THE SEATTLE STAR — APRIL 30, 1902
A MERMAID SEEN ON THE LONELY DUNCAN ROCKS ♢ Interesting News of the
Shore and Sound Told Briefly—Ships That Come and Go
Mermaids those lovely sea creatures of a few centuries ago, have not entirely disappeared yet, if the story told by one of the officers of the steamer Grace Dollar, which arrived up from San Francisco this morning, be correct. This man says he saw a mermaid. He knows what mermaids look like, and who so bold as to dispute him? The good steamer Was plowing furrows in the briny and hearts aboard were happy at the approaching shore line, which spoke to them of home and beauty. As the steamer neared the Duncan rocks, which every mariner knows is a jagged, barren promontory not far from the Cape, and nearly opposite that reef of sailors’ woe, the Flattery rocks, posed near the sea-end of the rock sat a beautiful, beautiful maiden, as the man expresses it, with long golden tresses that fell in dangling tangles down to her girdle. With one hand she combed her long, yellow hair, and with the other she waived a tactful salute to the passing steamer. Her nether parts were fishy, not so the man’s story.
It was a beautiful sight—the lovely nymph, but the Kruse line sailors know a distinction between love and duty, and the steamer passed on.
The late Edgar Allen Poe once saw a raven and heard him tapping on his window pane. But then every-body knows that Poe had been imbibing; but this gallant sea dog was as sober as an Abbott. It’s a wonderful tale. Maybe when the Grace Dollar passes the Duncan rocks on her way back to San Francisco the mermaid may be still there, and then again, the mirage may have cleared off by that time, and the beautiful sea-lady with it.
The Seattle Star. (Seattle, Wash.), 30 April 1902. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
