The Briscoe Residence, Oysterville c. 1890

Yesterday I received a note from my Australian friend Rosemary Peeler.  I think of her as a blog/community historian connection.  We actually “met” on the internet through some blogs I had written about Judge Briscoe and Michael Lemeshko’s subsequent Briscoe research.  The Judge was one of Rosemary’s ancestors.

She is a serious genealogist and came all the way to Oysterville from her home in Melbourne to meet Michael and me and to see where Briscoe and his family hung out beginning in the 1860s.  Actually, she came visiting twice during that summer of 2018 when she was in the States.  We’ve been friends ever since.

Her note yesterday included an attachment — an article dated Saturday, April 20, 1935, in the Northern Champion, which was a bi-weekly newspaper published from 1912  to 1961  in Taree, New South Wales.  The clipping was headlined “King Tide – Why He Rolls In.”  In her accompanying note, Rosemary  said she had remembered reading something about King Tides long ago.  She pointed out that information in my recent blog (about the term “King Tide” perhaps being coined  in connection with Climate Change) was probably not true.  And here was an article to prove her point!  It began:

Michael Lemeshko’s Book about Briscoe

The annual appearance of he King Tide recently was noted by mariners and fishermen, but probably few of us in the ?? atmosphere of clerical routine took the trouble to mark the occurrence…

The report went on to mention that King Tides usually happen in January, explained the influence of the moon at perigee, and told how favorable winds enhance the extra high tide.  Nowhere was “climate change” mentioned.

Wow!  I don’t know what impresses me more — that I have a friend in Australia who reads my blog or that she remembered reading of King tides long ago and was able to come up with documentation to correct my mis-information.  Thank you, Rosemary!

And speaking of our most recent King Tide  — I noticed in our own Chinook Observer that he made quite a splash out at Cape De last week.  However, for the record, he hardly set foot in Oysterville at all.  He didn’t even bother to come up the lane or to rest by Willard’s bench in the meadow like he did the time before.  Perhaps those “favorable winds” were the missing element on this side of the Peninsula.