Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/383



REMINISCENCES OF CAPT. W. P. GRAY 343

had been in the lighthouse service and who had surveyed the bar.

"The channel was familiar to him but he was unfamiliar with the fact that the channel had changed a week before and that my brother and I had just surveyed the new channel in- side the breakers and just outside Sand island. We knew there were six feet here at low water. We started through this new channel with a long tow line on the brig. It was high tide and there was a strong east wind beginning to blow. Knowing it would be impossible to tow the brig up the main channel against the east wind on a strong ebb tide, I signaled to the pilot that I was going across the sands. I squared away for Cape Disappointment. Captain Sherwood, who was in charge of the brig, went down into the cabin, got his rifle and came on deck. He told the pilot that if that crazy fool on board the tug struck the brig on the sands he would never turn another wheel nor wreck another ship. It didn't give me a very com- fortable feeling to look across to the brig and see the captain with a rifle trained on me. He kept it pointed at me until we had crossed the sands and run up above Cape Disappointment and were safely anchored in Baker's bay. Then he sent me a handsome apology and complimented me on my seamanship.

"I stayed on the lower river as a captain and pilot until 1873, when I engaged in business in Astoria. In July, 1875, Frank T. Dodge, who had been the purser on the upper river and was later agent of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company at The Dalles and who was later superintendent of the Portland water system, but who was at that time the superintendent of the Willamette Transportation & Locks Company, gave me a job with that company. My run was from Portland to Dayton on the Yamhill. I had charge of the old steamer Beaver, whose machinery had been brought from the Enterprise, which had been wrecked on the Umpqua bar. I later had charge of this same steamer, the Beaver, on the Stikeen river in Alaska. While on the Willamette river run I was captain of the Ori- ent, the Fannie Patton and the Governor Grover, the latter boat running from Portland to Corvallis.