again, but the ability to do so would take some time. Unlike a modern diesel, a 19thcentury steam engine could not just be stopped or started with the turn of a key or the push of a button. Shutting down the steam plant was a process that would start about a half an hour before anchoring or mooring. Restarting the furnace and building up steam pressure could take hours if the fire had been completely overhauled and the boiler drained. Accordingly, it took nearly five hours before the Wolcott was ready to get underway. After being joined by Special Treasury Agent James McHale, recently detailed from San Francisco, Captain Glover steamed the cutter northwards at around nine knots from Port Townsend. The weather was overcast and raining, with light and variable winds from the southwest, and the cool 45°F temperature was dropping by the hour. These conditions were unfavorable for an intercept. While a small sloop would be difficult for the Wolcott to spot in poor visibility, the smoke from the cutter’s furnace and the noise from propeller cavitation when her screw broke
the surface as the ship rolled in choppy seas could betray her presence from miles away. The smugglers also had the advantage of lookouts ashore, who would warn them by red lantern at the tip of the Quimper Peninsula, the five-mile strip of land that separates Port Townsend from Discovery Bay, to announce that Wolcott was underway. But Glover had a plan. He knew exactly how to use the wind, the weather, and the local geography to his advantage. While the rain and clouds might give the smuggler cover, they would also help to conceal the Wolcott as Glover moved to set an ambush. An hour and a half after having departed Port Townsend, the cutter left Puget Sound and entered Port Discovery Bay. In this era, the term “Port Discovery” generally referred not only to the settlement at the southern end of the bay with the same name, but to the entire body of water, and the opium cargoes could be landed almost anywhere along the remote, heavily wooded shores of the ten-mile-long inlet. Accordingly, Glover immediately turned west to anchor just south of Clallam
Bay Spit. Now known as Diamond Point, Clallam Bay Spit was formed by sand deposited by wind and the longshore currents at the western edge of the entrance to the bay. It was once home to a village of the Native American Clallam Tribe, but in 1889 it was a narrow, mile-long protrusion of sand and trees jutting eastward across half the northern border of Discovery Bay. Glover’s choice to anchor just south of the spit was cunning. With the wind out of the southwest, any sailing vessel seeking to enter the bay would have to hold a southeast or southerly course. The Wolcott would be blocked from view by the trees on the spit until the smuggler had crossed into the bay. Since he likely anticipated getting underway again with little notice, Glover would have ordered the furnace fire of his steam plant to be “banked.” This entailed covering hot coals at the front or back of the furnace with a layer of good coal—producing enough heat to keep the water in the boiler hot without producing steam, and facilitating restarting of the fire. This would also eliminate the tell-tale smoke plume that could betray the cutter’s presence.
uscg collection
USRC Oliver J. Wolcott, also known simply as Wolcott, was built between 1872–73 by Risden Iron Works in San Francisco. She was constructed with white oak and yellow fir from Oregon and Washington, with bilge keels and iron-wire standing rigging.
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SEA HISTORY 178, SPRING 2022