(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

UPDATE: “The Bellwether Sheep of the Mosquito Fleet” won second place in the the Robert Kotta Memorial Song Writing Contest. Winners will perform at 1:45 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025, at the Port Gamble Maritime Music Festival. Admission is free.

Published in The Seattle Times online on Jan. 4, 2024
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Jan. 7, 2024

For whom the bell(wether) tolls: The 1904 calamity of the Clallam

By Clay Eals

So often have we heard: “Don’t do something just because others do it. Don’t be a sheep.” Well, sometimes a sheep can lead us all. Possibly save lives.

One-hundred-twenty years ago, just as now, a popular way to reach key points along Puget Sound and the Salish Sea was over water. Today, we might drive onto a state ferry. In 1904, we would have walked aboard a private predecessor.

That year, on the blustery morning of Jan. 8 at Pier 1 at the foot of Seattle’s Yesler Way, the stately SS Clallam, just 9 months old and deemed the queen of the informally named Mosquito Fleet, took on 61 passengers bound for Port Townsend and Victoria, B.C.

Also clambering aboard was an agglomeration of sheep. All, that is, but one. Known as Billy, the bellwether animal wore a bell and for years led herds aboard vessels headed for the provincial capital.

That morning he was “particularly stubborn,” the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. Billy “threatened dire things to anyone who tried to drag him aboard. The tossing waves did not look good to him.” When the Clallam shoved off, Billy remained ashore.

What followed was unspeakable tragedy. While the steamer reached Port Townsend without incident, it confronted gale winds while entering the Strait of Juan de Fuca, taking on water and launching three lifeboats filled with women and children, all of whom perished in the storm. Overnight, tracing a triangular path in the strait, the Clallam broke apart and sank.

The final death toll: 56. Survivors, including crew, numbered just 36.

Learning of the calamity last fall, Queen Anne singer-songwriter Jon Pontrello, 37, decided to pen a ballad to commemorate its 120th anniversary. Ensnaring his imagination was the role of the bellwether sheep.

Survivors claimed Billy had “a way of knowing what the weather will be that, for accuracy, puts to shame all the storm signals and information of the weather bureaus,” the P-I reported. So Pontrello’s 8-minute song summons a haunting hero:

There may be a seer among us
whose actions we don’t understand,
an omen that throws into question
all the things you had planned

Some sheep are meant to follow,
and some are meant to lead,
so when that bell starts ringing
you know that you better take heed

For Pontrello, the lesson evokes a potent metaphor. “The way I think about it is, we’re all on this voyage,” he says. “The sea is like the universe, the ship is you, and you are the captain of that ship.”

Of course, we each can ask: Who is our bellwether?

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to Nat Howe, executive director of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, and especially Jon Pontrello for their invaluable help with this installment!

See Jon Pontrello perform the full song in video below and in concert Jan. 11 and 13, as indicated in the poster below. Also, he will play the song at 1 p.m. Monday, Jan. 8, the 120th anniversary of the Clallam sinking, on 91.3FM KBCS.

Here are two extensive articles on the Clallam tragedy:

• essay by Daryl McClary at HistoryLink.org
• essay by Peter Grant of Victoria

Due to technical difficulties, there is no 360-degree video this week. However, below you will find a poster, 2 videos featuring Jon Pontrello and, in chronological order, 15 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), SGN and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.