WA Secretary of State Blogs

The Sea Serpent That Got Away

Friday, April 13th, 2012 Posted in Articles, Digital Collections, For the Public, Random News from the Newspapers on Microfilm Collection, State Library Collections, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »


From the desk of Steve Willis, Central Library Services Program Manager of the Washington State Library:

After reading this description of a sea serpent as described on page 7 of the June 30, 1899 issue of The Tacoma Evening News, can anyone out there familiar with the creatures in Puget Sound identify what they really caught?

LOST THEIR SEA SERPENT

Party of Scientists Shipwrecked Off Moskito Island

Collecting Specimens of Giant Barnacles, Sponges, Sea Cucumbers and Other Things For The Ferry Museum

“Ferry Museum has a large and varied assortment of material added to the list of attractions, but not until after a campaign lasting three days, and a shipwreck that lost the entire collection of the first day’s work.”

“An extreme low tide on the straits between the west end of McNeil’s Island and Meridian, off Moskito Island, County Commissioner C.H. Dow has told of wonderful large barnacles, as big as a quart bowl, the beasts having a mouth and jaws on them like the beak of the dinasaurs of the reptilian age. Other strange and wonderful monsters were said to abound in those waters, and a party was fixed up to go after them.”

“Admiral Jacobs, of Puyallup, owner of the fine steam yacht Strea, took out his boat, with Professor Harlan I. Smith, of the New York Museum of Natural History; Professor Gilstrap, curator of the Ferry Museum; Commissioner Dow, Frank R. Baker and Mrs. Dow, Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Jacobs.”

“The barnacles were all that had been promised, and a big collection of them are now in place at the Museum, where their vicious snapping and terrific looking beaks are a terror to beholders. There is also a fine assortment of sea cucumbers, sea eggs, star fish; sea weed, shells of various kinds, some sponges and other specimens of much interest.”

“The catch of the season, however, was lost by the capsizing of the boat: the sea serpent, one of the most terrible and striking looking of the kind ever caught.”

“The animal, with a lot of other stuff, was in a yawl boat in tow of the steamer, when the struggles of the beast upset the boat, losing the entire collection in the Sound.”

“The sea serpent was of a brilliant green color, so dazzling that it appeared as though the light shone through him. His body was wide and thin, with two immense fins immediately back of the head, giving him a ferocious appearance when seen from the front. His tail was set vertical, with three saw-like teeth, and with one fin immediately forward of the tail on the back.”

“On his brilliant green sides were irridescent spots of red, yellow, white and black, that appeared to come and go as he splashed about in the water, which was lashed into foam as he sped about in the shallows where he was finally caught.”

Some updates to this news article:

Moskito Island has also been known as Mosquito Island, Enriquita Island, and today is called Pitt Island, according to Gary Fuller Reese.

In the book Island Memoir, Betsey John Cammon tells us the town of Meridian used to be on the mainland just across Pitt Passage from McNeil Island. The town actually jumped across the water and was established as the U.S. Post Office for McNeil from about 1903 to 1936, when the island was taken over as a prison site. Meridian’s McNeil Island site (along with Mosquito/Pitt Island) appears on the 1941 Metsker’s Atlas of Pierce County, Washington. WSL has an extensive collection of Metsker’s maps, both loose and bound.

Harlan Ingersoll Smith (1872-1940), the visiting archaeologist, eventually settled in British Columbia and made Pacific Northwest Native cultures his focus of interest.

William Henry Gilstrap (1849-1914) was a former portrait painter who became the curator of the Ferry Museum and Secretary of the Washington State Historical Society.

The Tacoma Evening News ran from 1889 to 1903, and can be counted as one of the many ancestors of today’s News Tribune, as seen on WSL’s newspaper history chart.

 

Trial, error, and success was the name of the game at WCC in 2011

Thursday, March 8th, 2012 Posted in Articles, Institutional Library Services | 1 Comment »


WCC Library

When I first came to the Washington Corrections Center Library in 2010 I went through a little bit of a culture shock.  I had worked in other facilities, but nothing like WCC.  This library serves a small population of inmates who are housed here on a long term basis, but the institution has the unique aspect of being the receiving center for all male inmates in the state of Washington. 

In 2011 I asked if the library could provide service to the Recieving Units, otherwise known as the R-Units.  I got approval, which lead to several months of a rotating door.  The inmates moved in and out of the institution so fast that I was not able to keep up with  them. Because this led to the loss of too many library materials, this trial service was suspended.  However, we were lucky that we still had all of the books and other material from the McNeil Island Corrections Center library that has closed in 2010.  This material found a home in the R-Units here at WCC giving the many readers that transititioned through the facility an escape from prison life. 

During this trial period, we also started serving a unique unit here at WCC, the Re-Entry Unit.  This unit is full of offenders who have 6 months or less till they return to society.  I have been grateful that I have been able to provide them with much needed re-entry material that will help them transition into society.  They continue to come to the library today and will be joining the long term inmates in our WCC Reading Program as we read some of the classics.

Even as 2011 came to a close I realized that the ups and downs have made us all stronger and we continue to provide a much needed service to the inmates in all of our institutions.  I personally look forward to moving forward in 2012.