Port Townsend
Port Townsend is located on the shores of northwest
Puget Sound, at the end of the
Olympic Peninsula, in Washington State. It was, certainly in the pre-steam era, a choice port of call
for vessels of all sizes, particularly those from England.
1 Prior to Spanish arrival to the area, circa 1789-92, the region was, as with today,
populated by a variety of Salish-speaking peoples.
2 However, the site of Port Townsend was the traditional land of the Chimacum.
3Vancouver arrived there in 1792 after a year at sea, as part of his mission to divine a rumoured
waterway through which to lead vessels from the North American coast, across the continent,
and into the Atlantic. Instead, he sailed to the southern reaches of
Puget Sound.
4 And, as with the
Sound,
Vancouver named Port Townsend after a naval colleague: the Marquis Lord Townshend (1724 - 1807),
who was a key figure in the siege of
Quebec.
5
Later, though, the first US settlers to the region dropped the H from Townshend.6 Arguably, the town dropped its morality, too, in the mid-1850s, as it became a port
of depravity and questionable indulgence. The town was rumoured to have one saloon
for every seventy residents.7 Drunkards, gamblers, and soon-to-be-Shanghaied
sailors stumbled through the streets and cavorted with prostitutes. Generally, sin
abounded.8
According to J. Ross Browne's 1853 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, even the
US Customs employees were somehow seduced by base pursuits, as they apparently spent
what free time they had uselessly engaged in chasing wild Indians and porpoises.
9
- 1. Doug Brokenshire, Washington State Place Names: from Alki to Yelm, (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1993), 173.
- 2. Ibid., 171.
- 3. Native American Groups of the Olympic Peninsula, [US] National Park Service.
- 4. Brokenshire, Washington State Place Names, 170.
- 5. Ibid.
- 6. Ibid., 171.
- 7. Ibid.
- 8. Ibid.
- 9. Ibid.