Description: Jaggar (1927) reports on an event in 1927: "The Seattle 'News-Tribune' carries an Associated Press dispatch of the date September 30 stating that Mageik Volcano of the Katmai group erupted explosively 'late in August (1927.)' The authority quoted is Captain Harry W. Crosby, President of the Crosby Fisheries, who spent the summer aboard his schooner-cannery 'Salmon King' in the northeast arm of Uganik Bay on the northwest side of Kodiak Island. Mageik and Martin were two volcanoes seen by Dr. Jaggar to be steaming, looking northwest from Shelikof Strait on May 18, 1927. Both took part in the great Katmai eruptions of 1912. Mageik is forty nautical miles from the middle of Shelikof Strait, and sixty miles from the Crosby anchorage in Uganik Bay. NEW PARA "Thousands of tons of pumice stone and ashes were reported by Crosby as showered over an area 50 miles square. The article quotes him:
"'We were about 50 miles off the Alaskan Peninsula in clear weather, when suddenly we noticed a gigantic puff at the top of Mageik. Soon the air was filled with volcano ash, and it began to rain pumice stone. After the explosion, the volcano smoked like a factory chimney. A short distance from the ship we found large quantities of pumice stone, some pieces as big as your fist, floating on the ocean.
"'We scooped up a bushel or more of the stones and brought them to Seattle. For five days the eruption continued, and the mountain was still smoking when we left for Seattle.
"'Each morning while we were off the Alaskan Peninsula, the decks and rigging of the ship would be covered with the fine powdered volcanic ash, some of it so white that it resembled snow. The first duty of the crew in the mornings would be to sweep the decks clear and to dust off the rigging.
"'The eruption followed a period of unusual weather, a great calm with scarcely a breath of air, and a depressing atmosphere. The air was full of white volcanic ash for a week, and thousands of tons of pumice stone fell around us.'
"No dates or ship's positions appear in this article, but apparently the vessel did not sail until five days after the major explosion. Captain Crosby is a reliable commercial man, navigator, and fisherman of many years' experience in Alaskan waters."
Fierstein and Hildreth (2001) provide clarification that this account does not describe a volcanic eruption at Mount Mageik: "Although fumarolic 'puffs' are common, there is no evidence of a post-1912 plinian pumice-fall deposit anywhere between Mount Mageik and Shelikof Strait. The [Jaggar] report also mentioned fine white ash falling on the decks, but fine white ash still falls occasionally today during spells of dry summer weather when windstorms loft ash from the barren surface of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes to altitudes of many kilometers."
Fierstein and Hildreth (2001) also firmly state: "Not a single one of the 20th century tephra eruptions of Mageik listed in Simkin and Siebert's (1994) "Volcanoes of the World" seems plausible. Configuration of the crater has not changed since it was first photographed in 1923; there are no juvenile ejecta in the crater or around its rim (except a scattering of 1912 pumice clasts from Novarupta); and the only late Holocene fall deposits on the or near the lower flanks of Mageik are the Novarupta pumice falls of 1912 and the black Trident ash of 1953."
Hildreth (1983) also states: "In particular, a pumice shower said by a fisherman to have issued from Mt. Mageik in August 1927 (Jaggar, 1927) cannot be corroborated by detectable deposits in the volcano's crater or on its flanks."