streets.”
The owner of the delinquent cows, who is believed
to be a rancher in the area, hasn’t come forward. Mean-
while, there must be a cow pie pile up.
David Suslenskiy, who takes a lot of walks in the
area, recently spotted the herd. “It’s pretty weird,” he
noted.
he Daily Morning Astorian
of April 23, 1893, ran a dis-
turbing story about fi sherman
Jens Nielson, “a steady, indus-
trious man,” who previously had
“no conception of man’s base
inhumanity to man.”
On April 20, Nielson and
his boat puller were anchored at
Megler station in Washington
state with several other fi sher-
men. They all decided to leave at
once that morning, so they could
help each other, if needed.
Nielson set sail, but a squall
struck, and the boat quickly went
bottom up. “We managed to climb
on top,” he recalled, “and then
saw two boats … I thought there
was hope of being picked up, as
the boats tacked toward us. We
shouted for them to come; but no,
they did not … (and) left us to our
fate.”
By then, they were in the middle
of the river, being pulled out to sea by
an ebb tide. “I stood up and waved
my hat, hoping to attract attention,”
he said, “as that was the last show
we had for our lives. As good luck
would have it, McGowan’s men …
happened to see us.”
Upon returning to Astoria,
Nielson was horrifi ed to learn that
the fi shermen who hadn’t helped
him had, indeed, reported seeing
him in trouble. “I would like to
know how such men would feel
placed in similar circumstances,”
Nielson fumed. “ … What are
such made of, or have they any
feeling of humanity?”
Nielson’s boat and net were
found, as was another boat, which
was empty. “The occupants of the
boat were brothers named Mar-
cilla,” the newspaper reported.
“Nothing has since been heard of
them.” Were their cries for help
ignored, as well?
TALE OF A TITAN
W
hile many are probably aware of the 110th anni-
versary of the sinking of the “unsinkable” Titanic
on April 15, most probably don’t realize its demise was
eerily predicted in a short novel, “The Wreck of the
Titan: Or, Futility,” by Morgan Robertson.
The Titan’s tale was originally written in 1898, when
the Titanic was not even on the drawing board yet. It
wasn’t until 1907 that the White Star Line decided to
build the biggest and grandest luxury liners on the seas
— with fewer lifeboats, to make deck space room for
their passengers’ enjoyment.
The parallels between Robertson’s imaginary ship
and the Titanic are uncanny. The Titan was 800 feet,
Titanic was 882.5 feet; they were both made of steel, had
two masts, three propellers, a 3,000 passenger capacity
and not enough life boats (24 on the Titan, 20 on the
Titanic). Both ships hit an iceberg on the starboard side,
near midnight, in the month of April, and sank.
“She was the largest craft afl oat,” Robertson wrote of
the Titan (which could also describe the Titanic), “and
the greatest of the works of men. In her construction
and maintenance were involved every science, profes-
sion and trade known to civilization.” Sadly, the iceberg
didn’t care.
NORWEGIAN WINE IS FINE
N
autical writer Peter Marsh suggested this little gem,
something good (and tasty) evolving from climate
change: The Slinde Vineyard, on a fjord in Slinde, Nor-
way, is probably one of the last places you’d expect to fi nd
grapes growing, at 61 degrees north of the equator.
BBC.com, in a story about the owner, Bjørn Bergum,
and his partner, Halldis, noted that the normal grape-grow-
ing range is from 30 to 50 degrees latitude. Nonetheless,
now it’s warm enough in Slinde to grow grapes.
Bergum is passionately dedicated to the vineyard, the
culmination of a longtime dream to make wine from grapes
grown locally. But the problem isn’t the growing part, it’s
convincing people that a Norwegian wine is not only pos-
sible, it’s good. Since many oenophiles won’t even try
a Norwegian wine, Slinde wines have been entered into
blind tasting competitions, and are winning awards.
“Since 2014 we have been hard at work,” Bergum
says on the vineyard’s website, “creating what will soon
become the northern-most commercial vineyard in the
world — and we have done it with our own two hands.”
“So far,” he noted, “many of our eff orts have produced
excellent results.” Skål! (Photo: Slinde Vineyard)
BEACHED BEAVER
‘O
n Friday, we had the pleasure of rescuing this feisty
beaver,” Tiff any Boothe of the Seaside Aquar-
ium reported. “First reported as a sea otter, it took us a few
trips up and down the beach to fi nally locate him.
“He was originally spotted up by Sunset Beach but
before we could get to him, he got startled and went back
out into the surf. He swam all the way to Gearhart b each
before hauling back out.
“… While beavers can tolerate brackish water, salt
water can cause some major issues for beavers, especially
if ingested … We were able to successfully capture the
beaver and get him to the Wildlife Center of the North
Coast.”
Note: To donate to help the wildlife center , which needs
funding for a new seabird enclosure, go to coastwildlife.
org
“If all goes well,” Tiff any added, “once he gets a clean
bill of health, he will be released back into the wild. Good
luck, little buddy!” (Photos: Tiff any Boothe/Seaside
Aquarium)