In One Ear: Nautical notes

The Daily Astorian, May 30, 1879, reported “rough fishing”:

• Capt. B. F. Stevens ... informs us that night before last the swell was the roughest he has seen it for years near the Columbia River Bar.

• It was fearful in Baker Bay. The Edith lost her gangplank off the deck, and men were compelled to hold on to the lifeboat to keep it from going overboard. The plank was recovered.

• The body of a man was picked up on the weather beach about 5 miles south of Oysterville Road. The body was dressed in a blue saque coat, with dark woolen pants, woolen check shirt, gum boots and oil skin coat ... The body seemed to have been in the water a week or 10 days.

• A boat and net was towed into Cape Disappointment yesterday morning. The boat was filled with water, and appeared to have gone out to sea and back again. The men are missing.

Incidentally, on May 31, there was a story about the former captain of the New Jersey lifesaving service, Paul Boyton, aka the Fearless Frogman, who revised C. S. Merriman’s lifesaving suit designed for steamship passengers. To prevent drowning, Boyton’s immersion suit had rubber pants, shirt and hood and air pockets the wearer could inflate with tubes.

Traveling the world demonstrating and publicizing the suit, he was often greeted with great fanfare. He later toured with P. T. Barnum’s circus, and established the famed Sea Lion Park on Coney Island, New York, in 1895. Boyton’s adventures are well documented in “The Story of Paul Boyton.”