coming up the Columbia River from La Center. Wisler was reported to have been cleaning the railing on the upper deck when he apparently lost his balance and fell overboard. Two young women witnesses this, and told two of the young men who were with them about what had happened, but according to the report in the Morning Oregonian, these young men did not tell anyone on the crew. The alarm was only raised when a few minutes later one of the young women spoke to another passenger, who alerted the purser who in turn informed Captain Davis. Davis halted Mascot, and turned back to the point where it was thought Wisler had fallen into the water, but he could not be located. Wisler was about 22 years old and had no relatives in Oregon. The Morning Oregonian blamed his death on the "cool indifference" of the passengers. Later history of the first Mascot Fire safety problems Steamboats like Mascot were acutely vulnerable to fire. They were built entirely of wood, covered with paint and other flammable materials, and then left outside where they either dried out, rotted, or both, becoming the equivalent of a vast pile of kindling. In the middle of this was placed a steam boiler, fueled by as hot and intense a fire as could be generated by the available technology and the wealth of the owner. The tendency of steamboat owners to overcrowd their vessels also contributed to the danger. There were many instances throughout the country of inland steamers being destroyed by fire, with tremendous loss of life, such as Sultana, in 1865, with 1,196 people killed, and General Slocum, in 1904, with 1,021 dead. Numerous steamboats were lost in the Pacific Northwest, although none had such severe casualties as the Sultana or the General Slocum. Theoretically regulations existed to require steamboat operators to have fire safety equipment on board, but these were often poorly enforced, and compliance was by no means uniform. Occasionally there were inspections, however. In the early morning of April 18, 1905 local steamboat inspectors Edwards and Fuller, along with retired Admiral Louis Kempff, began a series of surprise inspections of steamboats operating on the Columbia and Willamette rivers. By that afternoon, the inspectors reached Mascot, and requested that the steamer conduct a demonstration fire drill. When one of the ship’s boats was launched, it was found to have a