SEA HISTORY 178, SPRING 2022
p.d. illustration from le petit journal, 5 july 1903
opium—initially confined to the Chinese laborers—had gained traction with working-class Americans. While the practice had garnered little attention when confined to the expatriate Chinese community, as the highly addictive habit spread to the general population, attendant rises in related crimes and health issues were blamed on use of the drug—and likewise on the Chinese. The US government sought to solve the problem in two ways: by limiting the numbers of Chinese entering the country and by reducing the availability of opium. First came the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, promptly followed by the Tariff Law of 1883. The Exclusion Act severely restricted the number of Chinese that could enter the country. All Chinese workers— both “skilled and unskilled laborers” and miners—were barred from entry. Any Chinese person leaving the US had to obtain a certificate of re-entry prior to departure, attesting that they would not seek employment upon return. The 1883 Tariff Law increased the duty on the importation of both “smoking” opium—also known as refined opium— and raw opium from which it could be produced, from $1 to $10 per pound. The theory held that this would price opium beyond the reach of the masses; instead, it just made smuggling ten times more profitable. Accordingly, smuggling quickly became so widespread that customs inspectors in San Francisco assumed that every steamer arriving from Hong Kong would have opium hidden aboard. In 1887 the United States enacted additional legislation that specifically prohibited Chinese persons from importing opium, and generally prohibited anyone from importing the form of raw opium that could be processed into smoking opium. This law significantly changed the already spiraling smuggling dynamic by effectively putting opium refiners out of business. With losses rising as customs inspectors at San Francisco grew efficient at finding hidden caches, and intelligence sharing enabled the local revenue cutter, Richard K. Rush, to seize or disrupt attempts to offload before entering port, opium producers turned their sights on British Columbia. Opium could still be imported legally into
Opium was big business in the Pacific Northwest at the end of the 19th century. Raw opium was typically brought in by steamer from Hong Kong and then “cooked,” or processed in Victoria’s local opium kitchens to convert it into a drug that could be sold to consumers in both the US and Canada. Canada with only a dollar-per-pound tariff; Chinese persons could enter with a $50 fee. A license to refine opium could be obtained for only $100. This permissive environment resulted in Vancouver’s coastal cities becoming the new nexus of opium manufacturing in North America. The port of Victoria, at the southern tip of Vancouver Island—less than forty miles from Port Townsend, the nearest US port of entry—emerged as the pre-eminent opium manufacturing site and smuggling departure point. Its thirteen refineries produced an estimated 90,000 pounds of opium annually. No longer did smugglers need to conceal opium aboard large steamships facing a weeks-long transPacific voyage from Hong Kong. Now a small, fast sloop could make the run across Puget Sound to Port Townsend in less than seven hours, and the region’s fleet of coastal steamers could conceal loads of the drug among legitimate cargo. By 1889, all forty of the vessels in the Victoria fishing fleet and every coastal steamer in the region had been identified as suspected smugglers. Only a single outdated revenue cutter with a small crew opposed them. The 155-foot Oliver J. Wolcott had been assigned to Port Townsend since her launch
in 1873. A 235-ton cutter, she was rigged as a topsail schooner—but also sported a vertical-cylinder, surface-condensing steam propulsion plant. The steam plant was capable of pushing her at 9 to 9 ½ knots and freed the vessel from the vagaries of the wind, but the drag from her propeller, even when “de-linked” or free-wheeling, limited her to just over nine knots when on her best point of sail. She carried a total complement of thirty-four men: Captain Russell Glover, three lieutenants, three engineer officers, and twenty-seven warrant officers, petty officers, and crew. The cutter was armed with two Hotchkiss six-pounder, rapid-fire deck guns, mounted forward on the forecastle and aft on the fantail, plus some small arms. When the Wolcott was under power, she produced a distinctive sound from her propeller cavitation that was obvious from four-to-five miles away in all but the flattest seas. On 10 January 1889, Glover and his crew had just returned to Port Townsend around noon from a patrol to the south. The cutter had taken on thirty-six tons of coal—enough for about four or five days of steaming at full speed—at Seattle and conducted six routine law-enforcement boardings before heading home. Almost immediately after anchoring near the Customs House at Port Townsend, a letter from the Collector of Customs was rowed out to the ship. According to Wolcott’s log, the letter stated “that telegraphic information had been received concerning a sloop which was expected to land 400 lbs. smuggled opium at Port Discovery.” Although the specific source of this intelligence has not been preserved, the Victoria waterfront was under regular surveillance by US Treasury and Customs agents, and the US Consul, Robert J. Stevens, ran an extensive network of informants, who provided details on many smuggling ventures. Informants were usually motivated by the lure of monetary gain—they could be paid up to 25% of the value of the opium seized as a result of their information—or by the opportunity to damage a competitor. Intelligence thus gathered across the strait would be telegraphed to the Collector of Customs in Port Townsend. Armed with this information, Captain Glover prepared his cutter to get underway 43