THE QUARTERLY
of the
Oregon Historical Society
Copyright, 1917, by the Oregon Historical Society
The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages.
THE LOG OF H. M. S. "CHATHAM"
By T. C. Elliott.
If any one cause has served more than another to advertise Oregon unfavorably, and to retard the physical and commercial growth of Oregon and indirectly of the entire Columbia River Basin, it has been the existence of the bar of sand across the mouth of the Columbia River. From the beginning of recorded trade (the founding of Astoria in 1811) the inability of easy entrance to the river has not only occasioned delay and dread and danger to ship owners, mariners and passengers, but has diverted commerce to other ports, and has kept back appropriations by the Federal Government for the improvement of the channels of the upper river. But now, after more than one hundred years of commerce in and out of the river, it has become possible to truthfully say (in the words of a veteran pilot at Astoria last summer) that "there is no bar at the mouth of the Columbia." Deep sea shipping now uses a channel containing forty feet of water, and danger comes only during thick weather, which is common to any port The Chamber of Commerce of Portland has celebrated this accomplished fact and in 1916 published for general distribution a large folding map showing the soundings of the channel from the light buoys off the river's mouth to the
