09576
DISASTER!
EDITED BY BEN KARTM AN & LEONARD Eft
DISASTER!
1
PELLEGRINI & CUDAHY
New York
COPYRIGHT 1948 BY BEN KARTMAN ANtJ IJ^ONAIU) BHUWN
PUBLISHES SIMULTANEOUSLY IN CANADA 11V
GEORGE J. MCLEOP, LTD,, TOKaNTO
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITIJD STATIC OI* AMEJUCA
AT THE AMERICAN BOOK-STRATFOfll) lRiv$S
DESIGN AMU TYPOGRAPHY ttY
JOS. TRAUTWK1N
Introduction
BINDERYOCT241949
Americans are among the world's most avid newspaper
readers, with a special fondness for sports pages, gossip
columns and comic strips. Yet when their daily paper car-
ries the account of a major catastrophe, they pass up their
favorite features, and even news of far greater signifi-
cance, until they have read every detail of the disaster and
scanned the casualty lists for familiar names. It is a mis-
take to consider this a purely morbid interest. Instead, it
is an indication that although disaster strikes repeatedly,
the average American never becomes so calloused that he
does not feel a swift surge of pity for the unfortunate vic-
tims* For what has happened to these people might, but
for the grace of God, have happened to any of us*
Newspaper editors long ago learned that the headline
which stirs the imagination and captures the sympathy of
a nation is word of striking disaster. How did it happen?
How many were killed, how many injured? Who was in-
volved the obscure or the famous, the rich on a luxury
liner or the poor on a week-end excursion? When a steamer
sinks in mid-ocean, when a hotel bums, when a hurricane
cuts a path of destruction through cities and villages, the
reader pictures himself on the liner's slanting deck; poised
at a high window for the leap to almost-certain death; or
fighting a .hopeless battle against wind and water.
In spice of man's great technological progress, in spite of
JtJs success in flying faster than sound, in harnessing the
acorn, he is still virtually helpless against the elements. He
can build ever-larger dams, enact costly flood-control pro-
grams* erect towering buildings of stone and steel, but
INTRODUCTION
ii'ttirn scant protection against natural dis-
astejrs v JFpr Nature refuses to be bound by man-made laws
or Sn^&Siiions. No amount of legislation will outlaw floods,
hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes.
Even where legislation is feasible, man continues to
make his own disasters. He has learned a great deal about
preventing fires and explosions, but not enough. These
continue to be a national menace, taking a frightful toll of
lives and property, and this book contains more fires than
any other one type of disaster. There are forest fires and
ship fires, hotel fires and theater fires, factory fires and
circus fires all adding up to the fact that fire is still
America's commonest, deadliest and most frightful type
of disaster. Each major holocaust arouses public indigna-
tion and brings new legislation, more exacting safety re-
quirements, more stringent inspection, but Americans con-
tinue to die horribly in an endless cycle of conflagrations.
A tragic feature of many of the disasters in this book is
the fact that they need not have happened at all, A fac-
tory owner locks the exit doors during working hours,
blocking escape for his employees when fire breaks out. A
bus boy carelessly strikes a match to replace a light bulb,
touching off a crowded night club's flimsy decorations. A
lookout in a crow's nest has no binoculars to sight a treach-
erous iceberg, so an "unsinkable" luxury liner ends its
maiden voyage at the bottom of the Atlantic. The fireman
of a derailed train stumbles and breaks his only warning
flare, and a crack flier plows into the wrecked cars.
There is only one bright spot, small but important, in
this picture of death and destruction. Almost without ex-
ception these disasters have contributed in some way to
the safety of future generations. The Triangle Waist Com-
pany holocaust resulted in a wholesale houseeleamng of
New York's sweatshops; the Cocoanut Grove inferno
aroused civic authorities throughout the nation to the
INTRODUCTION
dangers in their own communities; the sinking of the T*-
tanic in mid- Atlantic resulted in an iceberg patrol and
stricter lifeboat requirements; the wave o train wrecks in
1943 emphasized the railroads' need for more widespread
use of two-way radio communication.
This book contains no disasters resulting directly from
war, the greatest of all disasters. No, these are the catastro-
phes that can happen any time, anywhere, without the
help of the great god Mars. This book, too, concerns itself
only with outstanding American disasters. The one excep-
tion is the sinking of the Titanic, a "White Star liner, but
by the helpful process of rationalization we have included
it because: i) a large percentage of its passengers were
Americans, several hundred of whom went down with the
ship; 2) New York was Journey's End for those fortunate
enough to be rescued; 3) Jack Lawrence's graphic report-
ing was too good to omit.
No single volume of American disasters could be all-
inclusive, and this one does not pretend to be. It is, how-
ever, representative of the types of catastrophe which
strike without warning and, too often, without reason. For
the sake of continuity and to illustrate the changing pat-
tern of American disasters through the years, the articles
have been arranged in chronological order,
We have assembled those accounts of major catastrophes
which tell their stories in terms of people their suffer-
ings, their heroism, their miraculous escapes rather than
through statistics; for figures are cold, impersonal things
where human lives are concerned. Every disaster has had
its heroes, often men and women whose lives were other-
wise drab and commonplace, for heroism often springs up
from surprising sources.
To supplement the detailed accounts of the more dra-
matic, more important or more far-reaching catastrophes,
we have included a list of other American disasters with a
brief summary of the essential facts about each. It is our
INTRODUCTION
hope that this list will have practical, lasting value for ref-
erence purposes.
Finally, my collaborator and I would be singularly un-
grateful if we failed to express our thanks to the authors
and publishers whose generous cooperation made this book
possible. If we have produced a volume which you, the
reader, will find informative, useful and, above all, inter-
esting, the credit is as much theirs as ours.
BEN KARTMAN
Chicago
June 10, 1948
CONTENTS
YEAR OF THE GREAT QUAKES Vincent H. Gaddis 3
CHOLERA IN NEW ORLEANS The Rev. Theodore Clapp 7
MOUNTAIN ORDEAL Virginia Reed Murphy 13
PERILS OF THE DEEP Milo M. Quaife 24
NIGHT OF HORROR ON THE MISSISSIPPI Don Terrio 30
THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE Herbert Asbury 38
FIERY HELL AT PESHTIGO Pence James 47
WRECK OF THE PACIFIC EXPRESS Keith Harris 51
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD Hodding Carter 5 j
"THE BRIDGE WAS BURNED AT CHATSWORTH"
Elmo Scott Watson 61
THE BLIZZARD OF 1 88 8 Stephen Turkel 65
JOHNSTOWN REMEMBERS Jo Chamberlin 69
INFERNO AT HiNCKLEY Stewart H. Holbrook 79
TWISTER ON THE TOWN Leonard Brown 88
THE GALVESTON TIDAL WAVE Edwin Muller 95
THE IROQUOIS THEATER FIRE
Eddie Foy & Alvin F. Harlow 104
HOLIDAY HOLOCAUST Victor Boesen 114
SAN FRANCISCO: CITY OF COURAGE Felix Riesenberg, Jr. 120
"THE MINE'S AFIRE!" James Johnson 131
SWEATSHOP FIRETRAP Louis Waldman 143
TITANIC Jack Lawrence 148
FURY ON THE GREAT LAKES Walter HavighllTSt 164
TRAGIC QUEEN OF THE LAKES Harriet K. Nye 171
KIDNEY raxs WRECK A TRAIN Stewart H, Holbrook 177
THE FLU EPIDEMIC OF 1918 : Frederick Lewis Allen 182
CONTENTS
THE GREAT WALL STREET EXPLOSION Alan Hynd I
MISSISSIPPI RAMPAGE Harnett T. Kane i
THE 5-4 HAS BEEN SUNK! Mary Heaton Vorse 2
DEATH IN THE EVERGLADES Ralph Wallace 2
OHIO'S PRISON HORROR Charles Suters 2
HOTEL FIRE AT SEA Mary Evans Andrews 2.
PAGEANT OF THE POOR Robert J. Casey 2
FIVE O'CLOCK, OFF CALIFORNIA George W. Campbell 2
THE ROOF FELL IN Seymour Parnes 2
THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE HINDENBURG
Commander Charles E. Rosendahl 2
HURRICANE IN NEW ENGLAND from Time 2
FORTY FATHOMS DOWN f rom News Week 2
BOSTON'S TRIAL BY FIRE Ben Kartman 2
JINX YEAR FOR AMERICA'S RAILROADS Peter ROSS 2
MATINEE OF DEATH Edwin Affron 2
NEW YORK'S NIGHTMARE DISASTER Earl Mercer 2
SHADOW OF THE CRiPPLER Charles Johnson 2
AMERICA'S WORST HOTEL FIRE Eugene Ray 3
DEATH IN MAIN WEST from Time 3
PLUPERFECT HELL AT TEXAS CITY f rom Time 3
AVIATION'S BLACKEST HOURS from Time t 3
SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF AMERICAN DISASTERS 3
INDEX 3
DISASTER
Year of
the Great Quakes
By Vincent H. Gaddh
OHIO-MISSISSIPPI VALLEYS, December 16, 1811
-It was in March, 1811, that the Great Comet came.
Considered by the Russians to have presaged Napoleon's
historic invasion of their country, it flamed in the skies
over the southern United States, so soon to be rocked and
shaken by America's worst earthquake.
Stirred by some mysterious impulse, a horde o squirrels
had pressed south from Indiana a few weeks previously.
They poured into the Ohio River, swimming, clinging to
drifting bits of wood. Thousands of lifeless bodies drifted
downstream, mute warning of the terror to come.
Below the Mississippi basin, weighted by millions of tons
of river silt that had accumulated for millenniums, lay the
fault in the earth's crust, now strained to the breaking
point. There had been slight previous stirrings minor
shocks in 1776, 1791 and 179?. And throughout the world
other faults were active. In September, Charleston, South
Carolina, was shaken; in October, quakes had occurred in
Austria, England and the Philippines.
In November the rains came. Day after day water fell
from leaden skies, and damp misery gripped the flooded
Ohio and Mississippi valleys. In scattered cabins the pio-
neer farmers passed the time as best they could, waiting,
waiting. But the rain continued to fall, the floodwaters
rose higher.
Then, at two o'clock on the morning of December 16$
Copyright 1946 by Esquire, Inc., Coronet Building, Chicago I, III. (Coronet,
December, 1946.)
DISASTER!
the earth moved. Settlers were awakened by an ominous
rumbling that slowly grew in intensity. They hurried
from their cabins into the night. A weird glow lit the sky
as the ground swayed under their running feet. Dazed and
bewildered, they huddled beneath trees as objects around
them danced and groaned with a sudden life born of chaos.
Through the long night and the light of dawn, shock
succeeded shock as the earth buckled and rocked. Center-
ing around New Madrid, Missouri, the quakes were felt
over a. region of 301,656 square miles. A district of 30,000
square miles sank from five to twenty-five feet, while
other areas were raised in similar degree.
Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee, eighteen miles long, was
created. At several points the Mississippi River flowed
backward, changing its course for hundreds of miles. Huge
waves sank dozens of boats and smashed others on the
banks.
Rising and falling in sickening waves, the earth's surface
split into fissures, some a half mile long, and sulphurous
gases poured out. Trees were bent until their branches
interlocked into a leafy ceiling. Landslides swept furiously
down bluffs and river banks, the entire cemetery at New
Madrid being carried away into the river.
Several hundred lakes and islands were formed on a 300-
mile front from the mouth of the Ohio to the St. Francis
River. As the convulsions continued, some of these lakes,
miles in extent, were formed or drained in less than an
hour. Thousands of trees choked the river currents*
"When the tremors were felt," an eyewitness reported,
"houses crumbled, trees waved together and the ground
sank." Undulations "increased in elevation as they ad-
vanced, and when they had attained a certain fearful
height the earth would burst, and vast volumes of water
and sand and pitcoal were discharged, as high as the tops
of the trees, leaving large chasms where the ground had
opened."
From a scientific standpoint the shock of December i6 9
YEAR OF THE GREAT QUAKES
1 8 1 1, was the worst in American history and one of the
greatest on record. Only the fact that the district affected
was thinly settled and that most of the houses were log
cabins structures well adapted to resist quakes pre-
vented a tremendous loss of life and property. Neverthe-
less, an unestimated number of persons perished. Some
were swallowed up in the vast crevices that split the rock-
ing surface, many were drowned, and several "died from
fright."
The settlers, noticing that the earth chasms were run-
ning southwest and northeast, cut down tall trees and
dropped them at right angles to the direction of the
chasms. When the warning rumbling of another shock was
heard, they climbed on these trees and many lives were
saved.
The quakes were accompanied by rumbling sounds "suc-
ceeded by discharges as if a thousand pieces of artillery
were fired," and by vast dark clouds of dust and vapor.
Sulphurous odors saturated the atmosphere and impreg-
nated the water for hundreds of miles around the New
Madrid area, making it unfit to drink. An abnormal
warmth and smokiness was observed at Jeffersonville, In-
diana, for several days after the shock, and at Columbia,
South Carolina, the air was affected by obnoxious vapors
for some time.
Flashes of light and "glows" were reported from several
points in the shaken area. Some of these flashes were ob-
served in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina
and Georgia. Residents of Livingston County, Missouri,
noticed a "luminous atmosphere" in which objects were
visible for some distance at night.
In the wake of the shocks came privation and suffering.
Practically all livestock had been killed and food destroyed
in the New Madrid area. Indian-style camps were erected,
and provisions were obtained from the wreckage of sev-
eral flatboats, New Orleans bound, that had been driven
into the bayou near the village.
DISASTER!
The land had been ruined, delaying the development of
eastern Missouri for fifty years. It was a country of chasms
and splintered trees. Vast regions were covered with white
sand. One by one, discouraged inhabitants drifted away to
make new homes for themselves farther west.
Then, slowly, the region became normal again. Flood-
waters and rain beat the sand back into the earth or car-
ried it away. The chasms filled and fallen trees were de-
stroyed. From the east came new residents to clear the
farmlands. Constant shifting of the river channel, how-
ever, forced the moving of New Madrid four times before
the Civil War. But despite the tricks of the temperamental
Mississippi, despite intermittent floods, New Madrid and
its neighboring towns stand today.
No one can estimate the loss of life and property that
would result if shocks as great as those of 1811 were to
convulse the earth today. Man, in his study of the atom,
now probes close to the very core of the universe. Yet he
stands helpless before the titanic vagaries of Nature as the
earth's surface constantly shrinks, grows and undergoes
tremendous changes.
Cholera
in Hew Orleans
By The Rev. Theodore Clapp
NEW ORLEANS, LA., October, 1832- In the ex-
cessively warm summer of 1832, my strength was so much
reduced that a change of climate was prescribed by friends
and physicians. With my family, therefore, I left New
Orleans in a steamboat, intending to spend the remainder
of the season at Niagara, Montreal and Saratoga Springs.
But when I reached Ohio, cholera had made its appearance
in Quebec and other places, and was traveling rapidly. In
one short month it spread from the capital of lower Canada
westward to Detroit, and to Lake Champlain, Albany and
New York.
Fearing that New Orleans might be stricken during my
absence, I abandoned my journey and retraced my course
downriver. I could not rid myself of the presentiment that
a great calamity impended for the Crescent City. The pre-
vious summer, in August, a frightful tornado had swept
over New Orleans, and the Creoles said this was the fore-
runner of pestilence. I proposed to leave Mrs. Clapp and
the children with her aunt in Kentucky, but she insisted
on returning with me.
When we arrived in New Orleans, on September i, the
weather was sultry and oppressive. That very week, sev-
eral cases of yellow fever occurred in the Charity Hospital
and in boarding houses along the levee. It soon grew into
Excerpted from the book Autobiographical Sketches and Recollections During
a Thirty-Five Years' Residence an New Orleans by the Rev. Theodore Cltpp,
Boston,
8 DISASTER!
an epidemic, and carried off hundreds during September
and October*
On the morning of October 25, 1832, as I was walking
home from market, I saw two men lying on the levee in a
dying condition- They had been landed from a steamboat
the night before. Some of the watchmen had gone after a
handbarrow on which the men might be removed to the
hospital. A large crowd had assembled, but when a physi-
cian rode up in his gig and exclaimed in a loud voice,
"Those men have the Asiatic cholera,'* the crowd ran for
their lives.
I was left almost alone with the sufferers, who could
speak and were in full possession of their reason. They had
what I afterwards found were the usual symptoms of
cholera cramps, convulsions, etc. Their hands and feet
were cold and blue; an icy perspiration flowed in streams;
and they complained of a great pressure upon their chests.
Their thirst was intense, and they begged for water. I
tried to board the steamboat which had put the men
ashore, but the staging had been drawn in to prevent all
contact with people on the levee.
At that instant the watchmen arrived with a dray.
Happily (because, perhaps, they spoke only French) they
had no suspicion that the strangers were suffering from
cholera. If I had pronounced that word in their hearing,
they too might have fled, leaving the sick men to perish
on the cold ground. I saw them placed on the vehicle, and
subsequently learned that they were dead before noon.
I walked home, attempting to be calm and resigned, de-
termined to do my duty and leave the consequence with
God. I said nothing to my family about the sick men I had
seen, though they thought it strange that I had taken so
long in going to and from the market, and observed that
I seemed uncommonly thoughtful and serious. But I felt
that the hour of peril had come. I said a silent prayer.
The weather that morning was very peculiar. The
heavens were covered with thick, heavy, damp, lowering
CHOLERA IN NEW ORLEANS
clouds that seemed like one black ceiling spread over the
whole horizon. To the eye it almost touched the tops of
the houses. Not a breath of wind stirred. It was so dark
that in some of the banks, offices and private houses can-
dles or lamps were lighted. Everyone felt a strange diffi-
culty in breathing.
After breakfast I walked down to the post office. At every
corner, and around the principal hotels, were groups of
anxious faces. As soon as the people saw me, the question
was put by several of them at a time: "Is it true that
cholera is in the city?" I replied by describing what I had
seen only two hours before. Observing that many of them
appeared panic struck, I remarked, "Gentlemen, do not
be alarmed. These may prove to be what the doctors call
sporadic cases."
That day as many people left the city as could find
means of transportation. On my way home from the post
office, I walked along the levee where the two cholera
victims had been disembarked. Several families in the
neighborhood were preparing to move, but in vain* They
could not find vehicles. The same afternoon, the pestilence
entered their houses, and before dark it had spread through
several squares opposite the point where the steamer had
landed the first cases.
By evening of October 27, cholera had made its way
through every part of the city. In the next ten days,
physicians estimated that, at the lowest computation, there
were y,ooo deaths an average of 500 a day. And many
more died of whom no account was rendered. Bodies in
great number, weighted down with bricks and stones, were
thrown into the river. Many were privately interred in
gardens and enclosures on the grounds where they had
died; their names were not included in the mortality lists.
Often I was kept in the burying ground for hours at a
time by the endless arrival of corpses over whom I was
requested to perform a short service.
One day I did not leave the cemetery until 9:00 P.M.;
io DISASTER!
the last burials were by candlelight. Arriving home faint,
exhausted, horror-stricken, I found my family sobbing
and weeping, for they had concluded from my long ab-
sence that I was dead.
After bathing and eating, I started out again to visit the
sick. My door was thronged with people waiting to con-
duct me to the dying sufferers. In this kind of labor I
spent most of the night. At 3:00 A.M. I returned home
and threw myself on a sofa, with directions that I was not
to be called before 5:30. I was to officiate at a funeral at
6:00 A.M.
One morning when I arrived at the graveyard I found a
large pile of corpses without coffins, laid in horizontal
layers, one above the other, like corded wood. I was told
that there were more than 100 bodies in that ghastly pile.
They had been brought there by unknown persons since
nine o'clock the night before. Large trenches were dug,
and into them these uncoffined corpses were thrown. The
same day, a private hospital was found deserted; physi-
cians, nurses and attendants were all dead or had run away.
The wards were filled with putrid bodies which, by order
of the mayor, were piled in an adjacent yard and burned.
Many persons, even of fortune and renown, died in their
beds without aid, unnoticed and unknown, and lay un-
buried for days. In almost every house the sick, the dying
and the dead lay in the same room. All stores, banks and
places of business were closed. There were no means for
carrying on business, since all the drays, carts, carriages
and wheelbarrows, as well as hearses, were kept busy trans-
porting corpses. Words cannot describe my sensations
when I first beheld the awful sight of carts driven to the
graveyard and there upturned, their contents discharged
like so many loads of lumber or offal.
The Sabbath came, and I ordered the sexton to ring the
bell for church at 11:00 A.M., as usual. I did not expect
half a dozen persons, but there was actually a congregation
CHOLERA IN NEW ORLEANS II
of two or three hundred, all men. The women were too
busy caring for the sick to come to church.
For several days after this Sabbath, the plague raged
with unabated violence. A fatal yellow fever had been
spreading destruction in the city six weeks before the
cholera commenced, and thousands had left to escape this
scourge. At the time of the first cholera outbreak, there-
fore, it was estimated that the population of the city did
not exceed 35,000. During the entire epidemic, at least
6,000 persons perished one-sixth of the population in
twelve days! This is the most appalling ratio of mortality
recorded in any part of the world, ancient or modern. The
same epidemic broke out again the following summer in
June, 1833. In September of that year, the yellow fever
came back again. So, within the space of twelve months,
New Orleans had two visitations of Asiatic cholera and
two yellow-fever epidemics, carrying off 10,000 persons,
according to official figures, and many more that were not
reported.
Multitudes began the day in apparently good health, and
were dead before sunset. One morning as I was going out,
I spoke to a gentleman who lived in the house next to
mine. He remarked that he felt very well. "But I wonder,"
he added, "that you are still alive." On my return two
hours later, he was a corpse. A baker died in his cart
directly before my door. Near me a brick house was going
up; two of the workmen died on a carpenter's bench
shortly after they had started work for the day.
One family of nine supped together in perfect health.
Twenty-four hours later, eight of them were dead. A
boarding house that contained thirteen inmates was emp-
tied by death; not one was left to mourn.
Nature seemed to sympathize in this dreadful spectacle
of human woe. A thick, dark atmosphere still hung over
us like a mighty funeral shroud. All was still. Neither sun
nor moon nor stars shed their blessed light. Not a breath
of air moved. A hunter who lived on the Bayou St. John
12 DISASTER!
assured me that during the cholera he killed no game. Not
a bird was seen winging the sky. Artificial causes of terror
were added to the gloom which covered the heavens. The
burning of tar and pitch at every corner; the firing of
cannon, by order of the city authorities, along all the
streets; and the frequent fires which occurred at that
dreadful period all conspired to add horror to the scene.
Often, walking my nightly rounds, flames from the
burning tar so lighted the city streets and river that I
could see almost as distinctly as in daylight. And through
many a window lighted by these fires I could see persons
struggling in death, and rigid, blackened corpses awaiting
the arrival of a cart or hearse to carry them away.
During these inconceivable horrors I managed to main-
tain my post for fourteen days, without a moment's serious
illness. I often sank down upon the floor, sofa or pavement,
faint and exhausted from overexertion, sleeplessness and
hunger; but a short nap would partially restore me and
send me out afresh to renew my perilous labors. I expected
that every day would be my last, yet I did not have the
slightest symptom of cholera.
In June, 1833, the disease first invaded our own family
circle. Two of my daughters, the eldest four years old,
the youngest two, died about the same time. I was fortu-
nate enough to procure a carriage, in which their bodies
were conveyed to a family vault in the Girod cemetery. I
rode in the carriage alone with the two coffins. There was
no one else present to aid in performing the last sad
offices.
Mountain
Ordeal
By Virginia Reed Murphy
I was a child when we started to California, yet I re-
member the journey well and with good cause as our
little band of emigrants who drove out of Springfield,
Illinois, that spring morning of 1846 has gone down in
history as "the ill-fated Donner party/* Actually, my
father, James F. Reed, was the originator of the party.
The Donner brothers, George and Jacob, who lived just
outside Springfield, decided to join him.
Nothing like our family wagon ever started across the
plains. It was a two-story "pioneer palace car," attached to
a regular emigrant train. Grandma Keyes, who at seventy-
five was a bedridden invalid, insisted on going along rather
than be parted from my mother, her only daughter. So the
car in which she was to ride was planned for comfort. The
entrance was on the side, like that of an old-fashioned
stagecoach, and through it one stepped into a small room
in the center of the wagon. At the right and left were
spring seats with comfortable high backs. In this little
room was placed a tiny sheet-iron stove whose pipe ran
through the top of the wagon. A board about a foot wide
extended over the wheels on either side the full length of
the wagon, forming the foundation for a roomy second
story in which our eds were placed.
We also had two wagons loaded with provisions enough
to last us through the %st winter in California, had we
made the journey in the usual time of six months. Yet
Ewrpted from the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine of July 1*91;
copyright 1891 by the Century Company >, New York, N. Y.
13
14 DISASTER!
when we reached California after fearful hardships, we
were almost destitute.
I shall never forget the morning we bade farewell to
kindred and friends. The Donners were there, having
driven in the evening before with their families so that we
might get an early start. Grandma Keyes was carried out of
the house and placed in the wagon on a large feather bed ?
propped up with pillows. Father had tears in his eyes, but
he tried to smile as friends grasped his hand in farewell.
Mama was overcome with grief. At last we were all in the
wagons, the drivers cracked their whips and the long
journey began.
That was the morning of April 14, 1846. Our party
numbered thirty-one and consisted chiefly of three fami-
lies, the other members being young men, some of whom
came as drivers. The Donners included George and Tamsen
Donner and their five children, and Jacob and Elizabeth
Donner and their seven children.
Nothing of great interest happened until we reached
what is now Kansas. The first Indians we met were the
Caws, who kept the ferry and took us over the Caw River.
I watched them closely, hardly daring to breathe, sure they
would sink the boat in the middle of the stream.
Grandma Keyes improved in health and spirits every day
until we came to the Big Blue River, which was so swollen
that we had to make rafts on which to take the wagons
over. As soon as we stopped traveling, Grandma began to
fail, and on May 29 she died. It seemed hard to bury her
in the wilderness and travel on, but as things turned out,
her death here was providential.
Finally the dangerous work of crossing the river was
accomplished and we resumed our journey. The going at
first was rough, but after striking the great valley of the
Platte the road was good and the country beautiful. Trav-
eling up the smooth valley, we made from fifteen to
twenty miles a day. At night when we drove into camp,
our wagons were placed so as to form a circle or corral,
MOUNTAIN ORDEAL 15
into which our cattle were driven after grazing, to prevent
the Indians from stealing them. The campfires and tents
were on the outside. There were many expert riflemen in
the party and we never lacked for game, as the plains were
alive with buffalo.
At Fort Laramie, 200 miles farther on, we celebrated
the Fourth of July in fine style. Camp was pitched earlier
than usual and we prepared a grand dinner. On July 6
we were again on the march. A new route had just been
opened by Lansford W. Hastings. Called the "Hastings
Cutoff," it passed along the southern shore of the Great
Salt Lake, rejoining the old Fort Hall Emigrant road on
the Humboldt. It was said to shorten the distance 300
miles. We were assured by Hastings that the only bad part
of the route was the forty-mile drive through the desert
by the shore of the lake.
The greater part of the company elected to go by the
old road. They reached California safely. But eighty-seven
persons took the "Hastings Cutoff" the Donners, Breens,
Reeds, Murphys, C. T. Stanton, John Denton, William
McClutchen, William Eddy and Louis Keseburg among
them. These were the unfortunates who have since become
known as the Donner Party.
On the morning of July 31 we set off in high spirits on
the "Hastings Cutoff"; but a few days showed us that the
road was not as it had been represented. "We were seven
days in reaching Weber Canon. Hastings, who was guiding
a party in advance of our train, left a note by the wayside
warning us that the road through the canon was impassable
and advising us to select a road over the mountains, the
outline of which he attempted to give on paper. But the
directions were so vague that C. T. Stanton, William Pike
and my father rode on in advance, overtook Hastings and
tried to induce him to return and guide our party. He re-
fused, but came back over a portion of the road and from
a high mountain tried to point out the general course.
16 DISASTER!
Over this road Father traveled alone, taking notes and
blazing trees to assist him in retracing his course.
Learning of the hardships of the advance train, our
party decided to cross towards the lake. But there was no
road, not even a trail. Heavy underbrush had to be cut
away and used for making a roadbed. Finally we reached
the end of the canon. It seemed impossible for the oxen
to pull the wagons up the steep hill and the bluffs beyond,
but we doubled teams and the work was at last accom-
plished.
Worn with travel, we finally reached the shore of the
Great Salt Lake. It had taken an entire month, instead of
a week, and our cattle were not fit to cross the desert.
"We were now encamped in a valley called Twenty
Wells. For the long drive across the desert we laid in, as
we supposed, an ample supply of water and grass. But the
desert, represented to us as only forty miles wide, was
nearer eighty a dreary, desolate, alkali waste. Starting in
the evening, we traveled all that night and the following
day and night suffering from thirst and heat by day and
from the piercing cold by night.
When the third night fell and we saw the barren waste
still stretching away before us, Father went ahead in search
of water. But before starting he instructed the drivers that
if the cattle showed signs of giving out, to take them from
the wagons and follow him. Soon the oxen began to fall
to the ground from thirst and exhaustion. They were un-
hitched at once and driven ahead. Father, coming back,
met the drivers and cattle within ten miles of water and
instructed them to return as soon as the animals had satis-
fied their thirst.
We waited all the riext day for the return of our drivers,
the other wagons being already out of sight. Toward night,
we had only a few drops of water left. Another night
there meant certain death, so we set out on foot in an
effort to reach our wagons.
After dragging ourselves along about ten miles, we
MOUNTAIN ORDEAL 17
reached the wagon of Jacob Donner. The family were all
asleep, so we lay down on the ground although a bitter
wind swept over the desert, chilling us through and
through.
At daylight Father left to learn the fate of his cattle,
and was told that all but one cow and an ox were lost.
Scenting water, the animals had rushed on ahead of the
men and disappeared.
We were now 800 miles from California, seemingly
stranded in the desert. The company let us have two yoke
of oxen, so with our ox and cow yoked together we could
save one of our wagons. Our provisions were divided
among the company. Before leaving the desert camp, an
inventory of our provisions revealed that the supply was
not sufficient to last us through to California. Then, as if
to render the situation even more terrible, a storm broke
during the night and the hilltops became white with snow.
Someone must go on to Sutter's Fort for provisions, and
Stanton and McClutchen bravely volunteered. The rest of
us resumed our journey and soon reached Gravelly Ford on
the Humboldt. There we were compelled to double our
teams in order to ascend a steep, sandy hill.
Milton Elliott, who was driving our wagon, and John
Snyder, who was driving one of Mr. Graves', quarreled
over the management of their oxen. Snyder was beating
his cattle over the head with the butt end of his whip when
Father, returning from a hunting trip, arrived and remon-
strated with him.
Springing upon the tongue of a wagon, Snyder struck
Father blow after blow with his heavy whipstock. Father
was stunned and blinded by blood streaming from his
head. Another blow was descending when Mother ran in
between the men. Seeing the uplifted whip, Father had
time only to cry: ** John, John," when down came the
stroke upon Mother.
In an instant Father's hunting knife was out and Snyder
fell. He was caught in the arms of W. C. Graves, carried
1 8 DISASTER!
up the hillside and laid on the ground. In a few moments
he was dead.
A council was held to decide Father's fate, while we
anxiously awaited the verdict. Refusing to accept his plea
of self-defense, they decided that he should be banished
from the company. Thus, Father was sent alone into an
unknown country without provisions or arms even his
horse was at first denied him. But I followed him through
the darkness to give him his rifle, pistols, ammunition and
some food.
We traveled on, but all life seemed to have left the
party. Every day we searched for some sign of Father,
who would leave a letter by the wayside in the top of a
bush or in a split stick. When he succeeded in killing geese
or birds, he would scatter the feathers about as a sign that
he was not suffering for lack of food. But a time came
when we found no trace of him. Had he starved or per-
haps been murdered by Indians?
It was apparent that our whole company would soon be
put on a short food allowance, and the snow-capped
mountains gave an ominous hint of the fate that really
befell us later. Our wagon was found to be too heavy, so
we abandoned everything we could spare and packed the
remaining things in part of another wagon. We had two
horses left, and they managed to carry my two little
brothers. The rest of us had to walk.
On October 19, while traveling along the Truckee,
Stanton returned with seven mules loaded with provisions.
McClutchen was too ill to travel, but Captain Sutter had
sent two Indian vaqueros, Louis and Salvador, with Stan-
ton. Hungry as we were, Stanton brought us something
even better than food news that Father was alive. He had
met him not far from Sutter's Fort.
We now packed what little supplies we had left on one
mule and started with Stanton. My mother rode another
mule, carrying Tommy in her lap; Patty and Jim rode
behind the two Indians, and I behind Stanton* Thus we
MOUNTAIN ORDEAL 1 9
journeyed on, looking fearfully towards the mountains,
where snow was already falling. Winter had set in a month
earlier than usual.
All trails and roads were covered; and our only guide
was the summit, which it seemed we would never reach.
Despair drove many nearly frantic. When the wagons
could not be dragged through the snow, their goods and
provisions were packed on oxen and another start was
made, men and women walking in snow up to their waists,
carrying children and trying to drive their cattle. The
Indians said they could find no road, so a halt was called
and Stanton went ahead with the guides. He came back to
report that we could get across if we kept right on, but
that it would be impossible if more snow fell. He favored
a forced march until the other side of the summit was
reached, but many were too exhausted to take another
step; so we camped within three miles of the summit.
That night the dreaded snow came, great feathery flakes
whirling down around the campfires. By morning it lay
deep on mountain and valley. We built cabins and pre-
pared as best we could for winter. That camp, which
proved the camp of death to many, was made on the shore
of what is now known as Doiiner Lake. The Donners,
camped in Alder Creek Valley below, were, if possible, in
worse condition than ourselves. The snow came on so sud-
denly that they barely had time to put up brush sheds
covered with pine boughs.
Many attempts were made to cross the mountains, but
all proved futile because of the pitiless storms. Finally a
party was organized, since known as the "Forlorn Hope."
They made snowshoes, and fifteen started ten men and
five women but only seven lived to reach California.
Eight men perished, among them the brave Stanton.
The misery we endured during those four months at
Donner Lake in our little dark cabins is impossible to
describe. The storms would often last ten days, and from
the inside we would cut chips from the logs which formed
20 DISASTER!
our cabins, in order to start a fire. Some mornings snow
would have to be shoveled out of the fireplace.
Time dragged slowly along till we were no longer on
short rations we were starving. Mother could not see her
children die without trying to get them food, so she de-
cided to try crossing the mountains, leaving the younger
children behind. With no guide but a compass we started
Mother, Milt Elliott and myself. Milt wore snowshoes
and we followed in his tracks, climbing one high moun-
tain after another, only to see others still higher ahead.
One morning we awoke to find ourselves in a well of
snow. During the night, the heat of the fire had melted
the snow and our little camp had sunk many feet below
the surface. We knew that any attempt to get out might
bring an avalanche down upon us, but we finally reached
the surface. Because my foot was badly frozen, we were
compelled to return, and just in time, for that night a
storm came on the most fearful of the winter and we
would surely have died had we not been in the cabins.
We now had nothing to eat but the raw hides on the
roof of the cabin; boiled, they were simply a pot of glue.
When the hides were taken off the roof, leaving us without
shelter, Mr. Breen took us into his cabin and Mrs. Breen
slipped me bits of meat now and then when she discovered
that I could not eat the hide. Death had already claimed
many in our party and it seemed as if relief would never
reach us. We did not know, of course, that on his arrival
at Sutter's Fort, Father had described our predicament and
asked for help. Sutter furnished horses and provisions, and
Father and Mr. McClutchen started for the mountains.
They came as far as they could on horseback, then pro-
ceeded on foot with packs on their backs. But they were
finally forced back.
Captain Sutter advised Father to go to Yerba Buena,
now San Francisco, and see the naval officer in command*
Father was in fact conducting parties there when the
seven members of the Forlorn Hope arrived from across
MOUNTAIN ORDEAL 21
the mountains. Their famished faces told the whole horri-
ble story. Cattle were killed and men were up all night
drying beef and making flour; then a party of seven were
sent to our rescue.
On February 19, 1847, they reached our cabins, where
all were starving. There was joy at Donner Lake that
night, for we did not know the fate of the Forlorn Hope
and we were told that relief parties would come and go
until all were across the mountains. But sorrow was
strangely blended with the joy, for the dead lay about on
the snow, unburied, since the living lacked strength to
bury their dead.
On February 22 the first relief party started across the
mountains with a party of twenty-three men, women and
children. Mother and her family were among them. It was
a bright sunny morning and we felt happy, but we had
not gone far when Patty and Tommy gave out. It was
not thought safe to let them go on, so Mama was told that
they would have to be sent back to await the next expedi-
tion. Mother protested that we would all go back together,
but the relief party would not permit it. Instead, Mr.
Glover promised that he himself would return for the
children.
It was a sad parting a fearful struggle. Patty said, "I
will take good care of Tommy and I do not want you to
come back.** Mr. Glover led the children back and left
them with the Breens.
Sorrowfully we traveled on, walking in single file. The
men wearing snowshoes broke the way, and we followed in
their tracks. At night we lay down on the snow to sleep,
and when we awoke our clothing was frozen. At break of
day we were again on the road: we could make better time
over the frozen snow. The sunshine only added to our
misery, melting our frozen clothes until they clung to our
bodies.
Once more we faced starvation when we discovered that
a cache of food which the rescue party had hung in a tree
22 DISASTER!
had been destroyed by wild animals. But Father, who was
hurrying over the mountains toward us with food, met us
just in time.
When he learned that two of his children were still at
the cabins, he rushed on in a frantic effort to reach them
before they starved. He seemed to fly over the snow, reach-
ing Donner Lake on March i. He was overjoyed to find
Patty and Tommy alive, but what a sight met his gaze!
The famished little children and the deathlike look of all
made his heart ache. He filled Patty's apron with biscuits,
which she carried around, giving one to each person. He
made soup for the infirm, and rendered all assistance pos-
sible to the sufferers. Leaving them with about seven days*
provisions he started out with a party of seventeen, all
that were able to travel. Three of his men remained at the
cabins to gather wood and care for the helpless.
Father's party had not traveled far when a storm broke
upon them. "With the snow came a veritable hurricane.
The crying of half-frozen children, the lamenting of the
mothers, and the suffering of the whole party was heart-
rending. All night Father and his men worked through the
raging storm, trying to erect shelter for the dying women
and children.
The relief party had cached provisions on their way to
the cabins, and Father had sent three of the men ahead for
food before the storm set in; but they could not return.
Thus, again, all faced death. Three days and nights. they
were exposed to the fury of the elements. Finally Father
became snow-blind, and he would have died but for Wil-
liam McClutchen and Hiram Miller, who worked over
him all night.
The storm ended at last and McClutchen and Miller set
out over the snow in an effort to get help for those who
could not travel. Miller picked up Tommy and started.
Patty thought she could walk, but soon she fell, exhausted.
Everything else was now forgotten in a frantic attempt to
revive the dying child. Father found some crumbs in the
MOUNTAIN ORDEAL 2. 3
thumb of his woolen mitten; warming and moistening
them between his own lips, he gave them to Patty and
thus saved her life.
There was untold suffering at that "Starved Camp," as
the place has since been called. "When Father reached
Woodworth's Camp, a third relief started in at once and
rescued the living. A fourth relief "went on to Donner
Lake, as many were still there and many remain there
still, including George Donner and his wife, Jacob Donner,
his -wife, and four of their children. George Donner had
met with an accident and was unable to travel; his wife
chose to die with him rather than leave him to die alone.
Most of the survivors, when brought in from the moun-
tains, were taken to Sutter's Fort, where the generous-
hearted captain did everything possible for them. Of the
eighty-three persons who were snowed in at Donner Lake,
forty-two had died, and of the thirty-one emigrants who
left Springfield, Illinois, that spring morning, only eight-
een lived to reach California.
EDITORS' NOTE: One of the ugliest features of the Donner
Party's ordeal a feature 'which Mrs. Murphy does not
touch on was the cannibalism to which some of the party
resorted in an effort to stay alive. Some historians main-
tain that certain unfortunates in the group were slain and
devoured; others, that only those who died of starvation
or exposure were eaten. But they are agreed that 9 toward
the end of the expedition, cannibalism did break out in
the J^onner Party.
Perils
of the Deep
By Milo M. Quaife
LAKE MICHIGAN Among the most distressing
tragedies ever enacted on Lake Michigan were the destruc-
tion of the Phoenix by fire in 1847 and the Lady Elgin
by collision in 1860.
The Phoenix, built in 1845, was a propeller of 302 tons
which plied between Buffalo and Chicago. On November
ii, 1847, she began her westward run, heavily laden with
merchandise consigned to Chicago and with a capacity
load of passengers, almost all of them immigrants from
Holland preparing to join relatives and friends who had
already found homes in Michigan or other states of the
Middle West.
The route of the Phoenix, like that of most other ships,
ran down the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, since
there were no important towns on the eastern coast. Leav-
ing Manitowoc in stormy weather after midnight of No-
vember 21, the vessel strained under her load and the
firemen fed her boilers furiously. About four o'clock in the
morning, smoke began pouring from the engine room and
the alarm of fire was given. Although a bucket brigade
was formed, it soon became apparent that efforts to sub-
due the fire were vain and the vessel's two small lifeboats
were launched with forty-three passengers and crew, all
of whom reached shore safely.
Left behind on the doomed Phoenix were some 200
From Lake Michigan by Milo M. Quoife, copyright 1944. V$ed by special
permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
PERILS OF THE DEEP 25
souls, most of them the Dutch immigrants who were hope-
fully nearing the end of their 4,ooo-mile pilgrimage. Two
hours passed while the fire continued to rage, and they
desperately awaited the return of the lifeboats or the
arrival of other rescuers.
They came, but too late. Many of the passengers had
sought refuge from the fire and smoke by retreating to the
rigging, where they perished one by one as the flames
mounted the tarred ropes and fired the sails. Others leaped
into the lake, to sink at once in the icy water or to cling
precariously to pieces of floating wreckage from which
they eventually slipped to their watery graves; some re-
mained on -their floats and perished from the cold.
Meanwhile at near-by Sheboygan the alarm had been
given and the work of rescue was set in motion. The life-
boat of the schooner Liberty was manned and started for the
scene, followed by many small boats launched by civilians,
while the propeller Delaware, which chanced to be in the
harbor, began raising steam to join in the work. As it
turned out, she arrived first, about seven o'clock, to find
but three persons all men still alive. Two hundred had
perished in the flames or in the icy water.
Amid the murky hell of the burning "Phoenix looms for-
ever the heroic figure of David Blish, a Southport mer-
chant. Only thirty-three and the father of four small
children, he had every reason to wish to live, yet he cheer-
fully gave his life to ease the agony of a crowd of alien
immigrants. Offered a place in one of the lifeboats, he
declined, preferring "to take my chances with the rest,"
and while the boats were being loaded he stood at the
gangplank to prevent them from swamping.
During the voyage he had made friends with the Hol-
landers, paying particular attention to the children, and in
their last agony he did not fail them. When the fire was
far advanced he took in his arms a lost and terror rstrickgn
little girl, shielding her body from the flames with his own.
26 DISASTER!
So he moved through the inferno, a veritable angel of
mercy; at the end he contrived to launch a little raft and
with two children still in his arms clung to it until over-
come by the cold.
Fortunately for those who found places in the lifeboats,
the lake was now calm after the storm which had pre-
vailed. Although an effort had been made not to swamp
the boats, they were loaded to capacity, and some who had
plunged into the water endeavored to cling to them. One
woman thus held on all the way to shore. Another pas-
senger, a girl who had got her hands on one of the boats,
was forcibly thrust off and sent to her death by those
inside. In such an extremity, necessity knows no other law.
The second boat was launched with only one oar and had
to be sculled all the way to shore. It dipped a good deal of
water and the Hollanders baled this out with their wooden
shoes.
Although there was no wholesale absence of discipline
on the part of the crew, only three of whom manned each
of the lifeboats, it is significant of the changing standards
of the sea which have since come about that among them
were the captain and the first mate of the Phoenix. Today
such officers remain with their ship, while "women and
children first" is the universal rule.
In the case of the Lady Elgin, which met with disaster
on the night of September 7-8, 1860, its dramatic end was
brought about indirectly by the dispute between North
and South over the issue of Negro slavery.
In the prevailing fashion of the time, Milwaukee's Irish
ward, appropriately known as the "Bloody Third/* had a
military company called the Union Guards. All Wisconsin
had been shaken to its depths by the controversy over the
Glover slave rescue, and the state authorities, not except-
ing the Supreme Court, openly defied the efforts of the
Federal Government to enforce the obnoxious Fugitive
PERILS OF THE DEEP 2J
Slave Law. But the Bloody Third was Democratic to a
man, and when Governor Randall, a states-rights Republi-
can, asked the captain of the Union Guards what he
would do if called upon to assist in enforcing the edicts
of the state courts in opposition to the Federal authority,
he answered that he would stand by the flag of the United
States.
The Adjutant General of the state now deprived the
soldiers of their arms and disbanded the company. There-
upon the Bloody Third boys determined to buy their own
equipment, and on September 6, accompanied by friends
and relatives to the number of several hundred, they en-
gaged the Lady Elgin for an excursion to Chicago to
attend a Democratic rally, hoping to realize enough money
to rearm the company.
When the speechmaking and carousing were ended, the
Lady Elgin departed on the return journey to Milwaukee,
late in the night of September 7. The distance between the
two cities is about a hundred miles, and one-fourth of it
had been covered when fate bore down upon the merry-
makers in the shape of the Chicago-bound lumber hooker
Augusta.
A storm had arisen and the Lady Elgin was steaming
northward against the wind. The Augusta, a schooner, was
sailing east by south, with the wind and under heavy sail.
Although the Lady Elgin's lights were clearly seen at a
considerable distance, no effort was made to change the
Augustus course until the ships were almost together.
Then the captain called "Hard up!" but still the course
was not altered, and she crashed into the Lady Elgin amid-
ship, tearing a great hole in her side and inflicting some
damage upon herself.
A minute or so later the two ships drew apart and the
Augusta continued on her way to Chicago, her captain
making no effort to learn the extent of the damage he had
inflicted, or to stand by the stricken steamboat.
28 DISASTER!
Within fifteen minutes the engine fell through the Lady
Elgin and the hull soon followed it to the bottom, while
the hurricane deck and perhaps more of the upper works
were torn loose and floated free. Two small boats contain-
ing twenty-one persons had been launched and both
reached shore, although four passengers in one of them
were drowned en route.
Thus the vast majority of the 400 persons aboard the
Lady Elgin either went down with her or were thrown into
the lake, where many succeeded in gaining pieces of wreck-
age for support. About two score got to the hurricane
deck, where Captain Wilson did his utmost to direct and
encourage them. Close to the shore the deck ran aground
on a sand bar and broke up, and those whom it had carried
almost to safety were lost in the boiling waves.
Meanwhile from Winnetka, Evanston and other ad-
jacent points townsmen crowded to the lake shore to gaze
helplessly upon the scores of men and women drifting
inland to their death in the raging surf. In this way hours
passed and reporters even had time to come from Chicago
to witness the death struggles of the victims.
Among the onlookers was one brave youth, a student at
Northwestern University, who in addition to being a good
swimmer possessed a dauntless soul. "When he perceived
that the passengers drifting helplessly were too weak to
make their way through the surf unaided, he plunged into
the water and, seeking out a drowning woman, managed
to bring hereto land. Again and again he returned for
others, until he was overcome by his exertions and by
exposure to the chilly lake. Wrapped in blankets, he was
standing by a fire which had been built when he saw a man
drifting in, apparently holding another person in his
grasp. Inspired by the sight, he determined upon one last
effort, and two more victims, who proved to be husband
and wife, were torn from the angry water.
In all, the youth entered the water sixteen times, to
PERILS OF THE DEEP
bring back seventeen persons who were about to perish;
and sinking at last in exhaustion and delirium, he repeated
over and over the question, "Did I do my best? 5 *
Although no monument preserves the memory of David
Blish, the hero who perished with the Phoenix, a grateful
university has inscribed a suitable bronze tablet on the
Northwestern campus in Evanston, Illinois, as a memorial
to Edward Spencer, hero of the Lady Elgin disaster.
Night of Horror
on the Mississippi
By Don Terrio
MISSISSIPPI RIVER, April 27, 1865 Ask almost
anyone to name the greatest ship disaster in history and
he'll probably reply, "The Titanic" or "The Lusitania."
Chances are he's never even heard of the steamship Sultana,
which blew up on the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865,
with the death o 1,700 men, women and children ap-
proximately 200 more than lost their lives when the
Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean.
The two-year-old Sultana, a side- wheeler built for the
lower river cotton trade, was running her regular schedule
from New Orleans to St. Louis when she took aboard
2,134 Union soldiers at Vicksburg, Mississippi, the evening
of April 24. They were emaciated and weak, their faces
drawn and haggard. Nevertheless, they were one of the
most cheerful crowds ever to cross a gangplank; after
months in Confederate prison camps they were returning
North in an exchange of prisoners.
Their number surprised the regular cabin passengers.
The soldiers marched onto the hurricane deck, around the
cabins, down to the lower deck, and all around the boiler
deck. Crammed into every corner of the ship, even into
the hold, they had barely enough room to lie down side by
side, wrapped in their blankets. But at journey's end would
be Cairo, Illinois and then home to Ohio, Michigan, In-
diana, Tennessee, Kentucky or "West Virginia. They were
full of hope and excitement, and their talk was about
wives, sweethearts, mothers, fathers.
In the cabins were a number of families, a honeymoon-
30
NIGHT OF HORROR ON THE MISSISSIPPI 31
ing couple, a U. S. Congressman, and about sixty other
passengers. With the crew, the ship carried nearly 2,300
men, women and children.
On the second day, passengers moved about the ship as
best they could, watching the sights along the river. The
Mississippi had overrun much of the countryside and the
water was much colder than normal for spring.
Churning her way upstream, the Sultana passed many
inundated islands on which only trees and large shrubs
reached above water. Captain J. C. Mason of St. Louis, the
ship's master, was a careful man. Several times he cau-
tioned the passengers not to crowd to one side of the ship
when they made a landing, because tilting the boat and
then returning to a level position endangered the boilers.
Most of the passengers at one time or another went to
look at the crew's "pet" a vicious-looking nine-and-a-
half-foot alligator in a slatted box by the wheelhouse.
William Lugenbeal of Perryton, Ohio, and others would
now and then poke the 'gator with sticks to see him open
his jaws. But the crew moved their pet to a closet under
a lower stairway. Lugenbeal had little idea that, in a few
hours, the alligator would be instrumental in saving his
life.
Just after dark on April z6, the Sultana landed at
Memphis. Some of the stronger soldiers helped unload 300
hogshead of sugar, earning a little extra spending money.
A leak in one of the ship's four boilers was repaired. It
was several hours before she turned over her paddle wheels,
swinging into the river to take on coal from a barge.
The chilly night was dark and starless. Lieutenant Jo-
seph Taylor Elliott, returning to Indiana, reported later
that he talked with Captain Mason early in tie evening.
The captain said, *Td give all the interest I have in this
boat if we were safely landed in Cairo."
At 2:00 A,M. the Sultana passed around a bend in "Hen
and Chickens" islands, eight miles north of Memphis. Sud-
denly, dock watchers and Memphis citizens who were still
32 DISASTER!
up gave a startled look toward the north. They had heard
a dull roar several miles away. Aboard the gunboat U.S.S.
Grosbeak) Mate William Floyd asked the quartermaster to
look through his telescope and report what he made of a
bright glare in the sky.
The quartermaster replied, "A large steamer on fire,
sir." Floyd pounded on the door of the captain's cabin,
shouting, "The Sultana is ablaze upriver, sir!" On the
captain's orders, he called the crew.
The Grosbeak put out into the river, together with other
boats from Memphis. But there was no hope for the
Sultana.
The roaring explosion aboard the side-wheeler had un-
told tons of force behind it as hot steam burst its iron
bonds. Several hundred men were hurled outward by the
blast together with hot coal, huge pieces of a boiler, and
the after-part of the deck. One man landed 300 feet from
the ship, miraculously unhurt. Three other survivors
landed in the water still on the piece of deck on which they
had been sleeping.
The terrific blast ripped a great hole upward through
the cabin and hurricane decks, tore out forward stairways,
and left the upper works a complete wreck. The tall twin
smokestacks crashed down upon the shambles, pinning a
number of men beneath them. Flames broke out on the
lower deck, around the broken boiler bed.
The floor of the main cabin, where officers were sleeping,
dropped at the fore end without breaking off. It made an
inclined plane to the lower deck which poured men and
cots into the flames in a tangled heap. For a few moments,
the explosion didn't seem to waken the passengers fully
almost all who survived later said they thought they were
having a nightmare.
"Don't jump! We'll try to run ashore!** the mate
shouted. But men began to scream. Someone called, "We've
been shelled, the boat is sinking!" Scores leaped overboard*
NIGHT OF HORROR ON THE MISSISSIPPI 33
Women still dressed in their night clothes ran shrieking
from the cabins, carrying children in their arms.
The flames, fed by dry cabins which had fallen into the
hot bed of coals, swept fiercely up and back through the
light wood of the upper decks. Men tried to put out the
blaze with buckets of water, but most of the buckets
had been hurled overboard. Broken planks from the hur-
ricane deck projected down, met the flames, and lifted
them to the upper deck.
Scalded and burned, men crawled over each other to get
away from the blazing center of the boat. The railings had
been blown off, and hundreds were forced overboard by
the struggling mass of humanity. Those who couldn't
swim went down; many of those who could swim were
dragged under by panic-stricken fellow passengers. The
water was solid with maddened, clawing men. Dozens
were knocked under by other men who jumped on them,
or by planks thrown overboard. The paddle wheels
stopped, and the bonfire in the river drifted with the
current.
Men ran madly up and down the decks, crying and
swearing. Others prayed quietly, then leaped overboard.
Close friends embraced and jumped together. Those who
kept their heads in the panic picked up pieces of planking
or other wreckage before jumping. Captain Mason tore off
window blinds and pitched them to the struggling men in
the water.
Most of the lifeboats were wrecked. A group of men
managed to get one boat into the water, but it landed
bottom-up and would support only a few. Someone cut
the ropes holding up the heavy iron-bound gangplank at
the bow; it came down on the men below, crushing them
to death. A hundred men grabbed the plank and hung on
while they pushed it overboard. But the plank went under.
When it came up, only two or three men still clung to it.
Just as a soldier stepped on the top of the starboard
34 DISASTER!
paddle-wheel housing, it broke away from the boat. The
housing tilted to a 4 5 -degree angle, and its deck planking
cracked to let the soldier drop part way through. Trapped
and screaming, he struggled vainly to escape. The rising
flames finally closed over him.
Men lay under heavy timbers, moaning for help. Their
comrades pulled frantically at the wreckage, but were
forced back by the flames. Other men, lying on the deck
with broken legs or severely wounded, pleaded to be
thrown overboard rather than be left behind to burn.
A woman, holding a rope tied to a mule that had gone
overboard, saw her husband sink with their child on his
back. Over and over, she moaned, "My husband and baby
are gone!" Another mother fastened a life preserver about
her little girl's waist and threw her overboard. But the
life preserver was fastened too low, and the child came to
the surface upside down. The frantic mother leaped into
the water but was unable to reach her daughter.
Some survivors were saved by mules, hanging onto their
tails while the animals swam to shore. One owed his life
to a cow. The animal stopped him from being blown into
the wheel house, where he would have been killed by the
still-turning paddle wheel.
"William Lugenbeal ran along the lower deck trying to
find a loose plank, but all had been thrown overboard. He
pulled at a piece of splintered siding, but it wouldn't break
off. Then he remembered the alligator in his wooden box.
Lugenbeal dragged the box out of the stairway closet,
grabbed a bayonet, and ran it through the reptile three
times. He then dumped the 'gator out, dragged the box
to the edge of the deck, and jumped into the river with
it. He was picked up several hours later by a gunboat.
Several hundred men were still in the bow of the boat,
which hadn't yet been reached by the flames. Then the
wind veered, sending a solid mass of fire against them.
Preferring death by drowning to being burned alive, most
of them jumped into the water.
NIGHT OF HORROR ON THE MISSISSIPPI 3J
Several non-swimmers managed to grab a coiled line, tie
it to mooring rings, and throw it into the water. They
also made a large chain fast. When the heat became too
intense, the men dropped into the water, hanging onto the
rope and chain while the ship drifted. After the cabins
had burned and the fire had largely exhausted itself, they
climbed back onto the hull and threw water on the still-
burning wreckage.
The group of shivering men drifted downstream until
the unguided hull struck a grove of small trees. Several of
them put out in a raft made of timbers from the ship,
passed a line around some saplings, and stopped the hulk.
Using the raft and a hewed log they found floating at a
near-by inundated house, they took the last two or three
dozen men off the Sultana. A few moments later the hull
sank, sending up a towering column of steam.
Some survivors floated downriver as far as Memphis.
There were men and women on planks, barrels, window
shutters, sections of railing, doors, bales of hay, horse
troughs, parts of the deck, and other wreckage. The Gros-
beak and other boats pulled in survivors wherever they
could find them. A Confederate soldier picked up fifteen
Union soldiers in his dugout canoe and took them to
shore, forgetting the war in a humanitarian cause.
One seven-foot Tennessean surprised his would-be res-
cuers when they pulled up beside the log he was riding, a
mile above Memphis. "Go to hell with your boat," he
said. "If you couldn't come to help me before, you'd better
have stayed away." He slid from the log, and swam to
Memphis unaided.
When dawn broke, men were on shore all along the
river, perched on logs, brush, trees and driftwood, rubbing
themselves to keep warm and smacking themselves to drive
away buffalo gnats and mosquitoes. Many had no clothes,
and some were badly burned. A large number died of
burns or from exposure after reaching shore. To keep up
their spirits, survivors shouted back and forth along eight
3 6 DISASTER!
miles of the Mississippi. Rescue boats went up and down
the river, picking up survivors and taking them to Mem-
phis hospitals.
Almost all of the cabin families were broken up. One
youngster was the sole survivor of a family of eight. A
bridegroom wandered up and down the river bank for
days, but never found his bride.
The Father of "Waters was kind to only a few that black
April night. A young cavalryman managed to get on a
stateroom door with his father, but the elder man was
knocked off by a horse which jumped from the boat. The
son was picked up unconscious. After recovering, he
opened more than 100 coffins at Memphis in search of his
father's body. Finally, he heard his father had been res-
cued, also unconscious, by Negroes from President's Island,
four miles below Memphis. The son took the first boat to
the island; there he found his father alive and well.
While the hulk of the Sultana drew spectators from
many miles by boat and carriage, the government sent out
a barge every day for more than a week to pick up the
dead. Daily it returned, its deck covered with bodies.
There were many rumors about the cause of the ex-
plosion: 'the repaired boiler had failed; Confederates had
placed a torpedo in the coal; the boat had tilted, causing
water to shift in the boilers. Later investigation showed
that not the repaired boiler, but another one, blew up. The
Sultana was built with the tubular boilers used by boats
on the upper Mississippi, rather than the flue-type boilers
used by boats on the lower river. And when the Sultana's
sister-ship Missouri had a less serious boiler explosion not
long afterwards, it seemed to prove the contention that
tubular boilers were not adapted to the muddy waters of
the lower Mississippi.
Even though no other ship disaster claimed as many
lives* history books no longer record the Sultancfs story,
losing sight of it among more important events Lee's
surrender to Grant on April 9 at Appomattox, Lincoln's
NIGHT OF HORROR ON THE MISSISSIPPI 37
assassination on April 14, and Johnston's surrender to
Sherman on April 26 near the spot where Durham, North
Carolina, now stands.
The Sultana's survivors held meetings for many years.
But today it is known to few. In the years that followed,
the side- wheelers churned on to write a bright chapter of
American history. And either flowing gently or swelling
in flood, the Father of Waters was not again to see such a
night as that which claimed the lives of 1,700 of the
Sultana's passengers and crew.
The Great
Chicago Fire
By Herbert Asbury
CHICAGO, ILL., October 8, 1871 For several
years after the close of the Civil "War, a respectable but not
very prosperous laborer named Patrick O'Leary lived in
the three rear rooms of a frame cottage at No. 137 De-
Koven Street, on Chicago's West Side, with his wife
Catherina and their five children, one of whom, James,
later made his mark in the world as Big Jim O'Leary,
he was a rich and powerful gambler.
The two front rooms of the cottage were occupied by
the family of Patrick McLaughlin, and in the rear was the
two-story shanty used by the O'Learys as a barn; in it was
kept a store of loose hay, a horse and wagon, occasionally
a calf, and five cows which Mrs. O'Leary milked twice
daily, peddling the milk about the neighborhood. High
wooden fences connected the barn with sheds and other
outbuildings on adjacent property, and the alley north of
the O'Leary cottage was strewn with old boxes, discarded
lumber, and other rubbish of a highly combustible nature.
On the evening of Sunday, October 8, 1871, Dennis
Sullivan, a drayman, called on his friends the O'Learys and
found them in bed; they had retired early, Mrs. O'Leary
said, because she "had a sore foot." Sullivan and O'Leary
talked for a few minutes about the unprecedented drought
only an inch of rain had fallen since July i and the
whole Northwest was parched and dry, forest fires were
Reprinted, in condensed form, from Gem of the Prairie by Herbert Asbury,
by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; copyright 1940 by Alfred A*
Knopf, Inc.
38
THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE 39
raging in Michigan and Wisconsin, and the grass of the
prairies was burning in a hundred localities.
About 8:30 Sullivan started home, walking slowly along
DeKoven Street toward Jefferson. Halfway down the
block he stopped, filled his pipe, and sat on the curbing to
enjoy a quiet smoke. But as he raised his head to light the
tobacco, shielding his match against the strong wind, the
drayman saw a bright, pulsating glow in the O'Learys'
barn. Crying the alarm, Sullivan rushed into the shanty
and managed to drag out a calf, whose hair had caught
fire. But when he went back to save the horse or a cow, his
wooden leg caught in a crack between two boards and he
barely escaped with his own life.
That was the beginning of the great Chicago fire; within
two hours it was raging over a hundred acres, devouring
pine houses, sheds, and barns as if they had been so many
matchsticks, and was beyond all possibility of control.
Several things had enabled the flames to make such rapid
progress in such a short time. Foremost was the fact that
Chicago was, as the Tribune had said, "a city of everlast-
ing pine, shingles, shams, veneers, stucco and putty"; of
60,000 buildings, two-thirds were constructed entirely of
wood, with roofs of shingles, tar, and felt, all bone-dry
from the drought and almost as inflammable as a bunch of
firecrackers. The fire department was undermanned and
possessed insufficient equipment, fewer than 200 men de-
pending upon seventeen fire engines, eighteen pieces of
other apparatus, and 48,000 feet of hose. But at least a
third of the hose, and several of the engines and hose-carts,
had been lost or damaged at previous fires and had not
been replaced or repaired. Moreover, the firemen were ex-
hausted; they had answered thirty alarms in one week, and
only the day before had fought for fifteen hours against a
$750,000 blaze on the West Side. And when the DeKoven
Street fire was reported to the watchman in the Court
House tower, he made a mistake in the location, and sent
an engine company stationed a mile and a half away in-
40 DISASTERS
stead of one of the four which were comparatively near by.
Finally, throughout the conflagration a wind which at
times reached the proportions of a gale blew without ceas-
ing from the southwest.
Half an hour before midnight the fire crossed the Chi-
cago River into the South Side, ignited the roof of a shanty
at Adams and Franklin streets, and leaped almost at once
to the new $80,000 stables of Frank Parmalee's bus com-
pany. Conley's Patch and Shinbone Alley vanished in a
flash of fire and smoke, and the blazing rookeries disgorged
their prostitutes, pimps and hoodlums to join the throng
swarming back over the West Side bridges and through
the tunnels. Gamblers' Row disappeared and so did Hair-
trigger Block, and swinging slightly eastward the flames
roared through the business district, destroying many im-
portant factories and all of the principal stores, wholesale
houses, hotels, theaters, newspaper offices, and public
buildings. Only two structures were left standing in the
460 acres bounded on the west, north, and east by the
Chicago River and Lake Michigan, and on the south by a
line running diagonally from Congress Street and Michi-
gan Avenue to Polk and Wells streets.
In the early hours of Monday morning, October 9, the
flames jumped the main-stream of the Chicago River to
the North Side and "went through that section of 75,000
people as fast as a man could run"; 1,450 acres were
burned over, and of 13,800 buildings fewer than 500 were
spared. Among the first to go were the waterworks and
pumping station on Chicago Avenue, and the new struc-
ture of the Chicago Historical Society at Dearborn and
Ontario streets. With the latter went priceless and irre-
parable records, among them the original draft of Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation.
Ahead of the reaching flames surged great masses of
homeless and bewildered people, blistered and scorched by
the terrific heat, carrying bundles and babies and invalids,
dragging trunks and carts, stumbling, falling, trampling
THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE 41
women and children, fighting, cursing, and screaming in
such a frenzy of terror that sometimes their cries could be
heard above the thunderous tumult of the fire.
"The people were mad," said the Chicago Post. "Despite
the police indeed, the police were powerless they
crowded upon frail coigns of vantage, such as fences and
high sidewalks propped on wooden piles, which fell beneath
their weight, and hurled them, bruised and bleeding, in the
dust. They stumbled over broken furniture and fell, and
were trampled under foot. Seized with wild and causeless
panic, they surged together, backwards and forwards, in
the narrow streets, cursing, threatening, imploring, fight-
ing to get free. Liquor flowed like water; for the saloons
were broken open and despoiled, and men on all sides were
to be seen frenzied with drink. . . . Everywhere dust,
smoke, flame, heat, thunder of falling walls, crackle of
fire, hissing of water, panting of engines, shouts, braying
of trumpets, wind, tumult, and uproar.
"The brute creation was crazed. The horses, maddened
by heat and noise, and irritated by falling sparks, neighed
and screamed with affright and anger, and roared and
kicked, and bit each other, or stood with drooping tails and
rigid legs, ears laid back and eyes wild with amazement,
shivering as if with cold. Dogs ran hither and thither,
howling dismally. Great brown rats, with beadlike eyes,
were ferreted out from under the sidewalk by the flames,
and scurried along the streets, kicked at, trampled upon,
hunted down. Flocks of beautiful pigeons, so plentiful in
the city, wheeled up aimlessly, circled blindly, and fell
into the raging fire beneath."
From the blazing dens of the underworld came swarms
of hoodlums, thieves and prostitutes, hurrying to reap the
richest harvest of loot that had ever fallen to the lot of
American criminals. They hunted singly and in packs,
snatching what they wanted from the drays and carriages
and carts; breaking into saloons, stores and homes, filling
their bellies with liquor and their pockets with money and
42 DISASTER!
jewelry, covering their backs with fine clothing and their
fingers and arms with rings and bracelets, dragging costly
furniture into the streets and viciously ripping it to pieces
because it must be abandoned to the flames.
"They smashed windows with their naked hands," went
on the Chicago Post, "regardless of the wounds inflicted, and
with bloody fingers rifled till and shelf and cellar, fighting
viciously for the spoils of their forage. "Women, hollow-
eyed and brazen-faced, with filthy drapery tied over them,
their clothes in tatters and their feet in trodden-over slip-
pers, moved here and there scolding, stealing, fighting;
laughing at the beautiful and splendid crash of walls and
falling roofs.* 5 Soon after midnight, with the Court House
on fire, 350 prisoners were released from the jail in the
basement. They immediately broke into a jewelry store and
looted it.
William S. "Walker, a Chicago journalist, said that long
before daybreak on Monday the looting had culminated in
scenes of daring robbery unparalleled in the annals of
disaster:
"As the night wore on, and the terrors aggregated into
an intensity of misery, the thieves, amateur and profes-
sional, dropped all pretense at concealment and plied their
knavish calling undaunted by any fears of retribution.
They would storm into stores, smash away at safes, and
if, as happily was almost always the case, they failed to
effect an opening, they would turn their attention to
securing all of value from the stock that could con-
veniently be made away with, and then slouch off in
search of further booty.
"The promise of a share in the spoils gave them the
assistance of rascally express-drivers, who stood with their
wagons before doors of stores, and waited as composedly
for a load of stolen property to be piled in as if they were
receiving the honestly acquired goods of the best man in
town. . . , The scenes of robbery were not confined to the
sacking of stores. Burglars would raid into the private
THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE 43
dwellings that lay in the track of the coming destruction,
and snatch . . . anything which their practical senses told
them would be of value. Interference was useless. The
scoundrels . . . were inflamed with drink, and were alarm-
ingly demonstrative in the flourishing of deadly weapons.
Sometimes women and children, and not infrequently men,
would be stopped as they were bearing from their homes
objects of especial worth, and the articles would be torn
from their grasp by gangs of these wretches."
Alexander Frear, a New York politician who had been
Boss Tweed's spokesman in the New York legislature, saw
the looting in part of the business district. He thus de-
scribed it in an article for the New York World:
"... I could see up Dearborn Street as far as the Port-
land Block, and it was full of people all the distance,
swaying and surging under the reign of fire. Around on
Lake Street the tumult was worse. Here, for the first time,
I beheld scenes of violence that made my blood boil. In
front of Shay's magnificent dry goods store a man loaded
a store-truck with silk, in defiance of the employees of the
store. ... I saw a ragamuffin on the Clark Street bridge,
who had been killed by a marble slab thrown from a win-
dow, with white kid gloves on his hands, and whose
pockets were stuffed with gold-plated sleeve buttons.
"On that same bridge I saw an Irishwoman leading a
goat that was big with young, while under the other arm
she carried a piece of silk. Lake Street was rich with treas-
ures; and hordes of thieves forced their way into the stores
and flung out the merchandise to their fellows in the
street, who received it without disguise, and fought over
it openly. I went through the street to Wabash Avenue,
and here the thoroughfare was choked with all manner
of goods and people. . . . Valuable oil-paintings, books,
pet animals, musical instruments, toys, mirrors, and bed-
ding, were trampled under foot. Added to this, the goods
from the stores had been hauled out and had taken fire;
and the crowd, breaking into a liquor establishment, were
44 DISASTER!
yelling with the fury of demons, as they brandished cham-
pagne and brandy bottles. The brutality and horror of the
scene made it sickening. A fellow, standing on a piano,
declared that the fire was the friend of the poor man. He
wanted everybody to help himself to the best liquor he
could get; and continued to yell from the piano until
someone, as drunk as himself, flung a bottle at him and
knocked him off it. In this chaos were hundreds of chil-
dren, wailing and crying for their parents. One little girl,
in particular, I saw, whose golden hair, worn loose on her
back, had caught fire. She ran screaming past me, and
someone threw a glass of liquor upon her, which flared up
and covered her with a blue flame."
The authorities were powerless to stop the looting, but
they did succeed in checking the outbreak of incendiarism
which seems inevitably to follow and accompany every
great conflagration. Firebugs were active from Monday
night, when the fire burned itself out against the open
spaces of Lincoln Park, until Wednesday evening, by
which time the city was being patroled by 2,000 special
policemen, 400 men of the regular force, six companies of
the Illinois militia, and four companies of regular troops
of the United States Army, all under the command of
General Phil Sheridan, who ruled Chicago under martial
law until October 22. Seven men caught setting fires were
shot, and an eighth was stoned to death by a mob of in-
furiated citizens at Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue,
where his body lay in the street for twenty-four hours as
a warning to his kind.
The Chicago fire was by far the most disastrous con-
flagration of the nineteenth century; in twenty-four hours
it took 250 lives (that many bodies were found; at least
as many more were believed to have been consumed in the
fire) , devastated an area of three and one-half square miles,
burned 98,500 persons out of their homes, and destroyed
17,450 buildings, with a property loss of approximately
$200,000,000, Hundreds of books, newspaper and maga-
THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE 45
zine articles, poems, speeches, and plays were written about
the catastrophe; no stereopticon collection was complete
without views of Chicago before and after the fire, and
as late as the early 19005 lecturers with magic-lantern
slides were still drawing curious crowds. The disaster was
the text of innumerable sermons, and scores of ministers
declared that God had destroyed the city in punishment
for its sins; the Rev. Granville Moody of Cincinnati was
convinced that the calamity had been visited upon Chicago
because it had voted down a proposition to close the sa-
loons on Sunday. "It is retributive judgment," he declared,
"on a city that has shown such devotion in its worship of
the Golden Calf."
But nothing that was said or written about the fire
solved the mystery of its origin. Legend has it that Mrs.
O'Leary went into the barn to milk one of her cows, and
that the animal kicked over a kerosene lamp, a tale which
was given some color by the discovery of a broken lamp in
the ruins. But both O'Leary and his wife declared, in affi-
davits, that no member of their family had entered the
barn after nightfall, and that there had been no lighted
lamp on their premises at any time during the evening.
Another story was that Patrick McLaughlin or his wife
had gone to the barn to get fresh milk for an oyster stew;
the McLaughlins were having a party to celebrate the ar-
rival of Mrs. McLaughlin's cousin from Ireland. But they
swore that no one had left their rooms except one young
man, who went to the corner for a bucket of beer.
"Before God,** Mrs. McLaughlin testified, "nobody went
out to get milk/*
A third story of the fire's origin was that it was started
by some boys smoking pipes and cigars in the hayloft. In
later years Big Jim O'Leary said that was what had hap-
pened. But he always insisted that he knew none of the
boys and was not himself a member of the group.
On the morning of October 10, 1871, W. D. Kerfoot, a
well-known real-estate agent and operator, went to the
46 DISASTER!
ruins of his office in Washington Street between Clark and
Dearborn. With the assistance of his clerk and the latter's
father, he cleared away the hot ashes and built a board
shanty sixteen feet long and twelve feet wide. Atop the
structure he placed a board on which had been lettered:
"Kerfoot's Block," and on the front nailed a large sign:
W. D. KERFOOT
EVERYTHING GONE BUT 'WIFE, CHILDREN
AND ENERGY
This was the first building erected in Chicago after the
great fire. But by the i8th of October, ten days after the
start of the conflagration, business was being carried on in
5,497 temporary structures, and within a year 100,000
men were constructing 10,000 permanent buildings at a
cost of almost $46,000,000. By the end of another decade
Chicago was a bigger and grander city than even its most
optimistic booster had ever imagined it would be.
Fiery Hell
at Peshtigo
By Pence James
PESHTIGO, WIS., October 8, 1871 On Monday,
October 9, 1871, John Mulligan, foreman of a lumber
gang at Peshtigo, Wisconsin, arrived on foot in Marinette,
seven miles to the north. His eyes were hollow and staring.
He was covered with charcoal streaks. His clothing smelled
burnt.
"Peshtigo is destroyed," he announced to astounded lis-
teners. "Not a stick remains and its people are lying dead
in the streets!"
The Peshtigo disaster occurred on the same day and at
the same hour as the famous fire which burned out the
heart of Chicago and killed 250 of its citizens. Chicago's
disaster went down in history as "The Great Fire of 1871"
but little was written about the fire at Peshtigo, which was
one of the hottest blazes of all time and which caused three
times as much human misery.
On October 8, 1871, Peshtigo was a robust community
of 2,000 in Wisconsin's densely forested bay-shore area.
The principal industry was an immense woodenware fac-
tory, located on the east side of the Peshtigo River, which
bisected the town. Several lumber and grist mills, a sash
and door factory, a foundry, and about fifteen stores and
hotels comprised the rest of the business section. There
were also about 350 homes, built along both sides of the
river.
That was the picture on Sunday afternoon.
^Printed by permission of the St. Louh Post-Dispatch and the Reader's
Digest; copyright 1946 by the Pulitzer Publishing Co., St. Louis, Mo.
47
48 DISASTER!
On Monday morning not a building remained. It was
difficult to tell where the streets had been. More than 600
people were dead. The thick forest, once the pride and
support of the community, had become a blackened, smok-
ing wasteland stretching as far as the eye could see.
The Peshtigo fire was unlike any previous conflagration.
Sweeping in on a high, twisting wind, it engulfed the
whole town before most of the residents were aware of the
danger. The first warning sign, which appeared shortly
after dark, was an angry red glow in the southern sky.
Within minutes there followed a terrifying sound like the
rumbling of thunder, caused by the explosion of methane
gas produced from superheated wood and marshes.
The atmosphere quickly grew unbearably warm and
then, with another loud explosion, the town was envel-
oped by a rush of air as hot as though it had issued from
a blast furnace. The wind lifted the roofs off houses,
toppled chimneys and showered the town with hot sand
and live coals. The shrieks of men, women and children
were scarcely audible above the roar and rumble of ex-
ploding gas and crashing timber. Buildings were now
bursting into flame from cellar to roof with one puff. Fire
appeared in a score of places simultaneously.
Vounteer firemen succeeded in getting a hose going, but
it was burned to ashes immediately. People were struck
dumb with terror, seeing nothing but fire overhead and
all around them.
Frenzied crowds converged in a whirl of humans, horses
and wagons on the main street that led to the river bridge.
Sparks and flaming branches hurtled through the air,
striking down victims. Some barely reached the river's edge
when their clothing burst into flame. Men's whiskers
caught fire. Solid walls of flame leaped across the river
from building to building, forming an arch of fire over
survivors in the water*
The river bridge was a scene of bedlam. People on the
east side sought safety on the west; and those on the west
FIERY HELL AT PESHTIGO 49
thought the only escape was to reach the east bank. They
met on the bridge, which soon burst into flames and col-
lapsed, dropping its burden of wagons, horses and humans
into the river.
To add to the horror, the woodenware factory erupted
like a volcano and sent a shower 1 of burning wooden tubs
and broom handles upon the tortured people in the water.
Fiery logs blown out of the lumber mill fell among the
victims with frightful, hissing sounds.
About fifty persons ran into a brick boardinghouse
when flames enveloped the town, thinking the walls would
protect them. Nothing remained of them next day but
white ashes and two watches, stopped at 10:05 and 10:10.
Those who sought the presumed safety of cleared farm
land found too late that the fire spared nothing. So intense
was the heat that boulders in the center of clearings a mile
wide were cracked apart. Tree stumps in such places were
burned out, roots and all.
Before dawn the intensity of the conflagration began to
abate, and the survivors who had been standing for hours
in the cold river crawled out and threw themselves wearily
on the hot, sandy ground. A low, marshy area on the east
bank had afforded refuge for about 150 persons who had
lain on the ground and were not touched by heat or flame.
They were the only citizens of the entire village who suf-
fered no physical torture from the fire. Those who had
spent the night neck-deep in water, however, were danger-
ously chilled and badly burned.
Among the survivors was David Maxon, who had just
recovered from a fever which still held his wife ill in bed.
When the fire came he shooed their five children ahead o
him, and with strength born of desperation dragged his
wife, bed and all, to the river. He pushed the couch into a
depth that covered her body, but not her pillowed head.
He kept the children huddled about him through the
dreadful night, and in the morning all were safe.
There were no bandages and no medical aid until Mon-
50 DISASTER!
day morning when a tent arrived from Marinette and was
turned into a hospital. Later that day the survivors were
moved to a hotel in Marinette. In the evening one day
too late rain fell in Peshtigo!
The fire had played strange tricks: in a hardware store
sixty-dozen axes were melted into one mass. On the fire
wagon the iron at the tip of the tongue was melted, yet
the wooden tongue itself was not even scorched. A group
of Swedes who were digging fire ditches had been seen
lying dead at their posts during the height of the blaze.
But rescue workers could find nothing to mark the place
they had been except their shovel blades.
A combination of drought and carelessness was re-
sponsible for the Peshtigo tragedy. For more than three
months there had been no measurable rainfall in Wiscon-
sin. Though the tinder-dry forests were ready to go up in
smoke, a gang of railroad workers had been burning felled
trees south of Peshtigo, and it is thought that the big fire
started when one of those blazes ignited huge quantities of
marsh gas.
Newspapers devoted considerable space to Chicago's
spectacular misfortune, but it was several weeks before
they got around to recognizing the nature of the Peshtigo
blaze. The governor of Wisconsin was forced to issue a
special proclamation pleading with the people to divert
their gifts from Chicago, which was being cared for by
the whole country, to Peshtigo, where the toll of human
life was far greater.
Yet today, when the Chicago and Peshtigo disasters are
cited as one of history's most startling coincidences, people
still inquire, "Why, what happened at Peshtigo?"
Wreck of the
Pacific Express
By Keith Harris
ASHTABULA, OHIO, December 29, 1876 Few
railroad disasters have combined more elements of horror
than the one at Ashtabula, Ohio, the night of December
29, 1876. Throughout the preceding day, a blinding north-
easterly snowstorm, accompanied by heavy winds, had
hampered the movement of trains. The luxurious west-
bound Pacific Express of the Michigan Southern & Lake
Shore Railroad, due at Ashtabula at 5:30 P.M., was three
hours late. When it arrived at the bridge spanning the
Ashtabula River, the night was pitch-black and lamps had
been burning for hours. Nothing could be seen even fifty
feet ahead through the driving snow.
As the eleven-car train drawn by two locomotives the
Socrates and the Columbia approached the bridge, it had
to force its way through a heavy snowdrift; when it
reached the span it was going a scant twelve or fourteen
miles an hour.
Passengers were making the most of the comforts of the
night. Some were playing cards, others were quietly doz-
ing in their seats or enjoying a last smoke before settling
themselves for the night. Ladies in the sleeping coach were
preparing to retire; some had already done so.
Suddenly the wheels stopped turning, the bell-rope
snapped, lights were extinguished. In an instant all felt
themselves falling, falling. An awful silence seized the
passengers. They sat breathless, bracing themselves as best
they could, experiencing the eerie sensation of dropping
into a fathomless abyss. Then, before they realized the full
52 DISASTER!
horror of what had happened, the once-beautiful train lay
at the bottom of the gorge, wrecked and broken and soon
to be consumed by flames. The bridge had broken in the
center!
As the Socrates reached the far side of the span, its en-
gineer suddenly heard a sharp crack, like the report of a
torpedo, and looked back to see the Columbia sinking out
of sight. With great presence of mind he instantly opened
the throttle valve, put on all steam and drove his engine for-
ward. It was "like going uphill/' he later recalled, but the
Socrates reached the abutment and was safe. Not so for-
tunate was the Columbia. As it was drawn forward, it
struck the abutment. For an instant the locomotive clung
to its leader, held by the coupling rod; but as that broke,
it fell, carrying the eleven cars with it.
At the bottom of the ravine, snow lay waist-deep and
the stream was covered with ice eight inches thick. Upon
this were piled the fallen cars and engine. All the passen-
ger cars were heated by stoves, and in less than two min-
utes the train began to burn. In fifteen minutes the holo-
caust was at its height.
The wrecked cars, scattered in terrible confusion, were
strewn among the iron beams and columns of the broken
bridge. Ice, water and snow; rods, braces and beams; de-
bris from the shattered train and bodies of men, women
and children all were mingled in a wild conglomeration.
Lucky indeed were the passengers who were killed out-
right. Less fortunate were those who lay, injured and
helpless but in full control of their faculties, watching the
rapid approach of the flames. At least two lives were sac-
rificed to fire at Ashtabula for every one lost in the im-
mediate shock of the disaster.
Amazingly, no one was lost in the last car. This was due
less to a miracle than to the energy and presence of mind
of a Negro porter. He broke a window and crawled
through it, then broke other windows and extricated all
the passengers before the flames could reach them.
WRECK OF THE PACIFIC EXPRESS 53
Though an immediate alarm had been given in the
neighboring town, the storm was so violent, the snow so
deep, that help was slow in coming. When it did arrive, it
couldn't do much. Those who attempted to rescue passen-
gers pinned fast in the advancing flames were driven back
by the intense heat.
Danger from all the elements threatened survivors. If
they escaped the flames, the water threatened to engulf
them. If they escaped the water, they were still exposed to
the full fury of the raging storm. Some crawled through
broken windows, tearing clothes and flesh, or smashed
glass doors with bare fists in their frantic fight for life.
Others escaped through openings in the sides or tops of
cars.
Strong men, bruised and stunned, were led to safety by
their wives. Others hobbled on broken limbs, not know-
ing the extent of their injuries. A father rescued his small
children and returned for his wife, who was pinned down
by the wreckage. The woman begged her husband to cut
her throat before the fire reached her, but he managed to
pull her loose and carry her to safety.
The flames kept rising, spreading far and wide, filling
the valley. A cloud of smoke ascended, black and dense,
from the paint and varnish and rich materials of that
gilded wreck. It darkened the sky and rolled a thick cloud
through the awful gorge. From within its frightful canopy
came shrieks of agony and despair.
The living, driven from the wreck by the flames, could
only stand and look upon the dreadful scene. For a time
they heard the hopeless cry of those who knew that they
must die. Then silence settled upon the scene, the awful
silence of the dead.
When firemen at last arrived from the village of Ashta-
bula, the wounded were already coming up the bank.
Citizens who rushed to the scene led gashed and bleeding
survivors out of the valley. The rescued were distributed
throughout the village, finding some degree of comfort on
54 DISASTER!
couches and beds of the few hotels; on store counters; on
the floors of private homes or saloons. The whole vicinity
became a huge hospital in which doctors and surgeons
worked frantically.
For a time the wreck was left unguarded, and plun-
derers made their way through the debris, taking watches,
jewelry, shawls, satchels anything of value. One dead
man was even robbed of his boots. Next morning, nothing
remained in the ravine but a charred and undistinguish-
able mass of car trucks, brake-rods, twisted rails and bent
and tangled bridge iron.
When a count was made of the casualties, it was found
that eighty- four had died and at least twice that number
had been seriously injured all of them the innocent vic-
tims of an iron bridge, built in 1865, which was faulty in
its original construction. In spite of distinct indications of
weakness the bridge had been in constant service for eleven
years. %
The surprising feature was that it should have given way
when it did. A double-track bridge, it should naturally
have fallen under the combined pressure of trains moving
simultaneously in opposite directions. Instead, it suddenly
gave way under a strain which was not particularly se-
vere, even combined with the great atmospheric pressure
of the storm.
As news of the Ashtabula catastrophe sped over tele-
graph wires from coast to coast, a sense of shock gripped
the nation. On the distant hilltops of New England, in the
green valleys of California, in great cities and tiny ham-
lets in the South and North, everything else was tempo-
rarily forgotten as a wave of sympathy swept America.
For the wreck of the Pacific Express was one of the worst
railroad disasters the United States had known.
Bring Out
Your Dead
By Hodding Carter
MEMPHIS, TENN., 1878 No one in Memphis,
Tennessee, could understand what kept the town together
in 1878. It was a filthy, bankrupt city; its taxable wealth
had shrunk from $30,000,000 in 1874 to $^o ? ooo,ooo.
The municipal indebtedness had reached a staggering
$5,500,000, and one-third of the taxable property had
been confiscated for nonpayment of taxes. Though the
population was double that of 1860, trade was little
better. Homeless Negroes, searching for jobs or Jubilee,
thronged the streets as paupers and petty thieves. "War,
reconstruction and political debauchery had brought Mem-
phis to the precipice.
In no way was the demoralization of Memphis more ap-
parent than in its lack of sanitation. Dirty wells and cis-
terns supplied the drinking water which before the war
had been taken from the Mississippi and the Wolf. Even
the pavements were decaying.
This was the Memphis in which a Mr. and Mrs. Bionda
operated a snack house on the river front, a haunt of
hungry and not too squeamish boatmen when ashore. Mrs.
Bionda, like everyone else, found it convenient to empty
the slops and garbage into the gutter or the near-by
shallows.
Perhaps Mrs. Bionda was throwing out the refuse one
August night in 1878 when she swished carelessly and too
late at a mosquito. Her mind was probably on other things.
From Lower Mbsissippi, copyright 1942 by Hodding Carter and reprinted by
permission of Rinehart & Company, Inc., publishers.
55
5 6 DISASTER!
Yellow fever, for instance. For three months Memphis had
been nervously discussing the great fever epidemics to the
south. As far back as May the businessmen of Memphis,
apprised that yellow fever was raging in the West Indies,
had petitioned for a quarantine. The council had refused.
In July the Memphis newspapers had reported an epidemic
in New Orleans. Thereupon a quarantine station was es-
tablished at railroad points outside the city.
In August it was rumored that in near-by Gre-
nada, .Mississippi, yellowjack was raging. Memphis became
panicky. It remembered another August, in 1873. A New
Orleans steamboat had left two sick men at Happy Hol-
low under the bluffs. Yellow fever had broken out in the
settlement and spread throughout the city. Twenty-five
thousand Memphians had fled. Of those who remained,
2,000 had died, and 5,000 others had been stricken and re-
covered. Memphis wanted no repetition of that terrible
onslaught.
Mrs. Bionda died on August 13. Her death was reported
the next day as the first yellow fever casualty, although
actually two Negro children and a white man had previ-
ously succumbed. The rooms of the snack house were
fumigated with carbolic acid and copperas, and the sur-
rounding streets disinfected.
Twenty-two new cases were reported on the day of the
announcement of Mrs. Bionda's death. Memphis went ber-
serk with fear. A wild new flight from the city began. By
the middle of September, 25,000 of the population had
departed; this left only some 20,000, of whom 14,000
were Negroes. Before the epidemic was to run its course,
17,000 of these Memphians were to be stricken. More than
4,000 of the whites would die, but less than 1,000 of the
14,000 Negroes.
The crazed rush had ended by early September, for all
who could or would flee had done so. Memphis was a
ghostly city, its trade and traffic suspended, its living car-
ing for the sick and burying the dead. The early morning
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD 57
stillness was broken only by the cry, "Bring out your
dead," as the burial carts made their rounds, and in the
unearthly hush even the buzzing of the green-bottle flies,
trailing the wagons to the graveyards, sounded loud.
White funeral notices hung Kmp from houses and fences,
and at the end of the last journey, drunken gravediggers
waited beside the stacked coffins and shallow pits.
The men and women who remained when they could
have fled, particularly the doctors and priests, acted with
unending heroism. The priests had remained behind with
their poor parishioners, the Irish. Twenty-four died. Fifty
doctors, including many volunteers from other towns, suc-
cumbed.
The epidemic clothed some with unexpected majesty.
"Down the Jericho Road," in the prostitution district,
Annie Cook ran the Mansion House, a sumptuous bagnio
on Gayoso Street. She discharged her prostitutes, and
opened her gaudy rooms to yellow fever patients whom
she nursed herself. On 'September 6, Annie was stricken.
A week later the Appeal carried this epitaph:
"Annie Cook, the woman who after a long life of
shame, ventured all she had of life and property for the
sick, died September n of yellow fever which she con-
tracted while nursing her patients. If there was virtue in
the faith of the woman who but touched the hem of the
garment of the Divine Redeemer, surely the sins of this
woman must be forgiven her."
The conduct of the Negro police and Negro militia was
likewise praiseworthy. The McClellan Guards, the Negro
soldiery, and the Bluff City Grays, the white military or-
ganization, united in patrolling the streets and guarding
the tent camp near the city where thousands of Mem-
phians, financially unable to travel farther, had congre-
gated. Negro male nurses courageously remained with their
charges, and though rumors of rapes of sick women by
some of these nurses persisted, no such crimes were ever
proved.
58 DISASTER!
But if heroism abounded, so did examples of cowardice
and worse. Survivors caroused madly. Attendants pillaged
the dying and the dead. A prominent citizen who was out
of town when the epidemic began refused to enter the
city even after being told of the death of his wife, her
stillborn baby, and another child.
Courts-martial were established to deal with robberies.
The decomposed bodies of a family of four, their bones
"in a puddle of green water," attested to the reluctance of
many of the living to approach the dead* Two decaying
bodies on a principal street remained untouched for days.
A naked, delirious woman, terrified of a drunken nurse,
fled unclothed beyond the city limits, calling for her hus-
band. Rats ate the body of a Negro woman, lying un-
tended near the Appeal office, and died. A mother was
found dead with the mouth of her lifeless baby clinging
to her breast.
And there were unusual and grimly comic incidents, A
woman died, but her healthy child was born posthumously.
A twelve-year-old girl, deaf, dumb, paralyzed on one side
of her face, and suffering from St. Vitus' Dance on the
other, recovered from the fever and recovered all her
faculties. Negroes dressed the bodies of the dead in car-
nival costumes. In St. Patrick's Cathedral, services were
being held for an Irishman when the shrouded figure
stirred, sat up, and yelled, "What the heU are you doing?"
The nation responded generously to the appeals of
Memphis. The Howard Association, a charitable society,
spent more than half a million dollars, and supplied 2,900
nurses. Thousands of dollars poured in from farmers,
bankers, ranchers, and merchants in the North and West
and South.
The fever raged throughout the long, unusually warm
summer's end and early fall. In mid-October, frost cov-
ered the middle South. Then a freeze followed, and the
epidemic ended. Seventy-five per cent of the whites who
remained in the city had died, but less than ten per cent
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD 59
of the Negroes. From records of this and other epidemics
it is apparent that the Negroes of the South had somehow
developed a comparative immunity to yellow fever.
Memphis had been hardest hit in this terrible year, but
Memphis was not alone. In little Greenville, Mississippi.,
150 miles below Memphis, 1,000 of its population of 2,300
had suffered yellow fever and 400 had died. In New Or-
leans, 4,046 deaths, the second highest number of victims
on record, were reported. Fugitive Memphians, fleeing
from the scourge that many carried with them, had spread
the fever throughout the Mississippi Valley and beyond.
Kentucky and middle Tennessee were heavily infected.
And fear of yellow fever brought severe economic damage
to the entire valley.
In this greatest of epidemics, yellowjack had chosen the
most propitious of all times to strike. The lower river was
battling to overcome the despair and the wreckage of re-
construction. The epidemic of 1878 hindered its eforts ?
reduced its population by death and desertion, and made
its greatest cities, Memphis and New Orleans, almost syn-
onymous with the scourge itself.
It is impossible to exaggerate the retarding effects of
yellow fever, and those lesser deadly scourges smallpox,
cholera, malaria and dengue upon the progress of the
valley. Through the i^th Century, disease stalked virtually
unchecked along the lower Mississippi, destroying thou-
sands of its settlers, driving thousands of others to quit
the baleful land of fevers, deterring uncounted numbers
from seeking their fortunes in the rich, unexploited valley.
Most of the Negroes remained, even after emancipation
gave them the right to move freely, for they were com-
paratively unscathed. But they contributed toil, and not
vision or capital or leadership, to the river; the strength of
their bodies was their lone endowment, and they could not
transfer immunity to their masters.
Yet the people of the river clung to their lowland towns
and fields, doggedly suffering the chills and fevers and
DISASTER!
outlasting their curse. Had Reed and Agramonte and Car-
roll lived and proved in 1800 instead of 1900 that yellow
fever was transmitted by the Aedes aegypti, the results in
lives saved, in territory developed, and in human contribu-
tion to the nation's aggregate strength would have re-
written the economic history of those hundred years. The
tiny mosquito, intermediate host to a virus as yet unidenti-
fied, cursed the valley with destruction. For a sorrowful,
death-ridden century, a fleet, whining insect had its way
against ignorant courage.
"The Bridge Was Burned
at Chatsworth"
By Elmo Scott Watson
CHATSWORTH, ILL., August 10, 1887 Songs
have their way with memories; a few bars of melody, a
couple of lines of words, and the spell is complete. But to
one man I have known, a certain sad old ballad evokes a
night of terror, the night of August 10, 1887.
Mr. B. M. Judd of Colfax, Illinois, was ninety-two
when I last saw him. But he was still haunted by his
memories of the T.P. & W. train wreck at Chatsworth,
Illinois, sixty years before.
He and a few others who may yet be living survived
that wreck, and their memories are added to the evidence
of a few pathetic souvenirs a bent and twisted dollar, an
old Pullman blanket, and the ballad:
From city, town and hamlet
There 'rose a mighty throng
To view the great Niagara
About 800 people from northern and central Illinois,
and some from far points in Iowa and Wisconsin, "made
up" a train for an excursion to Niagara Falls. It was a cus-
tom of the era to assemble such groups, one which the
railroads encouraged.
People were in a holiday mood as the Toledo, Peoria &
"Western train pulled out of Peoria. It was a family affair.
With joy they sped along;
The maiden and her lover,
The husband and the wife,
The merry prattling children
So full of joy and life.
62 DISASTER!
In one of the cars a quartet of young men got together
to sing hymns. An elderly couple obligingly changed seats
with two of the singers, unaware that such a simple
courtesy would shortly save their lives.
The engineer was standing
With eye upon the track
And hand upon the throttle
While shades of night were black.
They reached the town of Chatsworth
And rushed on through the gloom;
Oh, could someone have warned them
Before they reached their doom!
There was no warning. A little knoll two miles east of
Chatsworth blocked the view of the track ahead from the
alert eyes of Engineer Sutherland in the lead locomotive.
It was a tandem hitch, and in the second locomotive cab
Engineer Hitchcock may have been recalling his words to
the dispatcher back in Peoria, "This is a dangerous trip.'*
He should .have obeyed his premonition.
The lead engine sped up the hill and down toward a
bridge which crossed a deep ditch. Then, with horror in
his voice, Engineer Sutherland called to his fireman, "My
God! The bridge is burning! Jump for your life!"
The fireman jumped, and with rare presence of mind
Sutherland opened his throttle full and snapped the cou-
pling. His engine bucked and snorted, and raced across the
shaky structure to safety on the other side, whistle wide
open to warn Hitchcock in the second locomotive.
Hitchcock's luck was out. As Sutherland had done, he
grabbed his throttle, too. But the engine was already
pounding the approaches to the trestle. There was plenty
of momentum to hurl the engine across, but the bridge
gave way under the weight of the second engine, and it
smashed full-speed into the clay bank on the opposite side
of the ditch, its drivers heaving, its wheels churning air.
(They found Hitchcock later, dead with his hand on the
"THE BRIDGE WAS BURNED AT CHATSWORTH" 63
throttle in the best railroad tradition, his watch stopped
by the impact at 11:45 P.M.)
The wooden coaches behind plunged crazily after the
locomotive, tearing and grinding to matchwood against
the tender. And in the cars people screamed and died. The
old couple saw the four singers crushed to death and lived
to tell about it. One youngster, horribly hurt, saw his
mother's head roll grotesquely in the aisle. A man found
himself holding a silver dollar tortured out of shape by
the crash, and yet he was alive and would carry that dollar
to the end of his days.
Then the greater horror came. Kerosene lamps had
sprinkled the dead and the living with oil, and the wooden
wreckage caught fire.
There was no immediate way to help those pinned in the
burning shambles of the excursion train. A shaking brake-
man seized an unbroken lantern and, with another sur-
vivor, ran gasping and sobbing two miles back to
Chatsworth.
The town was sleeping, unaware of disaster on its door-
step. With the help of a lone night owl, who happened to
meet them in the street, they routed out the volunteer fire
department. The rest of the town rubbed its eyes sleepily,
and then leaped out of bed.
A wire was sent to Peoria, and while a trainload of doc-
tors and nurses was being readied, the townspeople of
Chatsworth rushed out to the scene of the wreck to aid
survivors.
Mr. Judd was in the wreck all this time. He was lucky.
The coach he was in didn't burn with the others. But it
was hours before he was released hours of horror as he lay
pinned down in splintered wreckage between a dead baby
and the child's screaming mother.
He remembers how doctors, summoned from near-by
towns, went along the wrecked cars administering mor-
phine to relieve the suffering of people trapped within
them, while the Chatsworth volunteer firemen fought to
6 4 DISASTER!
keep the flames from spreading to the other coaches. Fi-
nally he was pulled out and carried away in a Pullman
blanket. He kept that blanket as a grim souvenir of the
worst experience of his entire life.
One ten-year-old boy, the lad whose mother had been
decapitated, is remembered for his heroism. Despite a
broken leg and an injured eye, he begged rescuers to "take
care of those worse hurt than I."
The Chatsworth town hall served as hospital and morgue.
A resident who aided in the relief work recalled women
dying on the stage, and one who succumbed while lying
on the piano. The hall was resplendent with decorations
for an entertainment, and the garish gaiety of the bunting
and flags was in grim contrast to the scenes that took place
in the hall that night.
By morning relief had arrived and the rescue work was
complete. It was known that eighty-one had been killed
outright; 372 had been injured, and of these a number
subsequently died of their injuries.
The nation was shocked. Lithographs of the wreck were
printed and sold to grace parlor walls. T. P. Westendorf,
whose initials coincided, oddly, with those of the T.P. &
W., wrote a ballad about the wreck, some of the words of
which I have quoted.
Nor was this calamity a sensation quickly forgotten.
As recently as 1937 the wreck was recalled by oldsters at
Chatsworth. On the fiftieth anniversary of the disaster
survivors gathered there to reminisce. Flags were at half-
staff, and a quartette of young men sang Nearer My God to
Thee. A brief ceremony was held in the town park. Those
who had lived through that night of fear and pain joined
in the refrain of the ballad:
The bridge was burned at Chatsworth,
One hundred lives were lost!
The Blizzard
of 1888
By Stephen Turkel
When, on December 26, 1947, New York experienced a
2 5. 8 -inch snowfall the greatest in the city's recorded
history the event was a body-blow to "The Blizzard
Men of 1888." This select group had assumed the responsi-
bility of keeping fresh the memory of what for almost
sixty years had been the unchallenged Goliath of New
York blizzards. But a careful comparison of the two snow-
falls revealed that, though statistics favored the more re-
cent storm, the blizzard of '88 was far more serious as a
disaster.
Both storms took the city completely by surprise. The
blizzard of 1947 swept in from the Atlantic, where no
weather observations are made, and before it had ended
New York lay smothered under 99,000,000 tons of snow.
More than 30,000 men, at a cost to the city of $6,000,000,
worked in shifts to load the snow into trucks, shovel it
into sewers, clear main streets to facilitate transportation
of fuel oil, food, coal and medicine. Thousands of com-
muters were marooned overnight in cold, stalled trains be-
tween Manhattan and their homes. Stranded suburbanites
filled midtown hotels to overflowing. Trains were as much
as twelve hours late on normal runs of less than an hour.
Mayor O'Dwyer, informed of the emergency in El Centro,
Calif ornia, where he was on vacation, flew home to super-
vise relief work. City hospitals were plagued by the great-
est number of calls for aid in their history. At least seventy-
seven deaths were attributed to the storm in eight North
Atlantic states.
66 DISASTER!
On March 12, 1888, the day of the legendary blizzard,
the weather forecast for New York was: "Clearing and
colder preceded by light snow." By the time most Manhat-
tanites received their morning paper and read the amazing
forecast, almost two feet of snow had fallen and a f orty-
mile-an-hour gale was blowing. The temperature, which
had dropped steadily through the night, now registered 1 5
degrees. The barometer, still falling, was to reach a low of
29.62.
The blizzard, which raged for thirty-six hours and gen-
erated winds as high as seventy miles an hour, started out
as a "mild-mannered Dakota storm" that suddenly shed its
gentility and swept furiously up the Atlantic seaboard.
Towns and cities a hundred miles inland felt its anger. All
districts within a thirty-mile radius of New York were
paralyzed, while Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Phila-
delphia and practically all of the state of New Jersey lay
prostrate. Then, losing some of its intensity, the storm
followed the coastline, whistled through New England,
and finally dissipated itself in Canada. When it had ended,
a tally revealed a loss of 400 lives and countless millions in
property damage.
New York on that first morning of the '88 storm a
blue Monday if ever there was one lay buried under
enormous drifts of snow while icy winds whipped the city
with relentless fury. Telephone poles were severed like
matchsticks; upturned vehicles lay strewn like driftwood
in the streets. Houses were unroofed, steeples toppled, and
windows were shattered to bits. Children were blown
through the air to be buried in twelve-foot snowdrifts.
Dogs and cats lay huddled in semi-sheltered corners, soon
to be interred in the white mass. Swarms of sparrows beat
desperately against houses, only to drop exhausted and be
whisked away by the wind.
All transportation was at a standstill. No trains left the
city and few came in. One, scheduled to leave Danbury,
Connecticut, at 8:iy A.M. Monday, finally reached New
THE BLIZZARD OF 1 888 67
York seventy miles away at 2:00 P.M. Friday. Elevated
trains stranded between stations brought out hardy oppor-
tunists with ladders; they charged passengers two dollars
a head to descend to the street.
By noon Monday, New York was almost completely
cut off from the outside world. Telephone and telegraph
wires were down, buried in the snow. Telegrams between
New York and Boston were sent over the Atlantic cable
via England, crossing the ocean twice to reach points less
than 250 miles apart.
Navigation in and about New York harbor fared no
better. Some ships rode out the storm at anchor in the tur-
bulent harbor, but damage was extensive. Twenty-seven
vessels were washed up on shore, and twenty-five inside
the stone pilings near shore flew distress signals. Ferries
which attempted to run at infrequent intervals narrowly
escaped capsizing. The palatial yacht Cythera, owned by
millionaire William A. W. Stewart, disappeared en route
to Bermuda and was never heard of again.
Tuesday saw no appreciable change except that tele-
phone linesmen and snow shovelers were doing a herculean
job of repairing the ravages of the storm. As they dug,
snowdrifts yielded the bodies of many people who had
died of exposure.
By Wednesday the storm had abated, but new dangers
arose to plague the city. Huge drifts still prevented trains
from running. Food, coal and milk were running low, and
famine seemed not far off . What little supplies remained
were selling at three and four times their normal price.
Luckily, things took a sudden turn for the better on
Thursday. The sun came out for the first time. Commu-
nication had been partially restored, and trains, ferries and
elevateds were running again, routing the fear of famine.
The city was digging itself out.
Bizarre stories were on every tongue. There was, for
instance, the natural ice bridge which formed over the
East River on Tuesday when large chunks of ice floated
68 DISASTER!
down the river with the tide, jamming to form a solid
mass between Fulton's Ferry, Manhattan, and Martin's
Store, Brooklyn. All through the day pedestrians swarmed
over this bridge, scorning the ferries. Many of them had
to be rescued by tugs when the span suddenly disintegrated.
A man in Great Neck, Long Island, stoutly maintained
that he had walked over the tops of trees in snowshoes in
order to get home. Another man, attempting to cross the
Brooklyn Bridge on foot, sank exhausted within 100 yards
of his goal. An alert policeman who came to his aid had to
rake icicles from the man's mustache to allow him to
breathe. One man who died a natural death on Sunday
night in the suburbs could not be buried until Friday. He
was kept in a tub of ice in the living room of his house,
the ice being replenished each day from the great store of
frozen snow outside his home.
A small boy in Manhattan fell out of a window, rolled
off an awning into a snowdrift and walked back into the
house through the window, crying. And on one of the
highest drifts in front of Madison Square Garden, a puck-
ish citizen had placed a sign which read: "Keep Off the
Grass."
By Sunday, piles of snow and slush were all that re-
mained of the great storm that had held New York in its
perilous grip. Strangely enough, the blizzard had estab-
lished few Weather Bureau records. The city had experi-
enced larger snowfalls, storms with more powerful winds,
but none had combined the elements of wind, snow and
bitter cold. And none had been so unheralded.
So in spite of the record set by the blizzard of 1947, the
select little company will doubtless continue to meet each
year on March 12 to commemorate the earlier storm.
Johnstown
Remembers
By Jo Chamberlin
The Johnstown flood of 1889 was one of America's
worst disasters. Johnstown was destroyed in less than a
quarter of an hour. More lives were lost than in the San
Francisco earthquake and fire, the Iroquois Theater fire
in Chicago, the Dayton flood, and the 1937 Mississippi
flood combined.
For years the people of Johnstown had lived compla-
cently below the dam that gave way. Situated where two
rivers 'join, walled in by high Pennsylvania hills, the com-
munity had been visited by floods from its rivers since
1808, each involving considerable loss and inconvenience.
The dam above the town had broken once before but the
damage had been slight. The inhabitants were used to
moving, to upper floors and taking their livestock to safe
pasture at flood time, and there was no general recognition
of the fact that they were in the presence of impending
disaster.
Johnstown in 1889 was a bustling city of 30,000, built
along the flats of the Conemaugh Riven The Conemaugh
was a turbulent stream, flowing swiftly down a narrow
gorge until it widened out to join the Stonycreek River at
Johnstown. Every spring the Conemaugh and Stonycreek
became writhing torrents.
Yet nobody worried much about it, for Johnstown was
prospering. In near-by hills were valuable coal, lime and
iron. Johnstown had new steel mills, streetcars, water-
Keprinted by permission of the American Legion Magazine and the Reader's
Digest; copyright 1941 by the American Legion.
70 DISASTER!
works, electric lights, a fine new library, and an opera
house. Times were good, trading brisk.
New streets were added by filling in on river land, thus
further narrowing a channel already too small. In spring
the Conemaugh would overrun its banks and fill work-
men's homes with mud in the lower part of Johnstown.
But town officials denounced those who expressed the fear
that some rainy spring, when the Conemaugh was running
amuck, the dam might go.
The dam was a huge earthwork structure, ninety feet
high and 930 feet long, impounding Conemaugh Lake
Reservoir sixteen miles above Johnstown. The reservoir
was on South Fork Creek, a tributary of the Conemaugh.
This dam had been completed in 1853 to store water for
the Pennsylvania Canal, an important commercial route to
the West, but it was abandoned when the Pennsylvania
Railroad replaced the waterway.
It was three miles long, over a mile wide in places one
of the largest reservoirs in the United States. The reservoir
was seventy-five feet deep at the dam. There was enough
water impounded in it to fill a canal from New York to
Chicago twenty million tons held back by an earth-fill,
stone-faced dam, 280 feet thick at the base but only
twenty feet thick at the top.
The Pennsylvania Railroad, which bought the canal in
i8j7, had no further need for the reservoir. The dam de-
teriorated and continuous seepage drained the reservoir to
half its normal level. A small break occurred in July,
1862, but the water was low and only the lower part of
Johnstown was flooded.
In 1879 the site was leased as a fishing and hunting club
by a group of Pittsburgh millionaires. The club hired men
to repair and heighten the dam. The job looked fine, but
stumps, sand, leaves and straw had been dumped in the
breach. The dam itself was rotten. It had no solid cement
core.
JOHNSTOWN REMEMBERS
In June, 1887, Johnstown streets were flooded by the
swollen rivers. Leaks were reported in the South Fork dam,
but no investigation was made. There was only momentary
alarm.
During the last week in May, 1889, there was an un-
precedented rainfall in western Pennsylvania. Six inches
fell. Storm after storm drove across the mountains. Day
after day the rains poured down from leaden skies, until
the overflowing Conemaugh with the aid of the torrential
Stonycreek had flooded Johnstown streets to a depth of
three to six feet.
At the dam, water rose steadily until Friday, May 31.
On that drizzling Friday morning, men rode horses in
the waters of Johnstown streets, cracking jokes with citi-
zens who had retreated to second floors. Meanwhile, an
official of the fishing club, alarmed at the water seeping
through the dam, set men to work with spades and shovels.
It was no use more leaks appeared.
At noon, a civil engineer, John G. Parke, inspected the
dam in the pelting rain. He realized it would not hold. On
horseback he rushed to the village of South Fork, two
miles below, where South Fork Creek joined the Cone-
maugh, to warn its 2,000 people. They took to the hills.
Telephones were not then in wide use, and mountain
washouts had cut service. But Parke sent two men with
telegrams of warning for Johnstown to a near-by tele-
graph office.
Tragically, the clerk did not tell the men that wires
were down. The messages never reached Johnstown. If
Parke had known, he could have ridden cross-country with
the warning.
At the dam, men worked frantically, but gradually trick-
les began seeping over the top. For a while, as workmen
watched with sickening hearts, nothing happened. Then
small stones began washing over, followed by larger and
larger stones, in an alarming, fate-filled crescendo. Soon a
7* DISASTER!
notch twenty feet wide opened on top of the dam. With
a rumble and roar, a great V-shaped section gave com-
pletely away at 3:30 P.M.
Johnstown was sixteen miles away and almost 400 feet
lower. It was going about its business in all good humor.
Surely, the high waters would soon go down.
Through the breach rushed more than half a million
cubic feet of water in less than an hour. Within a few
minutes there was an avalanche of water seventy-five feet
high. It overturned huge trees, crushed homes and barns
like matchboxes, picked up huge boulders, and scoured the
valley clean with them as it went. In actual volume it was
as though Niagara Falls had been turned into the valley.
And the results were the same: annihilation.
Traveling at times forty miles an hour, the flood swept
down to the point where the South Fork joined the Cone-
maugh, already flowing higher than any man could re-
member. People at the village of South Fork had fled to
the hills, and they watched their town disappear under
muddy waters. Then the torrent turned and started roar-
ing down the Conemaugh.
A railroad ran along the river bank. Part of the line was
quickly washed away, together with bridges and rolling
stock. Ahead of the oncoming flood the engineer of a work
train tied down his whistle as a warning, but the flood
waters quickly overtook him. Miraculously, he escaped to
higher ground, with the waters churning around his legs.
The whistle suddenly stopped. The train was swept off
the tracks and into the current.
Other communities between South Fork and Johnstown
Mineral Point, Conemaugh, and Woodvale all met
destruction.
At Woodvale, just above Johnstown, the Conemaugh
valley is very narrow; there the waters rose to a wall 100
feet high. More than 250 houses were crushed. A wire-
and-steel works was demolished, its machinery and stock
loosed into the boiling current. Barbed wire and steel fenc-
JOHNSTOWN REMEMBERS 73
ing became ensnarled with the floating rubbish, dragging
people under. Careening timbers crushed those clinging to
other timbers. Swimming was no help.
A passenger train was stopped just above Johnstown.
One survivor tells of hearing about four o'clock the re-
peated shrill whistle of a locomotive up the valley. There
had been talk of a break in the South Fork dam and he
realized that this was the warning. He spread the alarm
and then went forward to the baggage coach to release his
hunting dog. By then the other passengers had started for
the near-by hills.
"As I jumped off the coach I looked up the valley and
was almost paralyzed by the sight," he records. "I saw
what appeared to be an advancing rotary wave of black
water, forty feet high and not more than 300 yards away.
In that hasty glance I saw huge tree trunks lolling in the
air as they turned endwise and disappeared. I sprinted up
the steep grade of one of the streets, glancing back as I
ran: I wished to see the flood pass the streets. But between
glances the advance wave of the flood rushed by, carrying
the houses away at the lower end of the block I was on. It
backed up in the street to within thirty feet of where I
was running, covering ground I had passed over less than
five seconds before."
With no warning but its roar and the scream of the lo-
comotive whistle in the valley, the flood rolled down upon
Johnstown at 4:10. "Water in the streets was already six
feet deep in places. There was no time or chance for mass
flight.
The waters swept to the hills in the western part of
town, then drove through the flats of central Johnstown.
By now the height of the flood had been reduced to thirty
feet but the water carried tree trunks, heavy boulders, and
debris that acted as battering rams against the city's
houses, most of which were of frame construction.
Just below Johnstown the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge,
approached by a high embankment, spanned the Cone-
74 DISASTER!
maugh. It was a long, massive structure, with arches sup-
porting a four- track roadbed thirty-two feet above the
normal river. Flood waters filled the arches with wreckage
and debris, forming a leaky but immovable dam. Thus
Johnstown, built on the river flats before it, was covered
with an immense and swiftly moving whirlpool, twenty-
five feet deep and three-quarters of a mile wide. The
bridge saved Cambria and other towns below Johnstown
from complete destruction, but in this maelstrom were
enacted the most tragic scenes of the flood. One account
tells how thousands who had survived the first onslaught
floated around helplessly in the whirlpool, "most of them
on roofs, some clinging to other wreckage, shrieking and
praying for help, while groups of other survivors rushed
about the shore lines, frantic but completely powerless to
render aid except to those few who, by accident, chanced
to float near."
Few of those who clung to wreckage survived. They
were either thrown into the flood or pitched into the mass
of debris in front of the bridge. Several carloads of pe-
troleum had been overturned by the flood. The oil satu-
rated driftwood and houses. At six o'clock fire broke out
at the bridge. To refugees on the hills above Johnstown
the scene below must have seemed as though the Flood of
Genesis had been loosed in Hell. Rafts would drift nearer
and nearer to the pyre and then be thrust into it. Men
worked heroically from the embankment and from the
hills, going out onto the wreckage to free victims; but
generally their efforts were in vain; the crackle and crash
of burning timbers would suddenly still the screams of the
dying. The fire burned for four days, consuming hundreds
of bodies fast in the debris.
Through Friday night the flood waters gradually receded.
On Saturday morning, dazed survivors began wander-
ing about, seeking loved ones, extricating survivors from
debris. Drowned mothers and children were found locked
in one another's arms. Nearly 3,000 were dead. Streets
JOHNSTOWN REMEMBERS 7J
were leveled; buildings vanished. No food or dry clothing
was to be had. No communication. No shelter. What had
been a thriving city was now a vast muddy plain.
"Why no more perished is a mystery, common to all great
disasters. Every surviving Johnstown citizen had lost a
brother, sister, relative or friend. Whole families were
wiped out, yet most people lived. Why? The Pennsylvania
Railroad bridge probably saved more lives than it lost by
preventing many refugees from being swept down the
river; many brick or stone buildings in higher parts of the
town stood firm; people in them could later struggle
through water to near-by hills. Those in the direct course
of the flood had little chance.
Strange things occurred during the disaster. A five-
month-old baby was rescued uninjured at Pittsburgh the
next morning after floating the entire seventy-five miles
on the floor of a house.
A mare standing in an alley was submerged by the
waters; whole buildings were seen to pass over her. How-
ever, she was found later in a cellar, a half mile away,
muddy but unhurt. Rescuers found a stable buried under
two wrecked freight cars. It contained a cow, calmly
chewing her cud, a small dog, and five angry wet hens.
A couple were married just before the flood. With their
guests they took refuge on the second floor, then the third.
They all passed a horrible night, wondering when the
building would go. It didn't. Next morning the wedding
party, still in gala clothes, stepped out of the house, pick-
ing their way carefully among the sprawled, grotesque
bodies of the dead.
One of those who miraculously escaped the flood, Victor
Reiser, lived to record his delivery in An American Doc-
tar's Odyssey. A boy of sixteen at the time, he had been
sent to the barn to see about a pair of fine horses his
father owned. As he started toward the house he heard
the terrifying noise of the flood and saw his father franti-
cally motion him toward the top of the barn. Hardly had
7 6 DISASTER!
he reached the ridge of the tin roof when he saw his home
crushed before his eyes. The barn, instead of being shat-
tered, was ripped from its foundation. Clinging to a piece
of the roof, he was borne headlong toward a jam where
wreckage was piling up between a stone church and a
three-story brick building. Into this hurly-burly he was
catapulted.
"The pressure was terrific," he records. "A tree would
shoot out of the water; a huge girder would come thunder-
ing down. As these trees and girders drove booming into
the jam, I jumped them desperately, one after another.
Then suddenly a freight car reared up over my head; I
could not leap that. But just as it plunged toward me the
brick building gave way, and my raft shot out from be-
neath the freight car."
Once out in the open water again he was carried toward
the bridge below the city. Some timbers ahead of him
struck the stone arches and plugged them tight. In the
recoil of the water his raft was swept behind a hill. As it
passed a brick building he was able to jump to the roof
and join a small group of people stranded there. The build-
ing held while others about it were smashed.
The biggest problem after the waters subsided was the
burial of the dead.
Bodies were jammed in debris, covered with mud and
muck, thrust in strange places. Many were never found at
all. There was grave danger of disease in Johnstown, for
by the time many bodies could be recovered decomposition
had set in. Six thousand men were kept busy for six weeks,
cleaning up the city, dynamiting, burning, salvaging,
burying the dead. So tightly was wreckage massed together
that thousands of pounds of dynamite were required to
loosen the huge piles of it. One pile was twenty feet high
and fifteen acres in extent, made up of trees, timbers, steel
rails, horses, barbed wire, bathtubs, mattresses, freight cars,
wagons, plumbing fixtures, books, kitchen utensils, stoves,
JOHNSTOWN REMEMBERS 77
sewing machines everything known to the living o the
day.
Property damage was more than $20,000,000.
Eight morgues were set up. Anxious relatives walked be-
tween the rows of dead, seeking loved ones. Mutilated
bodies were sometimes identified wrongly the person
would show up later, alive and well. One boy was identified
as nine different lads, within twenty-four hours. Only
clothes and jewelry could identify some of the battered
bodies. Nearly 800 victims were never identified at all.
They were buried together in "the plot of the unknown
dead," the crude coffins laid end-to-end in long trenches.
Men found cutting off fingers and ears of dead persons
for their jewelry were beaten unmercifully by vigilantes.
A picket line was set up; no one came into town without
good reason. The National Guard was called in to maintain
order. Crazed survivors caused as much trouble as the law-
breakers. One man, who had lost his four children, walked
into a hardware store, bought a revolver, and shot himself
on the spot. Bereaved parents had to be restrained from
throwing themselves into the waters which had taken their
children.
America was quick to offer Johnstown a helping hand.
Reporters dramatized the flood to millions. America,
deeply moved, came through generously. Nearly $4,000,-
ooo was contributed. Near-by farmers and residents housed
victims until they could rebuild their homes. Cities rushed
clothes, food, and money.
Gifts came from England, Germany, Turkey, Italy,
Persia and Mexico. The Y.M.C.A., fraternal organizations,
the Red Cross all sent men with cash. Clara Barton, founder
of the American Red Cross, came from Washington in
person, and labored for many weeks.
A Flood Relief Commission carefully distributed the
$4,000,000. From lessons learned in Johnstown, disaster
relief for other communities thereafter was put on a sys-
tematic basis.
7& DISASTER!
After '89, other communities examined their near-by,
dangerous dams, and doubtless other disasters were pre-
vented. Standards o production were improved, margins
of safety increased. Johnstown continued to have trouble
with its rivers, culminating in the flood of 1936 which
caused property damage of $40,000,000 and made 9,000
homeless. Again the nation responded, giving $1,250,000
for the relief of the victims. Only in 1937 was a large-
scale flood-control project launched, to end forever the
disastrous menace to Johnstown.
Inferno
at Hinckley
By Stewart H. Holbrook
HINCKLEY, MINN., September i, 1894 There
was little of dawn about the morning of September i,
1894, in the woods of eastern Minnesota. Throughout the
dark early hours, blazing stumps of pine lighted up a log-
ging load in the long swamp west of Hinckley Village and
gave the scene an air of peculiar and ominous beauty.
These stumps had smoldered unheeded through July and
August in the swamps and cutover lands around Hinck-
ley, Mission Creek, Pokegama and Sandstone, all in Pine
County. Now the stumps began to blaze in 'a morning that
had no dew nor other moisture about it.
In Hinckley, metropolis of the region, it was just an-
other smoky Saturday. The whistle of the Brennan Lum-
ber Company's big sawmill said it was seven o'clock, but
nothing else indicated that day had begun. It was all sort
of gray, neither day nor night. Men obeyed the whistle
and the ten-hour drone of saws started cutting lumber
and shingles that made Hinckley an important station on
the railroads between St. Paul and Duluth.
* The town's population was at least 1,200 some said
more. There was an Odd Fellows' Hall, a volunteer fire
department, three churches, five hotels and saloons, eight
stores, a restaurant and a roundhouse. Two railroads
crossed at Hinckley, each with its depot. The Eastern and
Minnesota ran north to Duluth, south to Minneapolis.
Excerpted from the book Burning an Empire, published at J2.50 by the
Macmillan Company, New York, N. Y.; copyright 1943 by Stewart H. Hol-
brook.
79
8o DISASTER!
The St. Paul and Duluth's corporate name explained its
route. Hinckley Village was built in the triangle formed
by the two lines of steel and the Grindstone River.
On the morning of September i, the pall of blue-gray
smoke appeared to lift for a few moments, and everything
seemed bathed in a ghastly light of pale yellow. Human
beings and objects looked unreal. The strange light passed,
and again the gray sifted down, deeper and darker.
Out on the farms and homesteads, fire was creeping
close, running along the fences and rearing up at cabin
doors and barnyards. In Hinckley, just before noon, a
sudden gust blew sparks from burning stumps into the
millyard, and piles of lumber started to burn. A crew went
to work hauling water in barrels, dousing the lumber and
the nearest stumps. The wind died away, and again a dead
calm settled over Hinckley. But it was an uneasy calm.
Right after the one o'clock whistle, another wind
stiffer than the first came out of the southwest, and the
volunteer fire department was called to the edge of town
where a dozen fires were entering the village. They soon
found that neither water nor dirt had any effect. The
wind continued to freshen, and now hot coals that came
riding on the wind burned and smoldered in streets that
were more sawdust than soil. Soon a cloud as big and dark
as night appeared on the horizon, and Tommy Dunn, tele-
graph operator in the St. Paul & Duluth depot, received a
message that Pokegama now Brookpark nine miles
south on the line, was being destroyed by fire and most of
its inhabitants burned to death.
As the great black cloud in the south bore on toward
Hinckley, Douglass Greeley, proprietor of Hinckley's
largest hotel, stood a moment on the porch to watch it,
and to listen to a far-off roar that sounded like a great
waterfall.
Just then Father Lawler, Catholic priest who had been
working with the fire department, came running up the
INFERNO AT HINCKLEY 8 1
main street, shouting: "Run for your lives! Run to the
gravel pit, run to the river! Save yourselves!"
And then hell itself roared into Hinckley, riding the
back of a rising hurricane. There was no time to save
anything. Mothers snatched babies out of flour-barrel
cradles and fled.
Over at the Hinckley Enterprise, Editor Angus Hay
picked up his files and ran out into the street, a street
suddenly lined with blazing houses. He noted two women
down on the grass of the town hall, praying. "Run, run
to the gravel pit!" he shouted. "Water is better than
prayers right now." The women ran.
Many folks had been hurrying to the Eastern Minnesota
Railroad depot where stood a passenger and a freight train.
The trains were hastily coupled, with "William Best and Ed
Barry at the throttles of the two locomotives, and Con-
ductor H. D. Powers in charge. Three boxcars, five coaches
and a caboose made up the train.
The bells jangled to hurry the fleeing townspeople. Pres-
ently the depot itself began to burn brightly. And still
they came men, women and children, running for the
train and screaming. The first person lifted aboard was
John Hogan, a cripple, in his wheel chair. Then the women
and children were piled into the train.
Now the paint was running down from the cars; the
depot was a furnace. Engineer Best, thinking of the river
bridge he would have to cross to get out of town, let go a
blast on the whistle. With the bells ringing, both engineers
pulled their throttles open and the train moved away from
the blazing station.
A new and much greater hurricane of wind and fire
swept in as the train steamed out of town, and Engineer
Best watched Hinckley burn for a moment he never for-
got. He saw men and women and horses and cows stagger
in the street, then go down to stay. Fire leaped at the sides
of houses, devouring them so quickly the buildings seemed
to melt.
82 DISASTER!
Now the train was running in the pitch darkness of
smoke. Brakemen CX L. Beach and Peter McLaughlin wet
themselves with water from the tank, then hung to the
tender, one on each side, each with a lantern. Just after
they crossed the Grindstone River bridge, already burning
briskly, the brakemen heard shouts and screams in the
smoke. They flagged down the train, and some forty-odd
climbed aboard. The last to board the train, they brought
the total passenger list to almost 500.
The train ran north to Sandstone, nine miles, with Beach
and McLaughlin holding fast to their dangerous posts on
the head-end, all but blinded. A brief stop was made at
Sandstone depot, and passengers shouted to Sandstone folk,
warning them that all hell was in the rear and traveling
fast. Not one soul paid heed.
So the train moved on again, and soon approached the
high bridge that spanned Kettle River. The bridge was
seen to be afire, and the pilot brakeman flagged down,
while they got out to consider. The old bridge watchman's
body was beside the track, well-charred. The bridge was
afire almost its entire length, but the brakemen thought it
would hold. If it didn't wdl, look what was coming
behind them from the south. They gave Engineer Best the
signal, then climbed onto the running boards again.
Slowly, carefully, the train clanked across Kettle River
on a bridge of fire. Inside the cars women screamed as
flames leaped into the shattered windows. The train made
the far bank with almost two minutes to spare. The bridge
then started to collapse, but the train was safely on its way
to Superior.
Approximately twenty minutes after the train crossed
Kettle River, the fire storm belched into Sandstone village
and swept everything away, including forty-five persons.
Back in blazing Hinckley, Death was hunting out most
of the remaining citizens. One hundred and twenty-seven
of them took refuge in a swampy, cleared place a sort of
swale along the Eastern Minnesota tracks, and there they
INFERNO AT HINCKLEY 83
were burned to black crisp or gray-white ashes, every last
one.
The only safe spot in Hinckley that day was the gravel
pit, with its two acres of shallow water. Citizens had often
complained of it as an eyesore and had damned the Eastern
Minnesota Railroad for inflicting it on the town. But now
the yawning pit and its stagnant water saved more than
100 persons, and many beasts; for horses and cows and
dogs and cats, driven by instinct or knowledge, came un-
erringly to the one place where life could be sustained until
the fearful tornado of fire had passed.
Those townspeople who did not leave on the train or go
to the gravel pit were in for a tragic time. Some 200 of
them had run north on the tracks of the St. Paul & Duluth
road, while the ties smoked and burst into flames under
their feet; and every few rods tongues of flame reached out
to catch and stop first one, then two, then a dozen, until
thirty-three had fallen on the rails and died there.
The survivors, those who still pressed on northward,
soon felt the roadbed vibrating, and presently saw a head-
light coming at them in the gloom. The train was No. 4,
the Duluth Limited, on its way from the Iron Port to St.
Paul . . . but it wasn't going to get there.
Jim Root, who had run a locomotive for General Sher-
man in Georgia, was in No. 4*s cab. He was a man of small
stature but vast staying powers. He saw the army of refu-
gees running up the track toward him, and not far behind
them a cloud of smoke that shut out everything beyond.
He stopped his train and got down out of the cab. White-
faced kids, well beyond whimpering, were helped aboard
by women whose hair smelled of singeing and by men who
had no eyebrows.
Engineer Root knew from what they told him that he
could run no farther south. The nearest water was a swamp
hole called Skunk Lake, six miles back. He climbed into
his cab, reversed the lever, and opened the throttle.
Root looked out the cab window for one last glance at
84 DISASTER!
Hinckley, lost now in a cloud blacker than the surround-
ing gloom, then turned to sit backward in his seat. Just
then a terrific explosion somewhere outside shattered the
window, and the flying glass made deep cuts in Root's neck
and forehead. He had to keep wiping the blood out of his
eyes. By the time the train got to moving, flames were
racing ahead of it along both sides of the coaches. Root
could see that even the far end of his train was afire.
In the chair car ahead, John Blair, Negro porter, was
calming passengers and averting panic. Paint was running
down the walls. The lamps had been lighted, but they were
now smashed and blown out by explosions which broke
almost every window. Blair stood by the water tank pass-
ing out cupfuls until the water was gone. He soothed chil-
dren and adults alike.
Back in the cab, Jim Root wasn't doing so well, and had
it not been for his fireman, Jack McGowan, things might
have been worse. The heat in the cab was something men
don't often live through. Not far out of Hinckley, Root
fainted with his hand on the hot throttle. When he came
to, he saw he had only ninety-five pounds of steam. The
train was moving slowly. Root thought he must have in-
stinctively started to shut the throttle when he fainted;
it was half closed.
The day was darker than any night Root had ever seen,
but a different kind of dark, streaked with fire that gave
no light to see by. The passing scene on each side was
mostly impenetrable gloom, with now and then a few
stumps burning luridly. Root couldn't tell just where he
was, for sure, but he didn't think he was at Skunk Lake
yet. He pulled her wide open.
The curtains at the cab started blazing. McGowan
doused them. Small flames ran along the cab woodwork, as
if feeling it out, testing it, then burned brightly. The
solder in the cab lamp trickled down. The wooden handles
of the steam connections were afire and they turned coal-
black when McGowan threw water on them.
INFERNO AT HINCKLEY 85
McGowan threw water on Root. Then Root dipped both
hands in the pail. They were puffed up, but he didn't dare
rub them for fear the skin would come off. The fireman
was in no better shape; but each time Root fell off the
seat, McGowan picked him up and put him back. Then he
threw water in his face. "Good," said Jim Root, "that's
good."
The very coal in the tender was burning as in a grate
when No. 4 groaned slowly across Skunk Lake bridge.
Root shut off the steam. They could see the muddy water,
its green scum showing red in the glare. Grabbing a pail,
McGowan got down. He threw water on the flaming coach
steps and platforms so the passengers could get out. Engi-
neer Root was down and out on the floor of his cab.
The entire train broke into roaring flames the moment it
stopped, and the refugees piled off. Men, women and chil-
dren tumbled into the water-mud of the lake, some eight-
een inches deep, where they sat with slime to their armpits
and covered their heads with wet clothes when the reach-
ing sheets of fire came over the pond.
Engineer Root lived it out. So did some 300 more who
came to Skunk Lake.
While Hinckley was being destroyed, other communities
in the region were in flames. Mission Creek, four miles
south, was a company town built around a sawmill. The
mill had shut down in August, and most of its employees
had gone to the Dakotas to work in the harvest. The
seventy-three men left in Mission City fought local brush
fires, off and on, pretty much all through August. Then
came that first day of September, when the mighty wind
came in with a hot breath and the town went into
darkness.
Presently every home in the village, the sawmill, and
the company store and barns started burning at once. Ed
Boyle, the mill owner, led the townspeople into a big
potato patch where they lay for two hours while fire
played over their heads. No one was lost here.
86 DISASTER!
Fire entered the town of Pokegama in early afternoon,
and in less than two hours the village had been wiped out.
Twenty-three persons one-fifth of the population were
burned to death.
At Sandstone, many persons saved their lives in the Kettle
River which flows through the village. But the death toll
here and in near-by homesteads totaled forty-seven.
At Partridge, a logging camp and the most northerly
settlement in the fire area, all but one man were saved by
taking refuge in a small lake. A heroine here was May
Boyington, telegraph operator, who left her post only
when the depot started to burn. The settlement was en-
tirely consumed.
Refugees were still huddled in the mud of Skunk Lake
and in the gravel pit when relief parties were forming all
the way from Duluth to St. Paul and Minneapolis. By mid-
night, the parties were on their wpy.
All over Hinckley's black acres the dead were found
and laid in long piles for identification. Horses and wagons
came from Pine City, just beyond the edge of the fire, and
the search for the dead went on. That small swamp just
north of town proved to have been the most fatal spot of
all; 127 bodies were found there. A few more floated in
the Grindstone River.
By afternoon a load of lumber was brought in from
Pine City and a crew of men began whacking up coffins.
The bodies, many of them never identified, were placed in
the boxes, and the boxes were piled into wagons and hay-
racks. Then the somber procession moved through the
stumps and ashes to a field a mile east of the village. Here
248 were buried in trenches while priests and ministers
performed simple rites.
The official death list of the September fires gave the
dead as 418, including many who were never identified.
What started this fire that became such a tremendous
sea of flames? As is the case with most great forest con-
flagrations, the cause and origin will never be known. But
INFERNO AT HINCKLEY 87
it is not difficult to learn why the fire reached the propor-
tions it did.
The soil of Pine County is rather light, originally cov-
ered 'with pine and spruce and some hardwoods. Logging
and farm clearing had been going on at a rapid pace for
almost twenty-five years before 1894. On the cutover
lands were large accumulations of slash, or logging debris.
.Growing up around this slash were spruce and pine and
poplar and white birch. There were also many thousands
of acres of virgin spruce and pine.
The records of the Weather Bureau at St. Paul, less than
eighty miles from the fire area, show that from May to
September of 1894 the rainfall totaled but 2.20 inches
1.6 per cent of normal. For four months, only a few very
light showers were reported. The temperature for the same
four months showed an accumulated excess of 427 degrees
an average daily excess of 4.2 degrees above normal.
Such were the ground and weather conditions as August
drew to a close. 'The necessary sparks had long been active,
waiting for conditions to become exactly right. On July
15, section men along the Eastern Minnesota Railroad both
north and south of Hinckley were fighting slash fires, grass
fires and fires in second-growth timber that were threaten-
ing the right-of-way.
In mid- July, too, along the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad,
hundreds of tons of hay had been burned near Mission
Creek by fires that crept out of the woods; and the corre-
spondent there of a St. Paul newspaper reported:
"The fires around here are spreading rapidly, and every-
thing is dry as tinder. Unless a heavy rain comes soon
there may be a great loss sustained/*
It was one of those true prophets speaking, but not
heard.
Twister
on the Town
By Leonard Brown
ST. LOUIS, MO., May 27, 1896 There was warn-
ing, of a sort. The juxtaposition of certain planets prom-
ised ill events for St. Louis, announced an astrologer. The
Weather Bureau in Washington issued a caution of its own.
A handful of citizens may have heeded one or the other of
these prophets, but the city at large was not prepared for
the cataclysm, of May 27, 1896.
At noon of that day, a Wednesday, the sky was overcast
in the northwest. To old-time residents there was a dread
familiarity about these curious cloud formations, light
gray cumulus heaped up over dirty ranks of flying scud.
There were some who knew the particular demon of the
Mississippi Valley, and some remembered the evening of
March 8, 1872, when a tornado had hit portions of the
city. Those who remembered must have felt fear tighten-
ing in their chests.
Still no one cried a warning to the busy and teeming
industrial port on the Mississippi.
By .three o'clock everyone knew a storm was on its way.
Wind velocity was increasing by the minute. On the river,
moorings were strengthened, and deck cargo was made
fast. In the city, storekeepers hoisted up their awnings.
People began to take refuge indoors from the anticipated
rain.
During the tense two hours which followed, lives could
have been saved by an instant evacuation of the city. But
no one was certain where the storm would strike, or if it
would strike at all. People watched the array of clouds
88
TWISTER ON THE TOVN 89
moving toward the city, and said uneasily that the mount-
ing wind surely would reach a limit, would blow itself out.
With each tick of the clock, time ran out, and the wind
did not reach a limit. The shifting cloud mass pushed
closer, turning a wicked, transparent green in color.
Five o'clock was zero hour for St. Louis. With an un-
precedented suddenness the rain descended, two inches of
it in a matter of minutes. Wind velocity gauges jammed at
eighty miles an hour, and the first full fury of the storm
was on the city.
The wind drove westward, throwing before it anything
it could collect. Signs went flying. Tin roofs rolled up like
bolts of yard goods. Streetcars tilted on their tracks and
cumbersomely flopped over. The river began to heave up
waves of a size never before seen.
The wind was in a hurry. It had an appointment in the
suburbs.
In the lobby of a downtown hotel a group of business-
men comfortably sat out what they thought was a spring
rain. A huge chimney crashing down through the skylight
subjected them to a deadly shower of bricks and glass.
The fashion then current of rearing brick facades a story-
above the roof of the building proper proved costly for
many business establishments. The wind used these false
fronts as a lever to wrench open the fronts of the build-
ings. It was as if nature's purpose was to expose man's
fraud.
Gigantic bolts of lightning ripped down through the
gloom, giving one witness the grotesque impression of
"sunlight seen under water." Electric poles were toppling
in the wind, and high-tension wires were whipping wildly
around in the streets. Telegraph poles were "flashing col-
umns of blue flame." The lightning got at the power plants
and played havoc with the system. And through the roar-
ing of the wind, the heavy voice of thunder spoke on
and on.
For .ten minutes the storm raged. At its fiercest, it
90 DISASTER!
reached a velocity later estimated at 120 miles per hour.
Joists, cornices, scaffolding, signs, trees and an endless
skyful of shingles pelted the city.
Then, just when it seemed that the wind would grow in
intensity until it wiped St. Louis off the map, there came
an inexplicable lull. It was enough of a respite to permit
people to draw a breath and thank their lucky stars that it
hadn't been a tornado. The damage had been severe, and
there were a number of injured, but it could have been
worse.
Even while the city folk congratulated themselves on
their deliverance, an old woman in a southwestern suburb
died of fright as a tree, roots and all, dropped down
through the roof of her home.
The tornado was on its way.
It showed its nature from the outset by poking its ugly
spout into a small school, killing five children and injur-
ing others. The bodies of the dead youngsters it took with
it for a while, throwing them down far from the shattered
building. It was a long time before they were found.
The spout moved on, snatching at roofs and outbuild-
ings. It sniffed like a clumsy animal at a cluster of houses
here, a barn there.
At the south side race track, the fifth had just been run.
The spout nuzzled down, picked up a horse, carried the
animal ioo yards and dumped it down a well. Then it
started into town, followed the Mill Creek Valley, careen-
ing madly off course from time to time.
The Lafayette Park section of pleasant homes and ver-
dant lawns was fair game. The tornado whipped its long
tentacle among these, houses, snatching at roofs and walls.
With a kind of lunatic wit it clapped a ridiculously
small roof on the open rafters of a large house. It tore
chunks out of other houses and stuffed the openings with
junk.
It hit the Compton Heights district, leaving debris in
TWISTER ON THE TOWN 9 1
its wake. In one residential section, it collected and de-
molished twenty-five pianos.
The city's institutions were in its path.
As if the occupants were not unfortunate enough,
the poorhouse and the insane asylum were struck by the
twister. The frightened cries of the old people and the
gibbering fear of the mad were mingled with the crash of
falling rubbish. Yet the storm was peculiarly merciful.
None of the inmates was killed. Rescue work began at
once, and among those most untiring and heroic in ex-
tricating the patients was an insane man.
The spout picked out the City Hospital for another test
of its strength. The test was unfair, for the hospital had
long been deemed a dangerously old structure. The build-
ing ripped easily. A rheumatic patient was lifted out of
bed and lowered gently to the yard below, where he landed
on his feet and hobbled to shelter, uninjured. Still the
tornado was merciful. Only one killed at the City Hospital
unless you counted the Mexican woman who died of
fright.
Impatiently the spout wrenched roofs from the Exposi-
tion Building, the armory, the Auditorium. St. Vincent's
Hospital was badly damaged; churches were wrecked. The
spout searched hungrily for prey.
In the older section of the city, where tenements were
huddled together and crowded with workmen's families, it
found what it was after. At Twelfth Street it settled down
to do some serious killing, and from there to the levee it
was ruthless.
Three men enjoying a friendly card game in a saloon
were crushed and buried, while the saloonkeeper's wife, on
the way to warn her husband, was herself killed. The
broken body of a dead baby fell from the sky into a man's
arms.
Some buildings were taken apart brick by brick, and
the rubble heaped upon the screaming occupants. At the
intersection of Seventh and Rutger, the tornado flattened
92 DISASTER!
a tenement housing more than twenty persons. Only a
mound of bricks was left. From this corner to Soulard,
and over to Eighth and Broadway, the loss of life was the
worst in the city.
It did no good to seek shelter from the spout. A group
of fugitives who huddled in an old brick market building
learned this when the twister pushed the walls in on them.
It left no building in its path unmarked, and its path
seemed to be everywhere. Yet for some reason it over-
looked the high buildings of the business district as it
whipped on toward the river. Warehouses were broken
into, and their contents passed out in a welter of flying
splinters. Car barns were made a shambles. A gas storage
tank was overturned, and its contents instantly ignited to
burn off harmlessly. Another tank was flattened.
A livery stable which stored carriages in its loft was hit.
The loft was removed; all of the carriages but one were
hurled yards away. The exception was an ornate black
hearse which sat high in the wreckage of the building,
mocking the tragedy at hand.
The spout swung wide and then veered out onto the
river. A million dollars' worth of shipping stood at St.
Louis. The packet captains, the pilots, and the wharfboat
men were powerless to help themselves, much less save
their ships. The proud packets were torn apart and their
hulls flung senselessly across to the Illinois side. Some six-
teen steamers, five ferryboats, two transfer boats, six tugs
were demolished with the lesser craft.
The Bald Eagle, Dolphin No. 2, Belle of Calboun, D. H.
Pike, and others blew their boilers or turned turtle, drown-
ing many of their passengers and crews. On the Illinois
side, a steam launch, Awtria, was lifted from her moorings
into the air, turned upside down, and dropped to float
twenty feet from her berth. An amazing number of peo-
ple on these ships escaped what appeared to be certain
death.
Once across the river, the twister slammed out at the
TWISTER ON THE TOWN 93
famed Eads Bridge, double-decked railroad and vehicle link
with the west. Only the foresight of its designer, who had
been criticized for adding a million dollars to its cost in
anticipation of such an emergency, saved the structure.
The spout knocked several freight cars down to the vehicle
deck, but spared a stalled passenger train which it could
easily have pushed into the river. It clutched and bore off
great chunks of masonry along the eastern approaches to
the bridge, and tore up track for several hundred yards.
Before finishing with the Eads Bridge, the tornado left
its calling card. A pine plank was later found driven
through a three-eighths-inch iron girder.
At about 5:30, after smashing about the waterfront on
the east bank of the river, the tornado began a sickening
duplication of its destruction in the sister city, East St.
Louis. Curiously enough, it followed the approximate path
of the previous twister of 1872. It demolished warehouses,
grain elevators, business establishments, hotels and homes.
It did the same terribly thorough job, and then wandered
out into the countryside.
The worst was over.
After a few minutes' lull, a brisk twenty-five-mile gale
whipped across St. Louis, but it passed almost unnoticed.
Along the seven-mile route of destruction, numerous
fires had broken out. The litter in the streets made it im-
possible to move fire-fighting equipment. A number of
those trapped in the wreckage died in agony before a
charitable downpour of rain extinguished the flames.
The electrical supply had broken down. Of all the
transit lines in the city, only one cable-car route was still
in operation. The telephone service was out.
Office and factory workers picked their way home
through the clogged streets, no one knowing what to
expect when he got home.
The city was in total darkness; even the moon was
covered by a conspiracy of clouds. Nonetheless, the rescue
work was begun. Digging the injured out of the wreckage
94 DISASTER!
was an endless problem. An even worse problem was -what
to do with them. The battered hospitals somehow made
room for the most seriously hurt.
The homeless were another problem. And the vulnera-
bility of a distraught and darkened city made looters still
another problem.
Somehow a message pleading for help was put through
to the outside world, and soon relief was on the way. St.
Louis struggled through the black and trying night. On
Thursday, martial law was declared. Newspapermen and
curiosity seekers thronged in. One by one the dead were
uncovered and sent to the morgue to await identification.
Counting the cost of the calamity was hard, but by Fri-
day it was known that about 250 had been killed in St.
Louis, more than 1,200 injured, and 5,000 left homeless.
Across the river in East St. Louis, the toll was roughly
proportionate, with 150 known dead. Property damage
was estimated at between twelve and thirteen million dol-
lars, only a small share of which was covered by tornado
insurance.
The only cheer in the gloomy appraisal came when the
crowded excursion steamer, Grand Republic, thought lost,
steamed safely into harbor.
St. Louis rolled up its sleeves and got to work.
The Galveston
Tidal Wave
By Edwin Midler
GALVESTON, TEX., September 8, 1900 That first
week in September everybody went sea-bathing on Galves-
ton Beach, Texas. There'd never been such a fine surf
great rolling combers that swept in from the Gulf. Yet
there was hardly a breath of wind.
A blanket of humid heat lay over the city. Storm warn-
ings went out to the Gulf shipping. The barometer was
falling. Those signs should have been of concern to the
inhabitants of a town built on a sandbar scarcely more
than a mile wide and only nine feet above the sea at its
highest point. But nobody seemed to be worried. Scientists
had said that the city was safe from storm and flood, that
the long gentle slope of the sea bottom would protect
them.
Life was comfortable and prosperous in Galveston in
the year 1900. It was a typical American community, the
fastest growing port on the Atlantic and Gulf seaboard,
exporting each year millions of dollars' worth of cotton
and grain. Even in this comparatively dull season many big
steamers were anchored in the bay or lay alongside the
wharves. The city boosters talked confidently of the day
when Galveston would rank with New York or any other
port.
On Friday afternoon of that week the sea-bathing had
to be stopped the surf was becoming too dangerous. Still
Reprinted from the North American Review for December, 19)8; copyright
1938 by the North American Review Corporation, 420 Madison Ave., New
Yor*, N. Y.
9?
96 DISASTER!-'
there was no wind. The surface of the Gulf was smooth,
gray satin lined with streaks of foam. The massive ground
swells came at long intervals, sometimes of a minute or
more, but when they came, they raced in at express-train
speed and broke on the sand in reverberating thunder.
The older inhabitants, the ones who could remember the
big storm of 1875, began to study the sky toward the
southeast, toward the Caribbean where, in the doldrums,
hurricanes are born. Some of them noticed a white, misty
patch above the horizon.
At 2:00 A.M. on Saturday, September 8, the wind began
to blow.
By the time the city awoke at its usual hour there was
half a gale and it was increasing steadily. But after break-
fast businessmen went downtown as usual. There seemed
to be nothing to worry about this wind was from the
north, the side of the mainland and the shallow bay.
Nevertheless, as the day went on, nerves began to wear
thin. No one could remember a wind that increased with
such steady relentlessness thirty, thirty-five, forty miles
an hour and not a minute of let-up. With it came a driv-
ing rain that grew in intensity with the wind. Water was
piling up against the wharves, licking at the big grain
elevators and warehouses on the north side of the island.
And, inexplicably, it was rising on the Gulf side as well,
where the residence section spread down to the beaches. It
crept up, slowly at first, past the highest flood marks,
reaching toward the streets and houses.
People began to phone the local Weather Bureau. Then,
when the wires were continually busy, they began to go
there, at first in scores, then in hundreds. What they heard
was most disturbing: this was a West Indian hurricane of
the most dangerous kind, a mass of air whirling at tornado
speed in a circle several hundred miles in diameter, advanc-
ing steadily across the sea. It had veered away from the
tip of Florida, crossed the Gulf in a long curve and was
THE GALVESTON TIDAL WAVE 97
headed straight for Galveston. Everyone on the Gulf side
should abandon his house and move to the highest ground
and the strongest buildings. There was much worse to
come.
Galveston began to be frightened. The velocity of the
wind was now more than fifty miles per hour. A whistling
sound could be heard above its deep, vibrating hum. Those
in the streets had to shout to others close at hand. The rain
cut like a knife, struck the sides of buildings with the force
of solid shot. Some took the advice and evacuated their
homes. Others decided to wait.
People were scared but not yet in a panic. They were
still a community. Measures would be taken by those in
authority.
But by early afternoon there was a sense of impending
catastrophe.
Groups of people were seen hurrying through the streets
carrying suitcases and bundles hastily tied together. The
Tremont was the largest hotel in the business district, the
higher section of town. Its lobby began to fill with fright-
ened refugees. They said that water was already in the
lower streets, that houses had begun to go, that the big
Beach Hotel and Bathing Pavilion were breaking to pieces
under the twenty- foot waves pounding the shore. One of
the bridges connecting the city with the mainland had
been washed away, the others couldn't last long.
By 3:00 P.M. half the city was under water. At first it
crept up slowly, covering the residential section block by
block. Then it came faster, in great surges. The lower
streets were swift-flowing streams, the water seethed and
rushed at the foundations of the houses. Men struggled
against the current through waist-deep water, leading
mules on which they had set their wives and children.
Everywhere was the explosive sound of windows smashing
in, heard above the noise of the wind that was like the deep
roll of a great drum. The water supply failed. So did the
electric light plant. Although night was still far off, the
98 DISASTER!
city was almost dark, the driving rain cutting off visi-
bility.
Everywhere morale began to fall. The crowd huddled in
the Tremont lobby saw and felt the walls vibrate. Every
few minutes an announcement was made as to the depth of
the water outside. Still rising. With each announcement the
hysteria grew. At last water came through the door, spread-
ing a widening pool over the lobby floor. The crowd fought
its way up the stairs, filling the mezzanine, praying and
moaning.
No one could escape from the city. The mainland was
two miles away, across an expanse of wild water which no
boat could survive. All four bridges were down. Men ?
women and children crouched in their houses, staying close
to the walls because that was the safest place if the roof
came down. Houses were collapsing, people were dying.
No one knew how many, no one knew when his own turn
would come. The wind blew on and on and on. It
would never, stop.
Then, quite suddenly, it did stop.
At 8:00 P.M. the wind slackened. Within a few minutes
there was an almost dead calm. Men looked at each other
and thanked God churchgoers and saloon-goers alike.
But not those who understood the nature of a circular
hurricane, the calm center inside the whirling periphery.
When, within the hour, the wind began again from the
southeast now it was the real thing. It quickly passed the
record of the afternoon. The Weather Bureau recorded
eighty-four miles an hour; then the instrument blew away.
It was estimated later that the wind attained a velocity of
120 miles. It built up the accumulated volume and mo-
mentum of an avalanche, it struck with the concussion of
a great explosion. Trees were uprooted and driven through
the walls of houses. Solid masses of salt water were blown
across the island, choking those who were still outdoors
fighting their way to shelter.
The noise of the wind was so great that no other sound
THE GALVESTON TIDAL WAVE 99
could be heard. One man, looking out of a window, saw
a large house collapse across the street. He saw the tim-
bers rend, the roof and walls come smashing down. But he
heard no sound of it.
Now the waters had risen so that they covered every
square foot of the island. Even the highest part was three
to four feet under water. The streets were full of floating
wreckage. Masses of it were battered by great waves against
the walls of houses still standing, bringing them down in
their turn. It was dangerous to stand near a window, even
on the leeward side of a house. One man who did so was
sucked out bodily, hurled to death.
Those who had stayed in their homes in the lower part
of the island were now trapped. If they stayed in, more
likely than not the house would collapse and bury them. If
they tried to escape outdoors on floating wreckage they'd
be lucky to live a minute. Solid timbers were blown
through the streets. Most deadly were the slates blown off
the roofs. They filled the air like clouds of feathers in a
gale. Bodies were found later with the tops of the heads cut
cleanly off by these sktes.
Now organized society itself was going to pieces. The
storm had torn apart the ties of civilization that bind men
together. It had isolated them one from the other. Galves-
ton was no longer a community, it had disintegrated into
a thousand individual battles with death. Men react in
different ways to great catastrophes. Some battled for their
lives with the brutal selfishness of animals, fighting each
other for preferred places on floating wreckage, clambering
up into the branches of floating trees and kicking down
others who tried to follow them. Others risked their lives
to make rescues.
The Catholic orphan asylum began to cave in. Each of
the Sisters took ropes and tied eight infants to her. Each in
turn said a prayer and launched herself on the current. A
few were saved but more were found dead after the storm,
still tied together.
ioo DISASTER!
Mr. Cline of the Weather Bureau had stuck to his post
until late in the day, then had struggled home to find his
family. They were in the house, a solid structure in what
was thought to be a comparatively safe locality. He left
them on the upper floor and went down to the front door.
There he stayed for hours, making frequent sorties out
into the swift current to bring in refugees. Eventually
fifty were gathered under his roof.
But the house began to be battered by heavy masses of
timbers, driven by the wind and waves. Quite suddenly it
collapsed.
Of the fifty in the house, thirty-two were killed. Cline
never saw his wife again she was one of the thirty-two.
He clutched his two young children, was overwhelmed by
the water, lost consciousness for an instant. He came to,
still clutching the children, when his head struck a tim-
ber. He managed to drag the children to the top of a float-
ing pile of wreckage. For two hours he saw no homes, no
land, only the waves around him. He thought he had been
carried far out to sea, as hundreds had been. But at last
the raft grounded and, struggling from one pile of wreck-
age to another, he got the children to safe shelter in a
house on higher land.
Death and destruction rose to a final crescendo in the
dark hours before midnight. At that period the separate
units of disaster grew larger. Those who had fled their
own houses in the lower districts but had not gone to
higher ground had collected in the larger buildings, the
churches and the schools. Now many of these went down.
Church walls caved in, killing fifty at a time. The largest
school was destroyed. A hospital with too patients col-
lapsed, and of the patients and the staff, only eight sur-
vived.
The end came soon after midnight. The wind slackened
a little at first, then rapidly. The water went down very
quickly too. In a few hours there were only scattered pools'
of it left.
THE GALVESTON TIDAL WAVE IOI
At dawn the survivors crept out of doors. The streets
were almost impassable, masses of wreckage and tangled
wires.
No one knew how many were dead. No one knows
today, but most estimates agree that, of a population of
38,000, 6,000 had died.
The survivors were stunned, incoherent. During that
night there was not a man or woman who had not come
close to the borderline of insanity. Many had gone over it.
Now, in the early morning light, half -clothed people wan-
dered aimlessly in the streets, screaming. Others sat quietly
in the slime, laughing to themselves. Some who had held
up bravely through the night collapsed now that the strain
was over.
For most there was nothing to eat, no water to drink.
No one could escape from the island.
At first there was no organized effort, but soon the dis-
ciplined habits of civilization began to reassert themselves.
A meeting of citizens was called at 9:00 A.M., committees
for each district were set up, those who had been accus-
tomed to lead in the past took the lead now. Plans were set
in motion to repair the water and electric plants, to send
boats to the mainland for help, to improvise shelter for the
homeless. They set themselves to the task of the decent
burial of their dead. But presently this recovery of organ-
ized society had a setback, a setback almost as terrorizing
as the storm.
There were 6,000 dead bodies. There were more than
that number of carcasses of horses and cattle, their bodies
bloated, the legs sticking stiffly up. The sun shone down.
Corpses turned black, soon lost all likeness to human be-
ings. The stench was incredible. Vast armies of flies settled
down and the buzzards gathered in the sky.
Again panic gripped Galveston. As many people as pos-
sible were sent to the mainland, but only a very small frac-
tion of the population could be so transported. The others
102 DISASTER!
were still trapped, confined to their narrow island, with
certain pestilence coming.
The plans for a decent burial were discarded. At first
the authorities tried to dispose of the corpses in the sea,
but this method of disposal did not prove altogether effec-
tive. Many of the bodies washed back to shore. So did some
of the corpses from the graveyards.
It was decided to burn the bodies. They were piled up
where they were found, covered with wreckage and cre-
mated.
All corpses were treated alike, whether they were those
of longshoremen or of prominent citizens. Men found
themselves dealing with the bodies of people they had
known, of men they had worked for, of relatives and
friends. One man worked long and hard with burial par-
ties, showing neither fatigue nor emotion. Only, whenever
a new body was found, he would rush to it and open the
mouth. He hoped to recognize his dead wife by her dental
work.
The looting of bodies and of stores began on the day
after the storm. To the looters already in town were added
many who came from the mainland, securing transporta-
tion by claiming to belong to relief parties. Several men
were found with their pockets bulging with human fingers
the corpses were too swollen for the rings to come off.
Martial law was declared on Tuesday.
Those were grim weeks in Galveston. Men worked day
and night not looking ahead, just striving desperately to
keep ahead of the things that had to be done at once to
establish law and order, to insure sanitation, to clean up
the muck, to get food and water and shelter. Help came
from outside. Relief contributions were sent from every
part of the country food and tents and medical supplies.
But most of the work had to be done by the men and
women of Galveston.
Then came the question of the future. To some the task
looked too hard to tackle. They advised that the 32,000
THE GALVESTON TIDAL WAVE 103
survivors should abandon their sand-bar and make new
lives for themselves on the mainland. But in its first edition
after the flood the Galveston News carried the banner:
"Galveston Shall Rise Again." That was the decision of
the community of Galveston.
The citizens set themselves a ten-year program of hard
work and self-denial. They adopted a commission form of
government the first American city to do so because
that seemed the most efficient way to get things done. They
began to rebuild the city and to defend it from future
attacks.
Galveston today is prosperous and comfortable. The
great Sea Wall, costing more than a million dollars, runs
for seven and a half miles along the Gulf, seventeen feet
above the tide. It has had its test. In 1915 came another
hurricane, almost as violent as that of 1900. This time only
twelve lives were lost in Galveston and the property dam-
age was comparatively small.
The Iroquois
Theater Fire
By Eddie Foy and Alvin F. Harlow
CHICAGO, ILL., December 30, 1903 In 1903, I
opened what was destined to be the most memorable en-
gagement in my history. Klaw & Erlanger had recently
started to import the big Drury Lane pantomimes from
London, giving them an American farcical touch and ad-
ditional lavishness. One of the first of these extravaganzas
was Mr. Bluebeard, which opened the new Iroquois Thea-
ter in Chicago on November 23.
The theater was one of the finest that had yet been
built in this country a palace of marble and plate glass,
plush and mahogany and gilding. It had a magnificent
promenade foyer, like an old-world palace hall, with a ceil-
ing sixty feet from the floor and grand staircases ascending
on either side. Backstage it was easily the most commodious
playhouse I had ever seen.
A vast expanse of dressing rooms was provided under
the stage and auditorium for the chorus, and the principals
dressed on the stage level or above. The flies were reached
by elevators. The theater was hailed as the last word in effi-
ciency, convenience and safety. Instead, it proved to be a
fool's paradise. There had been no great theater disaster in
this country for many years, and all safety precautions had
been greatly relaxed.
We drew big crowds all through Christmas week. On
Wednesday afternoon, December 30, at the bargain-price
matinee, the house was packed and many were standing. I
Excerpted from- the book Clowning Through Life, published at $3.00 by E.
P. Dutton & Co., New York, N. Y.; copyright 1928 by Button.
104
THE IROQUOIS THEATER FIRE 105
wasn't able to get passes for my wife and youngsters, so
I decided to take only the oldest boy, Bryan, aged six, to
the show and stow him wherever I could. I tried to get a
seat for him down in front, but there were none left, so I
put him on a little stool in the first entrance to the right
of the stage a sort of alcove near the switchboard; and
he liked that even better than being down in the audi-
torium.
It struck me as I looked out over the crowd during the
first act that I had never before seen so many women and
children in an audience. There were several parties of girls
in their teens. Teachers, college and high-school students
on vacation were present in great numbers.
The house seated more than 1,600, and the managers
declared afterward that they had sold about a hundred
standing-room tickets, which would bring the total at-
tendance to well over 1,700. The testimony of others
seemed to indicate, however, that there were many more
standees than the management admitted; in fact, it was
widely believed that there were more than 2,000 people
in the house that afternoon. And back of the curtain,
counting the members of the company, stage hands and
others, there were fully 400 more. The quantity of scenery,
costumes and properties required for a spectacle like Mr.
Bluebeard was prodigious, and a big staff of men and
women was necessary to take care of it.
Much -of the scenery was of a very flimsy character.
Hanging suspended by a forest of ropes above the stage
and so close together that they were well-nigh touching
each other were no less than 280 drops, several of which
were necessary to each set. All of them were painted with
oil colors; the great majority were cut into delicate lacery
and some were made of sheer gauze.
There had been a fire in the scenery during our engage-
ment in Cleveland, but by a piece of luck it was quickly
squelched; and I had been playing in theaters for so long
without any trouble from fire that the incident hadn't
106 DISASTER!
given me much of a scare. It takes a disaster to make one
cautious. After our experience at the Iroquois, not one in
ten of us actors (and I daresay other people would have
been equally heedless) could remember whether we had
ever seen any fire extinguishers, fire hoses, axes or other
apparatus back of the stage.
The play went merrily through the first act. At the
beginning of the second act a double octette eight men
and eight women had a very pretty number called "In
the Pale Moonlight." The stage was flooded with bluish
light while they sang and danced. It was then that the
trouble began. In spite of some slight conflict of opinion,
there can be no doubt that one of the big lights high up
at one side of the stage blew a fuse. That was what had
caused the Cleveland blaze, and the company's electricians
knew that in order to obtain the desired lighting effects
they were carrying much too heavy a load on their wires.
At any rate, a bit of the gauzy drapery caught fire at the
right of the stage, some twelve or fifteen feet above the
floor.
I was to come on in a few minutes for my turn with a
comic elephant, and was in my dressing room making up.
When I heard a commotion outside, my first thought was:
"I wonder if they're having a fight down there again"
for there had been a row a few days before among the
supers and stage hands. But the noise swelled in volume,
and suddenly I became frightened. I jerked my door open,
and instantly knew that something was deadly wrong. It
could be nothing but fire! My first thought was of Bryan,
and I ran downstairs and around into the wings. Probably
not forty seconds had elapsed since I'd heard the first com-
motion but already the terror was beginning.
When the blaze was first discovered, two stage hands
tried to extinguish it. One of them strove to beat it out
with a stick or a piece of canvas, but it was too far above
his head. Then he got a fire extinguisher consisting of a
small tin tube of powder and tried to throw the stuff on
THE IROQUOIS THEATER FIRE 1 07
the flames. It was ridiculously inadequate. If there were
any of those large fire extinguishers which throw liquid
chemicals from a hose, nobody seemed to find them or to
think of them. Meanwhile, in the audience, those far
around on the opposite side and especially those near the
stage could see the blaze and the men fighting it, and they
began to get frightened.
The flames spread through those tinder-like fabrics with
terrible rapidity. If the drop first ignited could have been
instantly separated from the others, the calamity might
have been averted; but that was impossible. Within a
minute the flame was beyond possibility of control by
anything but a fire hose. Probably not even a big fire
extinguisher could have stopped it by then. Why no at-
tempt was made to use any such apparatus, or whether,
indeed, it was in working order, I don't know. If the house
force had ever had any fire drills, th|re was no evidence of
it in their actions. The stage manager was absent at the
moment, and several stage hands were in a saloon across
the street. No one had even taken the trouble to see that a
fire alarm box was located on or near the theater, and
a stage hand ran all the way to South Water Street to turn
in the alarm.
As I ran around back of the rear drop, I could hear the
murmur of excitement growing in the audience. Somebody
had of course yelled "Fire!" there is almost always a fool
of that species in an audience; and there are always hun-
dreds of people who go crazy the moment they hear the
word. I ran around into the wings, shouting for Bryan.
The lower borders on that side were all aflame, and the
blaze was leaping up into the flies. On the stage those brave
boys and girls, bless them, were still singing and doing
their steps, though the girls* voices were beginning to falter
a little.
I found my boy in his place, though he was getting
frightened. I seized him and started toward the rear. But
all those women and children out in front haunted me
io8 DISASTER!
the hundreds of little ones who would be helpless, trodden
under foot in a panic. I must do what I could to save
them!
I tossed Bryan into the arms of a stage hand, crying
"Take my boy out!" I paused a moment to watch him
running toward the rear doors; then I turned and ran out
on the stage, right through the ranks of the octette, still
tremblingly doing their part, though the scenery was blaz-
ing over them; but as I reached the footlights one of the
girls fainted, and a man picked her up and carried her off.
I was a grotesque figure to come before an audience on
so serious an occasion I wore tights and comic shoes, a
short smock, and a wig with a ridiculous little pigtail
curving upward from the back of my head. The crowd
was beginning to surge toward the doors and already show-
ing signs of a stampede. Those on the lower floor were not
so badly frightened as those in the more dangerous balcony
and gallery. Up there they were falling into panic.
I began shouting at the top of my voice, "Don't get
excited. There's no danger. Take it easy!" And to Dillea,
the orchestra leader, "Play, start an overture anything!
But play!" Some of his musicians were fleeing, but a few,
and especially a fat little violinist, stuck nobly.
"Take your time, folks. (Wonder if that man got out
with Bryan?) No danger!" And sideways into the wings,
"The asbestos curtain! For God's sake, doesn't anybody
know how to lower the curtain? Go slow, people! You'll
get out!"
I stood perfectly still, hoping my apparent calm would
have an equally calming effect on the crowd. Those on the
lower floor heard me and seemed somewhat reassured. But
up above, and especially in the gallery, they had gone mad.
Down came the curtain slowly, two-thirds of the way
and stopped, one end higher than the other, caught on a
wire. Then the strong draft coming through the back
doors by which the company was fleeing bellied the slack
THE IROQUOIS THEATER FIRE
of it in a wide arc out into the auditorium, letting the
draft and flame through at its sides.
"Lower it! Cut the wire!" I yelled. "Don't be fright-
ened, folks! Go slow! No danger! Play, Dillea!" Below me
Dillea was still swinging his baton and that brave, fat little
violinist was still fiddling alone and furiously; but no one
could hear him now, for the roar of the flames was added
to the roar of the mob. In the upper tiers they were in a
mad, animal-like stampede their screams, groans and
snarls, the scuffle of thousands of feet and bodies grinding
against bodies merging into a crescendo that was half -wail,
half -roar the most dreadful sound that ever assailed
human ears.
Then came a cyclonic blast of fire from the stage out
into the auditorium probably a great mass of scenery sud-
denly ignited and fanned by a stronger gust a flash and
a roar as when a heap of loose powder is fired all at once.
A huge billow of flame leaped out past me and over me
and seemed to reach even to the balconies. Some of the au-
dience later described it as an "explosion" or "a great ball
of fire." A shower of blazing fragments set my wig
smouldering. The fringe on the edge of the curtain just
above my head was burning, and as I glanced up, the cur-
tain itself was disintegrating.
By now the last of the musicians had fled. I could do
nothing more, and might as well go, too. But the inferno
behind me was so terrible that I wondered whether I could
escape that way; perhaps it would be better to leave
through the auditorium. But Bryan had gone out by the
rear if he had gone at all and I was irresistibly drawn to
follow.
I fairly had to grope my way through flame and smoke
to reach the Dearborn Street stage door, which was still
jammed with people getting out. The actors and stage em-
ployees nearly all escaped saved by the failure of the as-
bestos curtain to come down, which let the bulk of the
no DISASTER!
flame roll out into the auditorium and brought death to
many in the audience.
The flying ballet went out as I did, rescued by the
heroism of the elevator boy, who ran his car up through
tips of flame into the flies where they stood awaiting their
turn, and brought them down. But one of them was so
badly burned that she died in a hospital a day or two later.
Some of the people dressing under the stage broke down
doors or escaped through coal chutes.
As I left the stage the last of the ropes holding up the
drops burned through, and with them the whole loft col-
lapsed with a terrifying crash, bringing down tons of
burning material. With that, all the lights in the house
went out and another great balloon of flame leaped out
into the auditorium, licking even the ceiling and killing
scores who had not yet succeeded in escaping from the
gallery.
The horror in the auditorium was beyond all descrip-
tion. There were thirty exits, but few of them were marked
by lights; some had heavy portieres over the doors, and
some of the doors themselves were locked or fastened with
levers which no one knew how to work.
It was said that some of the exit doors leading from the
upper tiers onto the fire escapes on the alley between Ran-
dolph and Lake streets were either rusted or frozen. They
were finally burst open, but precious moments had been
lost moments which meant death for many behind those
doors. The fire-escape ladders could not accommodate the
crowd, and many fell or jumped to death on the pave-
ment below. Some were not killed only because they
landed on the cushion of bodies of those who had gone
before.
When one balcony exit was opened, those who surged
out on the platform found that they could not descend the
steps because flames were leaping from the exit below
them. Painters in a building across a narrow court threw a
ladder over to the platform; a man started crawling over
THE IROQUOIS THEATER FIRE III
it, but one end slipped off the icy landing and he fell,
crushed on the stones below.
The painters then succeeded in bridging the gap with a
plank, and just twelve people crossed that narrow footpath
to safety. The twelfth was pursued by a tongue of flame
which dashed against the wall of the opposite building
and no more escaped. The iron platform was crowded with
women and children. Some died there; others crawled over
the railing and fell to the pavement.
But it was inside the house that the greatest loss of life
occurred, especially on the stairways leading down from
the second balcony. Here most of the dead were trampled
or smothered, though many jumped or fell over the balus-
trade to the floor of the foyer. In places on the stairways,
particularly where a turn caused a jam, bodies were piled
seven or eight feet deep. Firemen and police confronted a
sickening task in disentangling them. An occasional living
person was found in the heaps, but most of these were ter-
ribly injured. The heel prints on the dead faces mutely
testified to the cruel fact that human animals stricken by
terror are as mad and ruthless as stampeding cattle. Many
bodies had the clothes torn from them, and some had the
flesh trodden from their bones.
Never elsewhere had a great fire disaster occurred so
quickly. From the start of the fire until all in the audience
either escaped, died, or lay maimed in the halls and alleys,
took just eight minutes* In that eight minutes more than
500 perished.
The fire department arrived quickly after the aUrm and
extinguished the flames in the auditorium so promptly that
no more than the plush upholstery was burned off the
seats. But when a fire chief thrust his head through a side
exit and shouted, "Is anybody alive in here?" no one an-
swered. The few who were not dead were insensible or
dying. "Within ten minutes from the beginning of the fire,
bodies were being laid in rows on the sidewalks, and all
the ambulances and dead- wagons in the city could not
ii2 DISASTER!
keep up with the ghastly harvest. Within twenty-four
hours, Chicago knew that at least 587 were dead, and
many more injured. Subsequent deaths among the injured
brought the list up to 602.
As I rushed out of the theater, I could think of nothing
but my boy. I became more and more frightened; as I
neared the street I was certain he hadn't gotten out. But
when I reached the sidewalk, God be praised, there he was
with his faithful friend just outside the door. I seized him
in my arms and turned toward my hotel.
It was a thinly clad mob which poured out of the stage
doors into the snow. The temperature was near zero, and
an icy gale was howling through the streets. Some of the
chorus girls were compelled to run out almost nude, but
kindly people put wraps around them and took them into
near-by buildings for refuge.
My own outfit of tights and thin smock felt like noth-
ing at all, and my teeth were chattering so from the cold
and the horror of what I had just been through that I
could not speak. A well-dressed stranger stopped me and
said, "My friend, you'd better take my overcoat," throw-
ing off his heavy coat as he spoke and helping me to put it
on. Then he picked up Bryan and walked with me across
the street and there, hurrying towards the theater, I saw
my wife.
She screamed at sight of me and crying, "Oh, thank
God, thank God!" she threw herself into my arms. Then
she seized Bryan and kissed him over and over.
I had no sleep at all that night. Newspaper reporters
begged me for interviews, friends called me by telephone
and wired me. I was too excited for sleep, anyhow; my
nerves did not subside to normal for weeks afterward.
The Iroquois Theater disaster brought a serious reaction in
the theatrical profession. On the day after the fire every
theater in Chicago was closed, and they remained closed for
some time while city authorities investigated their safety.
THE IROQUOIS THEATER FIRE 113
New York and other cities also began closing theaters sus-
pected of being unsafe.
A New York newspaper a few days later listed more
than fifty companies which had closed their season's run;
and counting vaudeville and burlesque players, some 15,000
people were idle.
But the terrible lesson was sadly needed. In New York
at that very moment, some Broadway theaters had wooden
stairways and aisles so narrow that not more than one per-
son could pass through them at a time. The matter of exits
had been given little attention; there were basement dress-
ing rooms reached by stairways little better than ladders,
where actors would be caught like rats in a trap in case of
fire.
The Chicago horror was a blessing in one respect it
brought about a countrywide investigation and house-
cleaning. Theaters in some cities were declared hopeless
firetraps and permanently closed. Others were compelled
to make costly repairs. Stringent ordinances regarding
exits were passed and enforced.
Since that terrible afternoon of December 30, 1903,
America's theaters have been safer than they ever had been
before. There are still occasional hazards and violations of
safety laws, but another disaster like the horrible one I
witnessed in the ill-fated Iroquois Theater is at least im-
probable, if not entirely impossible.
Holiday
Holocaust
By Vic for Boesen
EAST RIVER, N.Y., June 15, 1904 The parade of
children with their parents and relatives trooped gaily to-
ward the East River where the big boat was anchored
which would take them on their annual outing. St. Mark's
pastor, the Rev. G. F. C. Haas, headed the laughing pro-
cession, and behind him marched the band playing a med-
ley of lively airs.
At the.pier they were joined by additional oldsters, glad
of an opportunity to escape to the country for a day. The
General Slocum, veteran of thirteen years and one of New
York's fastest ships, settled to her normal draft as 1,358
persons overspread her spacious decks. Four hundred of
these were children, including St. Mark's kindergarten.
The rest were predominantly women.
It was good to be alive. The exuberance of the young-
sters was infectious. But there was also the tonic of spring.
Not a speck of cloud appeared in the sky on that i$th day
of June, 1904.
The band settled in chairs up forward and Pastor Haas,
whose own family was aboard, moved beamingly about to
see that everyone was comfortable. Then he gave the signal
to Captain W. H. Schaick in the pilot house. The lines
were cast off, and soon the great vessel was puffing north
among the tall buildings, her huge paddle wheels beating
the river into a muddy chaos.
It was just as the ship passed opposite Eighty-Third
Copyright 1945 by Esquire, Inc., Coronet Building, Chicago I, Illinois. (Coro-
net, March,
114
HOLIDAY HOLOCAUST 1 15
Street that fourteen-year-old Frank Perditsky spied a thin
column of smoke curling from the storeroom in the hold.
He ran to the pilot house and shouted this information to
Captain Schaick. "Shut up and mind your own business!"
the captain is recorded to have said.
A quarter of a mile farther, the skipper of a dredge
working in the river saw a puff pf smoke break from the
Slocvm's lower deck. He blew four sharp blasts of his
whistle. His signal was caught up by other craft, and as
each sounded the warning it fell in behind the steamer,
seeking to overtake her.
But there was no slackening of the big ship's speed. At
noth Street, many precious minutes later, a member of
St. Mark's congregation was startled by smoke belching
from the companionway of the forecastle. Calling a deck-
hand's attention to it, he hurried to tell Captain Schaick,
who summoned Mate Edward Flanagan to go below and
investigate.
Meanwhile, another boy had seen the flames and was
tugging at the arm of a crewman disporting himself at the
bar. Reluctantly reeling to the scene of the blaze, the man
studied it curiously then threw on a bag of charcoal.
As the crew member stood groggily watching the inevi-
table result, Mate Flanagan appeared. By the time he re-
ported to the captain through the speaking tube, the fire
had eaten through the partition into the engine room.
Captain Schaick, who had hoped to keep the situation
concealed from the passengers, sounded the alarm gong. At
that moment, a woman on an upper deck ran screaming
for help, her clothing aflame with a burst of fire that had
darted up at her through a chute. These cries, combined
with the ominous notes of the fire gong, brought a dra-
matic stillness throughout the vessel.
The passengers looked at one another in horror, then
broke in a wild stampede to find their children. In the first
moments of that awful scramble, dozens were trampled to
insensibility.
n6 DISASTER!
There were many places where the ship could be beached
or pulled alongside a dock, but Captain Schaick chose to
make a run for the shoals off distant Biker's Island. Un-
heeding as a sleepwalker, the hell ship kept to her course.
Mate Flanagan and a half dozen fumbling deckhands
got out the fire hose, but with the force of the water it
parted all along its length. They made no further effort to
control the spreading inferno, but fled for safety, knock-
ing down passengers who got in their way.
Three minutes after Captain Schaick had acknowledged
the fire, a column of flame and smoke had vaulted thirty
feet above the pilot house. Passengers were trapped for-
ward, aft and below. Those on the af tdecks were lashed by
flames bent backward under pressure of a headwind fanned
by the fifteen-mile-an-hour speed of the ship.
Engineer Frank Conklin, with fire licking at his cloth-
ing, was driven from his post in the engine room, leaving
no one to heed the signals from the pilot house. The coal
passers stuck a few minutes more before joining the mad
rush for life. The vessel was now running wild, a flame-
sheeted monster with Death the engineer.
Screaming humanity swathed in fire began leaping into
the river from all parjts of the vessel. Three little girls,
human torches, went overboard together. Some halted at
the rails, fearing the water more than the fire. The pursu-
ing tugs fell farther behind as they stopped to rescue
victims.
Still the blazing ship kept to her course, her boilers fed
by burning decks.
Passengers tore at the life preservers, fastened to the
walls with wire, only to have them fall apart. Granulated
cork spilled through their rotted covers and sifted down
onto the river where it strangled victims gasping for air.
The few who managed to put on the jackets sank on hit-
ting the water.
Crowds jammed against the ten lifeboats, inadequate to
HOLIDAY HOLOCAUST 1 17
accommodate all even had they been accessible, but these,
too, were lashed on with wire.
Suddenly a long moan went up- the supplication of the
doomed confronted by a vision of hope. The trim yacht
Candida came down the river dead ahead. Imploring
women held out their babies. Men shouted hoarsely for it
to come alongside. But the craft wheeled away in a wide
detour. Her skipper explained later he thought it best to
keep clear of the tugs and send a launch from a distance.
Women fell on their knees before the pilot house and
beseeched the determined captain in the name of God to
stop. Men cursed him. One father, crazed by the loss of his
child, drew a revolver and fired at Schaick, but missed.
Suddenly all three decks collapsed in a cloud of smoke
and sparks, trapping hundreds in their infernal embrace.
Those who died quickly were fortunate. A hundred more
slid off into the river.
Nature's law of replacement asserted itself when a new
life was born to this world of flame. A few smoke-laden
gasps and the baby was dead.
As the ship headed across the channel between Riker's
and North Brother islands, it struck a rock and began to
sink. Up to now everything had been done wrong. But at
last the insane flight was ended, allowing the pursuing
craft to catch up. These quickly formed a circle about the
ship while a fireboat reduced the flames to smoke.
Tugmen climbed aboard and began passing the survivors
over the rail. In those final moments, a young shout rose
above the hiss of the smoldering embers. People saw the
figure of a curly-haired boy shinnying up the flagstaff
away from the red-hot coals. He hung there a moment,
then dropped the last of four hundred youngsters to die.
By midnight 611 bodies were laid out on the grass; 400
were still in the water. Coal carts, vans and delivery wagons
were pressed into service. Soon morgues all over New
York, Harlem and the Bronx were choked with bodies.
n8 DISASTER!
Boathouses and police stations were clogged. And still they
kept coming.
For days afterward the river continued to give up its
dead. But some were carried away by the current, never to
be found.
Hardly a house in St. Mark's parish was without an em-
blem of death on the door. Some bore many. Pastor Haas
lost his wife and daughter; Frank Perditsky, the lad whose
report of the fire had brought only rebuke, lost his mother,
sister and brother.
For the wholesale burials and for those left without
means of support, a fund of $124,000 was raised. Those
unidentifiable from the action of flames were buried in a
common grave.
"Why did this disaster happen? A coroner's jury listened
to 1,000 pages of testimony in an effort to learn the facts
and fix the blame. The revelations resulted in sweeping re-
forms in the name of safety that remain today.
Captain Schaick, beset by savage criticism, gave many
reasons for not beaching his ship sooner or taking advan-
tage of one of the docks. In one place the water was too
deep. In another, it would have set lumber yards and oil
tanks afire.
The consensus, however, was that laxity began further
back than the men in charge of the ship. The indifference
and negligence of the owners, the Knickerbocker Steam-
boat Company, and that of the U. S. Steamboat Inspection
Service in the New York district had inscribed the dread
handwriting on the wall.
General James A. Dumont of the inspection service ad-
mitted that the life preservers hadn't been thoroughly in-
spected since they were put aboard at the time of the
Slocwm's commissioning. Henry Lundberg, who claimed to
have inspected the ship before the fatal excursion, was
found to have had only four months* experience. His in-
spection had been confined to poking an occasional lifebelt
with a stick. Nothing had been done about the fire hose.
HOLIDAY HOLOCAUST
A fantastic sidelight developed from the disclosure that
Dne concern making life preservers 'was inserting seven-
bach cast-iron bars in each cork block to bring the belts up
to the required -weight.
Of the crew, Flanagan turned out to be a former iron
worker, unlicensed as a mate. The remainder of the men
-were truck drivers, laborers and dock workers who knew
nothing of emergency measures at sea.
After three hours* and forty minutes 5 deliberation, a
coroner's jury found that eleven men should be held under
bond on charges of manslaughter in the first degree. These
were the president, secretary and five stockholders of the
Knickerbocker Company, Captain Schaick, Commodore
John A. Pease of the Knickerbocker fleet, Mate Flanagan
and Inspector Lundberg.
A year later Captain Schaick was sentenced to ten years
in prison for criminal negligence. But all the others suc-
ceeded in escaping responsibility for deaths fixed at 938 by
the inspection service and 1,031 by the New York police
one of the most appalling of all maritime disasters.
San Francisco:
City of Courage
By Felix Rjesenberg, Jr.
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., April 18, 1906 Just
after 5:15 on the morning of April 18, 1906, San Fran-
cisco was rocked by the mightiest terrestrial upheaval in
California since the prehistoric birth of San Francisco Har-
bor. The earth shifted for 300 miles along an ancient fault
that crossed San Francisco.
As day broke over the High Sierra, thousands of half-
clad people rushed into the streets to cower in small groups.
They had been startled by a tremor lasting two minutes.
Glass, chandeliers, crockery and bric-a-brac smashed when
houses shifted and flimsy shacks collapsed. Sleepers awoke
as if from a nightmare; some were thrown from their beds,
and people already abroad were brought to their knees.
Large fissures opened in Van Ness Avenue; streetcar tracks
on Market were twisted; East Street wharves bent out of
line; all lights went out.
Bums sleeping on the steps of the City Hall were buried
under tons of ground concrete as columns buckled and
sent the great dome down on the street. Buildings listed at
crazy angles along many streets; the Spanish tower on the
Ferry Building seemed about to topple. The man-made
land over old Yerba Buena Cove suffered the heaviest dam-
age from the shaking of the earth. The entire business sec-
tion settled; shattering noises were heard inside deserted
office buildings, and warning puffs of smoke showed in
fifty different blocks.
Reprinted, in condensed form, from ike book Golden Gate by "Felix Rjesenberg,
Jr., by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; copyright 1940 by Helix Rtesen-
berg.Jr.
IZO I
SAN FRANCISCO: CITY OF COURAGE 121
From the East Bay and the harbor's islands the city was
seen to burst into flame, half an hour before daylight. The
hissing of broken gas jets and electrical connections was
followed almost instantly by yellow flashes on the roofs of
buildings at the tip of the peninsula. "Tire!" dread cry of
gold-rush San Francisco, was heard in saloons and boarding
houses north and south of Market Street. Blazes broke out
in many places and dense smoke began spreading fanlike
before a westerly breeze.
Fire engines clanged down Market and Mission streets
from all over the city, pushing into the billow of smoke
that was piling up around warehouses, factories, chan-
dleries and slop shops. Stupefied men tumbled from flop
houses to help firemen connect hoses; seamen carted heavy
chests thrown from windows, and drunks were hauled out
of the path of the growing conflagration.
In the produce district frenzied horses broke away from
carts and stampeded through the narrow streets, their cries
rising above the human yells and shrieks. Firemen felt
their hair singeing and bawled for water. Smoke was suffo-
cating and blinding them. "Open the valves! Water!" The
heat was becoming unbearable. Steadily they were pushed
back. "For God's sake, water!"
But there was no water! Mains had been broken in the
quake, and 80,000 gallons were washing away!
Helpless, the fighters gave way before the hot, choking
gusts. In half an hour all downtown San Francisco was a
torrent of flame. No one doubted that the fire would con-
sume the entire city.
Hapless people from the Barbary Coast cheered crazily,
running toward the shop district; fire was the friend of the
poor. Prostitutes poured out of Morton Alley, some of
them with their scant clothes aflame. Muddled men and
women were trapped in darkened ways along Pacific Street.
A retreating army pushed through the financial section,
headed up California Street to the safety of Nob JEll.
In Chinatown, gongs beat wildly and a yellow horde
122 DISASTER!
surged toward the waterfront. Italians and Irish from
Telegraph Hill joined the Chinese on East Street, tumbling
with them under the dank floors of piers where joss gods
and crucifixes were fastened side by side.
From Fisherman's Wharf to China Basin, vessels were
cast off from their docks and towed into deep water. The
fireboats Active and Leslie moved in to send streams of salt
water over pier sheds and warehouses, through the clouds
of black smoke. Naval craft were worked alongside the
bent wharves, landing sailors and marines from Vallejo and
Yerba Buena Island.
Tens of thousands moved westward toward the Presidio
and the ocean, or south along the peninsula. Parents dragged
crying children, together with parrots, canaries and cats;
dogs whelped at their heels. Household goods were lashed
to sewing machines, toy express wagons and baby carriages.
Men and women trying to move against the crowd to
find lost ones were trampled along with paintings, tapes-
tries, clothes and furniture.
By mid-morning the fire was far out of control. General
Funston, in command at the Presidio, ordered his soldiers
to use dynamite, but the flames swept over the demolished
areas, the terrific heat starting new blazes ahead. Equally
ineffective were the hundreds of gallons of sewer water
that firemen tossed on buildings. South of Market the fire
ate through the tightly packed shacks of workers, march-
ing furiously toward the Palace Hotel. The resultant squall
kindled near-by fruit and print shops, blustering on to gut
the slender Pacific Mutual Building, the city's first sky-
scraper. The financial and retail districts were doomed.
Soon Chinatown would be ravaged.
Mobs retreating from the downtown cauldron suddenly
saw black smoke rising over Hayes Valley, far from the
major fire. Before noon that shanty-crammed part of town
was a blazing geyser 100 feet high. The new fire was
fanned north toward the original conflagration. It had
SAN FRANCISCO: CITY OF COURAGE 123
been started by a woman whose defective chimney caught
while she was cooking breakfast.
By late afternoon San Francisco was hidden below a
thick mephitic smudge. From tinder it came the noise of
burning timber, the crash of entire structures. The Grant,
Kohl, Parrot, Call, Monadnock and Examiner buildings
had been razed. Beams were twisted, cast-iron columns
went plummeting to basements, and tiles blackened. Cor-
rugated-iron houses melted like lard; bricks split and car
wheels became puddles of molten metal The scorching
wind from the great fire was felt in the East Bay. Cinders
fell for miles around the city, and wild animals as far
away as the Sierra foothills were made nervous by the
smell.
The first night brought new horror. Tired and dirty
men stumbled into the camps with word of the terrible
scene downtown. The Palace Hotel had gone after a brave
fight. The twelve-story Flood Building, the most massive
office structure in the city, was demolished, together with
hundreds of other landmarks. Men and women had met
gruesome deaths everywhere; hotels had become biers;
swarms of rats were being chased ahead of the fire.
Through the night the encampments swelled with new
refugees. Exhausted people dumped their few belongings
and rushed from group to group, making frantic inquiries
about lost persons. In the dark, rumors began to spread. It
was the end of the world. A man said he had seen wireless
reports: Manhattan Island was submerged; Chicago had
slid into Lake Michigan; the entire Pacific Coast was afire.
The word was passed along and exaggerated. A wild-eyed
man, wet with red flesh seared across his face, stumbled
through the camps shrieking: "The Lord has sent it! The
Lord!"
On Wednesday morning the entire city was in danger
of being annihilated. The Mission fire had divided, a great
arm leaped across Market Street to join the conflagration
124 DISASTER!
whose smoke rolled up Nob Hill* Mobilized citizens were
racing in and out of mansions, cutting valuable paintings
from their frames, and stowing them in rolls on wagons.
Costly antiques and rare books were trampled in the rush.
The heat was forcing the throng back; fire enveloped the
half-built Fairmont Hotel. As the hot tempest blew the
plateau clear, San Francisco dug in to make a final stand
against that convulsive scud of flame. Van Ness Avenue
was chosen as the last boundary. There the fire must end.
By the time buildings on the slope down to the wide
avenue began burning, loaded field pieces had been dragged
in from the Presidio. They were mounted on the west side
of the street to command the houses and lots opposite.
Caches of dynamite were planted by soldiers; policemen
forced the crowds back; firemen wet down the area with
the last of 250,000 gallons of sewage.
Before the fire was within six blocks of them, a scorch-
ing wave of heat made the gunners cringe. New volunteers
were mobilized. The torrent of flame must be stopped at
Van Ness. Men and women cowered in awe at the spectacle
of roasting houses. The stoutest structures buildings of
brick with steel reinforcements did not last five minutes,
while frame houses writhed before the flames got to them.
Nob Hill black, smoking rose in the distance. The fire
was four blocks away.
Asbestos roofs on the far side of Van Ness began to curl.
Trickles of smoke showed on the sides of houses next to the
fighters; the wood was too hot to touch. Gunners ducked
behind the artillery, their hair singed. The noise of falling
brands and the blustery wail of driven smoke deadened
other noises. The fuming, roaring thing loomed up so large
and close that people were in partial darkness. As the
flames swept into buildings three blocks away, the order
came: "Fire!"
The guns barked. The shot crashed into the blaze. At
that instant terrific explosions lifted burning brands sky-
ward, showered men with a hail of red-hot cinders. Soldiers
SAN FRANCISCO: CITY OF COURAGE 125
fired again and began retreating with their heavy field
pieces. From the Pacific Heights slopes they fired new
rounds.
Was the fire halting? No one could tell in that cloud of
black mist. The shooting continued.
Suddenly people were pointing south; the smoke was
turning before a freshening wind. The thick fumes were
breaking to show fringes of the fire at the curb of Van
Ness. The inferno was off, raging toward Sutter Street,
where it would meet the other arm of the blaze and burn
itself out. The fighters raced opposite it, hugging one an-
other, shouting that soon the fire would be over; people
with homes on Franklin Street, one block away, wept and
offered prayers of thanks. Houses smoked along Van Ness,
some of them caught; but the citizens and soldiers had the
fire under control. The mob was cheering wildly.
Then came cries from back on Van Ness, frantic calls
by persons pointing toward the north and east. The fire
had taken a new turn. It was snapping down toward the
waterfront of North Beach, howling back in the direction
of Telegraph Hill.
Through the day that hot wave peeled off false faces and
demolished homes in a wide swath toward Russian Hill. It
roared at Fisherman's Wharf and missed by only half a
block, having, as the Chronicle stated, "found a more de-
licious morsel in the shape of the gas plant at the foot of
Powell Street." A gigantic explosion in the sky, like some
bursting meteor, sent angry, voracious tongues whistling
over and around Russian Hill.
The fire approached Telegraph Hill from three sides.
Waiting to battle it were Italians and Irishmen who had
returned after evacuating their women and children. They
blasted it away on one side with dynamite; on another,
buckets of sea water held off the flames. Sweating, cursing,
praying men flayed at the licking blaze with brooms,
blankets and boards, pnly slowly did they beat it back.
Sudden shouts called the fighters to a third front. A
iz6 DISASTER!
new fire was climbing the hill. It gained. Then men citing
to racks, dumping bucket after bucket, watching the heat
evaporate the water. Brooms caught fire and houses were
smoldering. Soon the water was exhausted and the men
were ready to quit. Flames had enveloped the base of the
pinnacle; hope seemed gone.
Then Italians appeared, cheering hysterically as they
rolled out barrels of wine. Five hundred gallons of the red
juice were sloshed on roofs, bedding and blankets. Quickly
the grapes checked the flames. "Viva vino! Viva vino!" the
happy people shouted.
Late in the second day the blaze was being beaten in the
Mission, far out toward Dolores, and fire boats lay off Pier
27 showering water on flames that were tearing toward the
United States bonded warehouse in the block bounded by
Telegraph Hill, Sansome and Battery streets. There, stopped
by stout stone walls, ended San Francisco's great fire of
1906.
"We are determined to restore to the nation its chief
port on the Pacific," Mayor Schmitz wired President
Theodore Roosevelt before the ashes had cooled. The en-
tire nation responded to the disaster. Word was flashed
from Chicago pledging a million dollars. E. E. Harriman
placed his railroad at the disposal of the city, giving orders
that passenger limiteds were to take to the sidings when
fast San Francisco-bound freights appeared. California,
Oregon and Washington coast ports dispatched steamers
loaded with provisions and rescue workers.
But San Francisco seemed doomed. Vans and wagons
blocked the roads out of the metropolis as 200,000 people
fled. Railroads, giving free transportation, were packed,
and steamships with other thousands waited to sail. Those
with no place to go stood in mile-long bread lines and slept
tinder trees.
Rescue parties stirred through the ruins, coming upon
hundreds of charred remains, answering the dying calls of
SAN FRANCISCO: CITY OF COURAGE 127
men and women pinned under hot wreckage for three
days. Huge funerals were held all over the city, many
being buried in Portsmouth Square.
Looting had begun before the last flames were out; but
it proceeded on a grand scale as armies of tramps con-
verged on San Francisco aboard the fast rescue freights.
Bums took their places in the bread lines, filched anything
they could lay hands on; vandals plundered deserted
houses and even robbed the Red Cross. Blood showed on
the broken window panes of jewelry stores where robbers
had put their bare fists through.
Meanwhile the nation read details of the disaster and
was awed by the gargantuan losses. The size the western
port had attained suddenly dawned on other cities. For
months, pamphlets, books and lectures described the horri-
fying disaster. Four square miles of San Francisco lay
charred; 28,000 buildings were demolished; 200,000 peo-
ple had been left homeless. The total damage was in excess
of a billion dollars. Four hundred and fifty-two were
counted dead. As many more were thought to have per-
ished unknown in Chinatown, the Barbary Coast, Mission
hovels and East Street dives.
When a group of architects, engineers, contractors and
bankers stood near the summit of Twin Peaks and looked
down on the wreck-bestrewn peninsula that reached away
to the north and west, it looked like a great battlefield
filled with maimed and unburied monsters. Through bi-
noculars those sobered men were picking out the jagged
walls of topless structures, pointing to many demolished
sections. From under a haze of mortar dust, the paneless
windows of gutted buildings stared back at them. The city
of San Francisco was dead.
Large blueprints were stretched on the grass, the D. H.
Burnham Plan of 1904. It proposed a "Paris of America,"
a beautiful metropolis to cost $50,000,000 and take half
iz8 DISASTER!
a century to complete. The men continued to scan the
desolate vista below. It was difficult even for the most im-
aginative to picture Burnham's San Francisco of terraced
hills, wide boulevards, white symmetrical buildings, and
many parks. Could the distinguished engineer's dream be
realized?
The men argued. With thousands homeless and business
at a standstill, each day of delay was lessening the chances
for ultimate recovery. It would take months, even years,
to obtain land deeds necessary for changing the direction
of streets. Property owners were certain to balk. Financial
backers would never agree. The cost was too great, And
the city must be rebuilt immediately.
From a week of day-and-night consultations there
emerged a modification of the ambitious Burnham plan.
The new San Francisco would be an earthquake-proof and
fire-proof metropolis of modern, clean buildings. Streets
would be widened where possible, the waterfront enlarged
and a great Civic Center constructed. But the city would
retain its originality of outline.
Spirited merchants moved into their wrecked shops,
cleared away the heaviest part of the debris, and posted
hopeful signs. Restaurants told citizens to "Eat, drink and
be merry, for tomorrow we may have to go to Oakland.*'
Bankers opened offices in their homes and many rented
space at "gold-rush rates."
As the first foundations for new structures were laid,
newspapers announced that "great buildings are to rise
from the ashes." Unlimited credit had been extended to
the brave city and many were returning to lend a hand in
the restoration. San Francisco, the citizens shouted, would
be even greater than before the fire.
The spirit of the city was amazing. No amount of ad-
versity seemed capable of sinking it. As early as December
of 1906, when buildings had barely been started, San Fran-
cisco shouted a defiant challenge to reports that New Or-
SAN FRANCISCO: CITY OF COURAGE 129
leans was being considered for an exposition site to celebrate
the 1915 opening of the Panama Canal. At a downtown
mass meeting thousands stumbled through cluttered streets.
In two hours $4,000,000 was pledged to an exposition
fund, $500 a second!
By 1911 there remained scant trace of the fire. (San
Franciscans take exception to outsiders' calling the 1906
visitation "the quake" instead of "the fire. 3 * Had there
been nothing more than an earthquake, few would re-
member it.) New buildings lined old Market Street and
climbed higher up the hills to make the city rise off the
peninsula like some great concrete and steel fortress. Never
had San Francisco been so new. An Embarcadero came to
replace historic East Street, and great piers jutted into the
bay, heavy with returning commerce. Population was re-
turning to its March, 1906, figure; people concentrated
on forgetting the disaster.
On the night of April 20, sitting in the offices of the
New York Sun, Will Irwin had written the city's obituary.
The next day his article appeared under the head: "The
City That Was."
"The old San Francisco is dead," he wrote. "The gayest,
lightest-hearted, most pleasure-loving city of the western
continent, and in many ways the most interesting and ro-
mantic, is a horde of refugees living among ruins. It may
be rebuilt, it probably will; but those who have known
that peculiar city by the Golden Gate, have caught its
flavor of the Arabian Nights, feel that it can never be the
same. It is as though a pretty, frivolous woman had passed
through a great tragedy. She survives, but she is sobered
and different. If it rises out of the ashes it must be a mod-
ern city, much like other cities, and without its old atmos-
phere. . . ."
Now newspaperman Rufus Steele, in an article entitled
"The City That Is," advised Will Irwin to "dry his tears."
130 DISASTER!
"Of a truth the things which he meant by 'the old San
Francisco* did not die and are not dead," wrote Steele. "By
the Market Street parade, by the Poodle Dog, by the wall
pictures at Coppa's, the Orpheum gallery, by the honor of
Metia, by Sanguinetti's, by Italian opera, by Lotta's Foun-
tain, by Fillmore Street on Saturday night, by the potent
signs of these 'the old San Francisco* is very much alive ."
"The Mine's Afire!"
By James Johnson
CHERRY, ILL., November 13, 1909 Six bales of
hay were loaded into a coal car, and a husky laborer rolled
it out of the barn. The rain had stopped, but mud stood
shoe-top deep beside the narrow track, and cinders packed
between the ties were soggy underfoot. Cold wind slapped
the man's baggy overalls against his legs as he pushed the
high load into a waiting elevator cage. He signaled, cables
whined, and the car disappeared.
Three hundred feet down, a mule driver hitched the car
onto a train of six others and hauled them down the busy
passage. It was darker than usual in the mine. A power
line was broken, so obsolete oil lamps hung from cross-
beams alongside useless electric bulbs. Near an airshaft, the
driver switched onto a spur where the car would wait
until someone got around to taking it down to a stall-
filled room on the third level where sixty mules were
stabled between shifts. He gave the load a final shove and
went on with his work.
The hay coasted a way before stopping. No one saw the
high pile of fodder roll under a low beam, tip an open-
flame lamp and splash burning oil over the straw.
Months later, experts investigating the Cherry Mine
disaster which shocked the nation in 1909 pieced this
story together and shuddered. A more devilish human cre-
matory could not have been devised; oil to ignite the blaze,
hay for tinder, dry timbers for kindling, and countless
tons of coal to feed the furnace. The catastrophe seemed
even more horrible because it need never have happened.
Scene of the accident, one of the grimmest in U. S. coal-
mining history, was Cherry, Illinois, a company town
132 DISASTER!
owned by the St. Paul Company, fuel supplier to the Chi-
cago, Minneapolis & St. Paul Railroad. There was irony in
the drab settlement's colorful name. Stark gray towers ris-
ing above the mine shaft were banked with black moun-
tains of coal. Four hundred houses, a few false-front
stores, and seventeen saloons lined the rutted streets. Most
of Cherry's 2,000 residents were recent immigrants from
Italy, France, Ireland and the Slavic countries. The miners'
language differences gave them little in common except
able-bodied youth, children, and employment in the na-
tion's most hazardous industry.
The St. Paul mine was modern. It had been open for
four years and was considered one of the nation's safest.
When the roof in its original workings became dangerous,
they were abandoned and lower veins tapped. The new
sections contained solid timbering. Huge fans pushed fresh
air below. Heavy pumps kept tunnels dry. Two steel cages
operated between the surface and the second level. Below
the main shaft, a smaller hoist had been improvised to
serve bottom workings 500 feet into the earth.
At 1:30 on the afternoon of November i3th, a miner
smelled smoke and ran to where a hay-loaded car stood
burning on the track. His shouts were answered by several
workmen. The blaze was not big enough to cause much
excitement. They pushed the car down the passage to an
air shaft and tried to hurl the smoldering bales into a
water-filled sump at its bottom. Strong drafts fanned and
scattered the straw. Several miners went for buckets of
water. Hoses were pulled from racks, mismatched connec-
tions wrenched together and valve wheels spun. But the
pressure was low, and only a trickle came from the noz-
zles. A wide circle of timbers caught fire. The workmen
beat flaming wood with sweaty shirts, spread burning coal
dust with shovels until the heat became unbearable. Tun-
nel walls cracked, releasing inflammable gas. The miners
fled in panic. A dreadful cry echoed through the corridors.
MINE'S AFIRE!" 133
"The mine's afire!"
Some of the 300 men on the second level heard the
shouts, dropped their picks, and raced for the elevators.
Workers in faraway galleries were unaware of their peril
until smoke drifted to them minutes after an alarm could
have saved their lives.
Miner John Phillips left a hand drill sticking in the coal
face and started toward the lift. A crew of eight men
rushed past him going the wrong way and insisted that he
follow them. At least twenty miners sat in a row along
the wall waiting resignedly for death. Engulfed by dense
smoke, men sagged to the floor, clawing at their throats.
Others ran pell-mell down the tracks, tripped and bashed
their heads on ties. Cries like the shrieks of wild animals
split the air. Phillips crawled through the passage on his
hands and knees, using the rails for a guide. He grew
faint, gasped for breath, then remembered his tobacco
pouch. Dumping its contents, Phillips pulled the sack over
his nose and mouth like a mask and tied the drawstrings
behind his head. The quick-witted inspiration saved two
lives. Within 100 feet of the hoist, Phillips found a friend
unconscious, and he pulled him along to safety.
Eight trapper boys were in the mine opening and clos-
ing small wooden doors that channeled fresh air into
rooms .where the miners dug coal. Most of them were kids
under sixteen who had lied about their age to get their
names on the payroll. Young Jimmy McGill ran to his dad
when the fire started, and together they sought escape.
The boy clung to his father's hand until he could walk no
further.
"Go on, Pa. Leave me here," Jimmy pleaded as he
slumped to the floor.
McGill pulled off his belt, strapped the limp body to his
back, and struggled forward until he neared the cage.
Within sight he stumbled and fell. Before losing conscious-
ness, he yelled for help. The cries were heard* Two nearly
134 DISASTER!
lifeless forms were picked up and hoisted to the surface.
On the third level, 185 feet below the raging fire, al-
most 200 men were entombed. A cage tender pressed the
signal button without response. His elevator was controlled
from above. He could do nothing for the frantic mob that
crowded around him, pleading: "Take us up. For God's
sake, take us up!"
When the miners realized the hoist would never move,
they swarmed over its cage and began to scale the shaft's
perpendicular walls. The tender followed, clawing the pol-
ished face for handholds, stretching his arms upward, bal-
ancing on brittle juts of coal. Smoke and heat from the
fire directly above blinded and strangled the climbers.
They screamed and slipped back down the wall, clutching
at anything they touched, dragging others after them to
form a mound of broken bodies at the bottom of the
shaft. A few miners and the tender managed to reach the
top. Heads and hands were gashed. Blood dripped from
their faces. Blisters swelled their skin. Lungs ^rere taxed to
bursting. Mine superintendent John Bundy found the men
climbing out of the shaft and guided them to the elevator.
Several minutes later he dropped dead of exhaustion.
On that windy afternoon, miners* wives were hanging
wash, sweeping back porches, nursing babies in rocking
chairs beside dirty windows. They glanced at the tall
structures that straddled the town and were stunned.
Black smoke blossomed over the mine. Frightened screams
ran from mouth to mouth along each street. In a few min-
utes, Cherry's whole population had gathered at the pit
mouth.
Among the first to arrive was the company physician, a
tall, calm young man, Dr. L, D. Howe. He moved swiftly
but gently among the frantic women. At the elevator he
stopped, turned slowly and called for volunteers. There
was a long silence, then a few stepped forward. Some were
miners, skilled in survival underground. Others were un-
"THE MINE'S AFIRE!" 135
trained. The town's postman, a clothier, a grocer, a livery
man from a neighboring village adjusted unfamiliar lamp-
caps to their heads. Alex Norberg, manager of the third
vein, joined Dr. Howe. He would lead half the party.
Fourteen men were lowered into the earth one lived
through the following hours.
At the second-level landing, the volunteers separated.
Scorching air whirled around them. Leaping flames singed
their faces. They stumbled over the corpses of mules and
men, searching the dark labyrinth until they heard a gasp,
a prayer, a curse. Stupefied miners were led or dragged to
the waiting hoist. Fists pounded the signal button, and the
cage slid upward. When the rescuers felt faint, they rose
to the surface for a breath of fresh air. Those who did not
realize their danger in time were overcome and dropped in
the darkness. Others wandered into rooms too near the
fire. Their lamps winked out; bodies pitched forward.
Lung-collapsing after-damp instantly claimed their lives.
Dr. Howe went down into the flaming pit seven times.
Once he had to be carried from the lift and revived. On
the last trip up, he passed Alex Norberg and his party in
a descending cage. The nearly exhausted physician waved
feebly. His greeting was returned with a lusty cheer
tribute for the twenty-five lives he had already saved.
At the surface, Dr. Howe went to the elevator control
house. Inside, a sweating engineer, John Cowling, had an-
swered the order of each vital bell since the fire started.
He was tense.
"John," Alex Norberg had said before he started down,
"pay strict attention to the signals. If the signals go
wrong we're lost."
Cowling listened for instructions from below. They
came quickly. Three bells "we are entering the elevator."
One bell "hoist away." Cowling started the car upward
and immediately received the four-bell signal "hoist
slowly." He moderated the rising car's speed until he
136 DISASTER!
heard one bell "stop." Two bells "lower away/' Three
bells Cowling could not believe his ears. Three bells had
no meaning. The men in the control house waited anx-
iously. Dr. Howe knew the danger. He could stand the
tension no longer and insisted the car be brought up.
The engineer's hand tightened on the lever. He tried to
imagine what was happening 300 feet below him. Perhaps
the signal button had been struck repeatedly in panic.
Broken lines might be sending garbled rings. But what if
the men were off the cage? He could not pull away their
only means of escape. Norberg had told him to pay Strict
attention. The doctor pleaded. Three . . . four . . . five
minutes passed. Cowling jammed the lever forward.
When the lift appeared at the top of the shaft, John
Cowling buried his face in his hands. The crowd gasped,
women screamed and fainted. Four men lay on the roof
where they had climbed to escape the blistering heat.
They had suffocated. Eight men, including Norberg:, were
slumped against the cage's sides, bodies twisted into gro-
tesque positions of agony, clothing black and smoldering.
They had been roasted alive.
The hoists were repeatedly lowered. They returned
empty. No one dared go back into the inferno. No one
came out. Officials estimated 301 miners were trapped.
A miserable group of mothers and wives huddled to-
gether around the colliery. Babies were wrapped in shawls.
Children clung to full skirts. All of them stared at the
motionless elevators, waiting in dumb agony for a miracle
that never came. Night and a dreadful silence spread over
the town. In shadowed corners of sheet-metal buildings,
families sobbed and moaned. Torchlight flickered on tired,
grimy faces. Still waiting at dawn were the stricken wives
of Dominick Stefonelli, Olaf Sandeen, Joe Tinko, John
Donaldson, Frank Yagoginsky, Henry Stewart.
One street of squat bungalows had become "death row."
Out of thirty-three houses, only two were spared grief.
"THE MINE'S AFIRE!" 137
Smoke filled the sky above Cherry, Illinois. It dimmed the
sun and drifted out over the prairie a heavy shroud for
a town of the dead.
Flatcars loaded with 7,2OO-gallon tanks rolled in from
near-by towns. Pumps hammered all day Sunday pouring
tons of water into the shafts. It fell past the second level
without dampening the flames and flooded the bottom.
The fire raged on.
Late that night, workmen gathered around the mine's
six exits. Platforms of heavy planks and railroad ties were
built across each shaft's smoking mouth. Bystanders did
not fully realize what was being done until the wooden
covers were buried under mounds of wet sand. The mine
had been sealed.
Imaginations ran wild. Distraught wives were convinced
their husbands still lived but would soon suffocate without
air. Poison gas would fill every passage. Men would climb
to the surface and find no exit. At that moment, they
might be pounding on the timbers, screaming for help.
Mining engineers tried to explain. If the fire continued
to be nourished by oxygen it would burn forever. Water
could not reach it. It had to be smothered. Nothing could
be done until the flames died.
This reasoning was scientific, but few people understood
it. Undercurrents of dissatisfaction grew so strong that on
Monday a steel bucket was twice lowered into the flaming
pit. Mining inspectors, protected by asbestos suits and
breathing helmets, explored the depths. Their report was
discouraging. Deadly after-damp filled the corridors. Tim-
bers were burned, ceilings caved in, walls crumbled. There
were no bodies near the entries, and the experts believed
the men had rushed to far ends of veins where some air
might be found. Anxious voices asked the engineers if
there was a chance some still lived. They shook their heads
doubtfully. .One thing was sure. Fresh air would rekindle
the flames. The mine must be closed again.
138 DISASTER!
By late Tuesday, even the wives had given up. No man
could live so long in fire. None would be saved. Families
who had kept vigil at the mine entrances for four days
and three nights turned away in despair. Their pleas were
heartrending: "Give us our dead. Let us bury our dead/'
That evening a Polish miner, Leod "WinoHchie, ran out
of his house into the back yard, flattened himself on the
ground and listened. He jumped up and hollered: "There
are men alive down there!" People gathered around as he
explained the startling news. "My house is over the mine.
Three times we have been shaken. They are signaling with
dynamite."
Farmers at the edge of town confirmed his story. Muf-
fled rumblings came from the earth beneath their fields.
Everyone tried to guess what the booming meant. Some
reasoned that gas had collected in the galleries and been ig-
nited. They feared the mine was erupting and would de-
stroy itself. Others whispered their belief where worried
families would not hear. The doomed men were ending
their torture, deliberately blowing themselves up to escape
the miseries of slow death. It had happened in other mines.
But to frantic mothers and wives the explosions brought
new hope. Their loved ones still lived!
The crowd's temper changed. Indignation meetings
sprang up on every corner. There was talk of violence, of-
ficials were threatened. In saloons, miners pounded the bar
and swore they would take over the sealed shafts by force.
Sullen groups stood along the tracks on Wednesday
morning and watched two companies of state militia climb
off special trains. Soldiers with rifles and bayonets guarded
the colliery, padlocked the saloons, blocked roads, patroled
the streets. There were no outbreaks, but tension mounted
and Cherry rocked on the edge of rebellion.
By now, the outside world had heard of the disaster and
wanted to help. Special committees formed in many cities
to promote fund-raising campaigns, bazaars and concerts.
'THE MINE'S AFIRE!" 139
Churches and newspapers started collection drives. The
mayor of Cherry, the St. Paul Coal Company, and the
United Mine Workers of America formed a relief organi-
zation, Ernest P. Bicknell, national director of the Red
Cross, arrived to manage the spending of $100,000. Money,
food and clothing poured in. Municipal fire departments
provided crack squads with their own equipment, to be on
hand when needed. Six carloads of coffins from Chicago
were shunted onto a railroad siding. Every through train
brought more officials, reporters, relatives of bereaved fam-
ilies and thrill seekers to swell the town's already crowded
tent-city suburb. The entire nation waited and watched
Cherry, Illinois.
On Thursday the mine was opened.
Inspectors cautiously penetrated the corridors, examin-
ing ceilings, tapping charred timbers, testing the air. Fire-
men entered smoking chambers and played water on smol-
dering coal. Dead miners were piled like cordwood into
the elevator cages. A circus side-show tent erected near the
main shaft became the morgue. There the charred bodies
lay in long rows as the pitiful process of identification
began. Horse-drawn hearses shuttled endlessly between the
graveyard and town.
They found Sam Howard with a diary at his side. He
was twenty and would have married Mamie Robinson on
Christmas Day so wanted to leave word that she should
have his diamond ring. Sam kept on writing. He described
the tortures of hunger and thirst his party endured. They
had a "swell time" building paddlewheel-style fans to keep
noxious after-damp from closing in on them. Sunday eve-
ning, with a fan apiece to clear the way, they tried to make
the bottom where the air might be better. "We had to
come back," he noted simply. "We can't move front or
backward . . . What is a fellow going to do when he's
done the best he can?"
His last entry was written at 12:44 P.M. Monday.
140 DISASTER!
"Our lives are going .out. I think this is our last. We are
getting weak "
For two days, volunteers combed the deep recesses re-
covering bodies. They honked automobile horns and lis-
tened hopefully for human voices to call out over tinny
echoes. Experts agreed there would be no survivors, but
exploration continued. On Saturday afternoon, a full week
after the fire had started, a party searching the south entry
heard noises. Out of the gloom stumbled eight ghostly fig-
ures miners who had lived through a nightmare. They
told of twelve others, too weak to stand, who waited for
help at the end of the passage.
Heroes of the valiant story were George Eddy, assistant
mine manager, and night foreman Walter Waite. Seven
days before, they had found themselves cut off from the
main hoist and hurried toward a remote passage they be-
lieved safe from fire. Wandering groups of miners joined
them, asking for leadership. Twenty-one men banded to-
gether before Eddy and Waite reached the place where
they intended to make a last stand. Black damp followed
close behind them. Waite entered a room and was almost
overcome. He and Eddy gave urgent instructions. The
workmen obeyed. Stones, lumps of coal, clothing, empty
dynamite kegs were hastily piled into barricades to plug
the tunnel openings. Wet mine dust was plastered over the
walls, chinking every crack. The gas-proof brattices took
three exhausting hours to construct. When their work was
done, the miners wondered if the fresh-air chamber would
prove a refuge or a tomb.
Leaders maintained order. William Cleveland sang
hymns. John Lorimer conducted divine services in a rich
Scotch burr. "Keep up your hearts, boys," he encouraged.
"God is with us."
Sometimes the miners shouted. There was never any an-
swer. They called the roll each hour, then sat in silence. At
first there were lights, but precious oil soon burned away.
"THE MINE'S AFIRE!" 141
Time passed slowly in the pitch darkness. Nerves chafed
raw. Minds gradually sickened with the thought of being
buried alive.
George Eddy wrote a farewell note to his wife and three
children. All the miners composed and signed a letter say-
ing they did not blame anyone for the accident and be-
lieved everything had been done to save them.
By Saturday morning, some of the men were too ex-
hausted to move. One miner became hysterical and, before
he could be stopped, beat down part of the lifesaving wall.
He ran out into the darkness, and they heard him stumble
and fall. The barricade was painfully rebuilt.
Hours later a sentry pulled an ax-handle plug from the
air hole in one wall. He sniffed cautiously, took a deep
breath and yelled: "Fresh air!" Eight miners broke through
the barricade. They carried buckets and went out into the
corridor in search of water. None could be found. The
disappointment lessened their will to live. The exertion
weakened their feeble hearts. Suddenly they heard distant
sounds. Echoing footsteps gave them strength. They stum-
bled forward toward the oncoming lights. Their ordeal
was over! Twenty men had lived.
But no more survivors were found. In a few days, the
fires began smoldering again, and the search ended. Ce-
ment caps were laid over each exit. They were not re-
moved for months, but the Cherry mine was not forgotten.
In it, 259 men had died. In it, one of the most dramatic
mine disasters in industrial history had taken place. Pub-
lishers, clergymen, teachers the people asked why.
Their answer came from the inquest, from official and
private investigations. Not one report put its finger on
any major cause. The calamity was a result of minor over-
sight, slight carelessness. Fate linked them together and
murdered. Both miners and management were victims of
their own human neglect. The mine had been a model of
safety, but it was not safe enough.
142- DISASTER!
In 1909, more than four out of every thousand miners
were expected to die; thousands more would be injured.
The St. Paul Coal Company fire brought the hazards of
mining to public attention more dramatically than ever
before. Grisly pictures and pathetic stories had their effect.
Laws were enacted, inspections stiffened. Scientific devices
were invented and installed. Disasters decreased in num-
ber and intensity. The 259 miners who lost their lives in
the flaming pit below Cherry, Illinois, left a significant
legacy.
Sweatshop
Firetrap
By Louis W aid-man
NEW YORK, N.Y., March 25, 1911 On the after-
noon of March 25, 1911 a raw, unpleasant Saturday
afternoon I was deeply engrossed in a book at a reading
table in the old Astor Library on Lafayette Street when I
suddenly became aware of the sounds of fire engines racing
past the building. Along with several others in the build-
ing, I ran out to see what was happening, and followed the
crowds of people to the scene of the fire.
A few blocks away, the Asch Building at the corner of
Washington Place and Greene Street was ablaze. When we
arrived at the scene, the police had thrown a cordon
around the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting
the blaze. The eighth, ninth and tenth stories of the build-
ing were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames.
Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic
of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company
was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped.
Horrified and helpless, the crowds looked up at the burn-
ing building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened
windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to
the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp.
This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occa-
sionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by
pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair
ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets
were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.
Condensed from the book Labor Lawyer, published at $3.50 by E. P. Dutton
& Co., Inc., New York, N. Y., copyright 1941 by Louis Waldman.
143
144 DISASTER!
The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women
were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms
of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines.
As darkness came on, the fire was brought under control
and by word of mouth the details of the dreadful story
spread through the East Side.
The Triangle Waist Company, owned by Max Blanck
and Isaac Harris, was a non-union shop which the previ-
ous year had stubbornly held out against demands of the
Waistmakers* Union. One of the conditions which the
union had won during a recent strike called for a half-
day's work on Saturdays. And so while all other waist fac-
tories in New York were closed that afternoon, the Tri-
angle factory was open with a full shift of about 850
workers, most of them young girls.
The factory had woefully inadequate sanitary facilities,
so that it was necessary for the workers to leave the plant
in order to reach the toilets. As a precaution against what
the employers called "interruption of work," the heavy
steel door which led to the hall and stairway had been
locked. Piles of oil-soaked waste lay under the sewing
machines. A carelessly tossed cigarette or match had ig-
nited these piles of waste material and the fires leaped
from machine to machine, converting the overcrowded
plant into a roaring holocaust. The girls, sitting at the
machines, were packed in tightly, row upon row, chairs
back to back. In the face of such crowding, escape was
virtually impossible, and panic must have been instanta-
neous.
One of the owners of the Triangle "Waist Company
who was in the building at the outbreak of the fire left it
hurriedly without unlocking the exits, thus dooming the
girls inside. Nor had the girls ever been permitted to use
the passenger elevators, due to the owners* fear that they
might carry out stolen material.
When the fire was over the toll of the Triangle disaster
was 147 killed and burned to death and several hundred
SWEATSHOP FIRETRAP 145
suffering from serious burns. Police and firemen on enter-
ing the charred building discovered bodies literally burned
to the bone. Blackened skeletons were found bending over
machines. In one of the narrow elevator shafts of the
building they found lifeless bodies piled six stories high.
A few days later the Waistmakers' Union arranged for
a mass funeral of the dead, since most of the victims had
been burned or mangled beyond recognition. City officials
prohibited any demonstration, but plans for the funeral
were carried out nevertheless. More than 100,000 workers
marched in a silent cortege behind the flower-laden hearses.
The streets through which the sad procession passed were
draped in black and purple; East Side places of business
were closed for the day.
Together with thousands of others I stood on the side-
walk and watched the funeral procession go by. A mass
emotion of sorrow and despair was felt everywhere on the
East Side that day. But in the weeks that followed, these
emotions gave way to angry questioning and a determina-
tion that a similar tragedy must never take place in New
York again. We all felt that the workers who had died in
the plant of the Triangle Waist Company were not so
much the viqtims of a holocaust of flame as they were the
victims of stupid greed and criminal exploitation.
Shortly after the mass funeral, a crowded meeting was
held at Cooper Union to consider the tragedy and its
meaning for the working people of New York. The his-
toric basement auditorium of Cooper Union was jammed
long before the meeting was scheduled to open. I have
been to many a. meeting in that auditorium since and I
have addressed many meetings there myself, but never
have I witnessed anything remotely comparable to that one.
The audience was silent. There was none of the friendly
chatter which is usually heard before a meeting starts.
There were no greetings, no one smiled.
The families of the Triangle victims were there, re-
minding us, if any of us needed reminding, of the recent
146 DISASTER!
tragedy. The finest orators of the New York labor move-
ment were there, among them Meyer London, later to be-
come the first Socialist congressman from New York City.
But more memorable, indeed unforgettable, was another
speaker whose oratorical powers and great personal charm
impressed me as perhaps no other man has impressed me
since. He commanded the breathless attention of the au-
dience with his first words.
Quietly, out of the memory of the days when he him-
self had been a factory worker, the speaker recounted life
in the factories: the long hours, unsanitary conditions,
fire, hazards, unguarded and dangerous machines. And sit-
ting there in that packed auditorium we all felt that this
man was the spokesman of our unexpressed thoughts, a
voice for the voiceless.
He spoke of the law of the sea by which the master of
a vessel is always the last to leave a sinking ship. But the
masters of industry, he said, were bound by no such hon-
orable code. The masters of the Triangle Waist Company
had locked the steel doors of the factory, had locked them
and left the women and children, the crew of the factory,
to their dreadful fate. The Triangle fire was the epitome
of a thousand similar, if smaller, tragedies which had oc-
curred over a period of many years. The life of the worker
was constantly attended by fire, disease, mutilation under
machines without safety devices. And now, as a result of
the Triangle tragedy, we must make the cause of New
York's workers known to everyone, to other workers, to
city officials, to the legislators in Albany, to the country
at large. . . .
America would listen to us if only we could find the
voice with which to declare our wrongs and the will to
declare them earnestly and constantly. Sympathetic edi-
torials in the newspapers were good, but not enough. The
governor must act, the legislature must live up to its re-
puted function of truly representing the people. The
speaker ended with these words: "The greatest monument
SWEATSHOP FIRETRAP 147
we can raise to the memory of our 147 dead is a system of
legislation which will make such deaths hereafter impos-
sible."
The audience stood and cheered when he concluded,
and since I had not caught his name when he was intro-
duced I turned to my neighbor and asked who the orator
might be.
Incredulously, the man replied: "Do you mean to tell
me you've never heard Morris Hillquit before?"
Hillquit had been an immigrant factory worker, com-
ing to America as a young man and working in the sweat-
shops of New York and, like so many other American
emancipators, determined to get out and speak for those
who could only stammer or remain silent. "Worker, attor-
ney, orator, theoretician, historian, Hillquit spoke and
pleaded for a future where people would not be mutilated
by machines, where girls would not leap to their deaths on
bloody pavements, where money -would not be superior to
human lives, no matter how humble or obscure.
Others at that meeting at Cooper Union might have
stirred the audience with demagogic oratory into an angry
destructive mob whose actions might have been spectac-
ular but fleeting. Hillquit, however, galvanized us all into
public energy ready to work. The fight for more humane
labor legislation was launched and in the weeks and years
that followed I knew that the deaths of the 147 girls in
the Triangle fire were not to be an utterly meaningless
catastrophe.
Titanic
By Jack Lawrence
ATLANTIC OCEAN, April 14, 1912 Frank Deu-
prey and I were alone in the Ship News office at the Bat-
tery when the Titanic invitations arrived. A boy brought
them down from the White Star offices on lower Broad-
way. The envelopes containing the invitations were about
eight inches square and had been addressed by hand like
wedding invitations:
THE INTERNATIONAL MERCANTILE MARINE COMPANY
REQUESTS THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY
AT LUNCHEON
ABOARD THE NEW WHITE STAR LINER
TITANIC
PIER FIFTY-NINE, NORTH RIVER
AT
ONE O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1912
As Deuprey opened the invitation, a little square of tis-
sue paper fluttered down and fell across his eyes. He
brushed it aside.
"Ah-h-h!" he exclaimed. "Caviar and champagne being
rushed to us across the Atlantic at twenty-four knots on
the world's greatest liner. May God speed her on her voy-
age and bring her safely to port."
In Deuprey's ecstatic imagination, the Titanic was a
golden treasure ship rushing to him across the seas with a
From "When the Ships Come In, copyright 1940 by Jack Lawrence and re-
printed by permission of Rtnekart & Company, Inc., publishers.
148
TITANIC 149
mighty cargo o imported delicacies. Some dreams go up
in smoke. Deuprey's went down in countless fathoms. All
he saw of the Titanic was her lifeboats strung out astern
of the Carpatbia as the ancient Cunarder towed them
wearily into Quarantine.
For months after the great ship had gone down, carry-
ing with her all but 745 of her company of 2,340 souls,
we ship-news reporters saw the finger of blame being
pointed this way and that but mostly at the captain who
did not survive to defend himself.
In the Ships News office, the charge that Captain Smith
was driving his ship along the North Atlantic steamer
track at twenty knots with ice and fog all around him
failed to arouse our indignation. Express liners with sched-
ules to maintain had been doing the same thing for years.
The prospect of commanding the Titanic had depressed
Captain Smith for many weeks before he ever saw that
vessel's bridge. He was one of many British seafaring men
who believed naval architects had gone a little mad in
their effort to produce new masterpieces in bulk, luxury
and speed.
Some of his contemporaries thought that Captain Smith
was old-fashioned. He certainly looked old-fashioned with
his rolling gait, his puckered eyes and his white beard. But
he had his own following in the North Atlantic passenger
trade. Clerks in the White Star offices used to say that
many customers, coming in to book passage, would begin
operations by asking for the ship commanded by Captain
E. J. Smith. This was the man who commanded the Titanic
on her fatal maiden voyage.
The voyage began at Southampton on Wednesday,
April 10, 1912. Bands were playing, flags were flying and
hundreds of persons on shore raised a mighty cheer as the
world's greatest steamship cast off her lines. The cheer was
drowned out by the rumbling blasts from the Titanic* s
brass throat the familiar three blasts that to the initiated
spell "Hail and farewell!" The Tronic's deep-throated
150 DISASTER!
roar was taken up and answered by the whistles of a hun-
dred other vessels.
Only one incident occurred to mar the departure of the
great ship. Tied up alongside the flag-bedecked Titanic
was the old American liner New York. As she lay there in
the shadow of the Titanic** towering walls of steel, the
little New York looked as though she might have been
hoisted bodily in the new vessel's davits.
The first revolution of the Titanic's giant propellers
created a suction under her overhanging stern that drew
the old New York to her as though the smaller vessel had
been merely a bit of driftwood. Two steel cables with
which the American liner was moored fore and aft parted
with loud reports and in a moment the ship was free and
drifting into the whirling maelstrom under the Titanic* s
stern. The situation was observed from the wings of the
Titanic's bridge and a signal stopped her engines in the
nick of time.
The incident caused much merriment among the great
liner's passengers. But in the ancient taverns of South-
ampton the old salts did not laugh. "A bad sign," they
said. "A damned bad sign."
Many of the Titanic's passengers had originally booked
passage on other vessels, but the new floating palace, built
at a cost of nearly $8,000,000, received so much publicity
that they changed their plans at the last minute and flocked
to the Titanic.
The facts printed about the new ship before her maiden
voyage made it plain that she was in many ways entirely
without precedent in ship construction. Much was made
of the fact that a system of watertight compartments that
could be instantly closed from the bridge made the ship
unsinkable even though her entire bow or stern might be
stove in.
When the Titanic made her triumphal departure from
Southampton that fine April day she had eleven steel decks
TITANIC IJI
that could be subdivided into fifteen watertight bulkheads
in case of emergency. She carried a crew of 860 and had
accommodations for 2,500 passengers. Four elevators were
provided to carry passengers from deck to deck. She had a
theater, several restaurants in addition to the main dining
saloon, sun parlors, a winter garden, a palm arbor, two
swimming pools, squash and tennis courts, a Turkish bath
and a miniature golf course. Up on the boat deck there
was even a spacious kennel for dogs traveling First Cabin.
"When the Titanic was finally clear of Southampton
shipping and straightened away on her first westward
voyage a checkup by Purser McElroy showed that the ship
was carrying a total of 2,340 persons. Later, in the White
Star Line offices, I was to see another check-up of the Ti-
tanic 9 s company. It revealed the grim fact that all but 745
had perished.
It was a happy and distinguished crowd that strolled the
Titanic** marvelous decks that bright April day as the ship
headed for the open sea at a stately clip. Had you mingled
with the Titanic'* crowd you could have chatted with
Benjamin Guggenheim, head of the great Guggenheim
mining interests; with John B. Thayer, vice-president of
the Pennsylvania Railroad; with Charles Melville Hayes,
president of the Grand Trunk and Grand Trunk Pacific
Railways; with Isidor Straus, merchant prince and head of
R. H. Macy & Company; with George D. Widener, Phila-
delphia traction magnate who had just purchased some
world-famous paintings in Europe. You would have met
John Jacob Astor, of course, and his pretty bride, the for-
mer Madeleine Force; and handsome Major Archibald
Butt, military aide of President Taf t.
With the exception of Mrs. Astor, not one of them
would ever step ashore again.
For five days the Titanic** maiden voyage was peaceful
and serene. They met some lively seas but the great vessel
trod them under foot or tossed them contemptuously
i $ 2, DISASTER!
aside. This unsinkable ship moved across. the seas as though
she were on a beautifully paved road no pitching, no
rolling, no vibration.
Far aloft, the Titanic *s Marconi aerials were making
their debut on the air. From down behind the horizon
came messages of congratulation and wishes of good luck
to the new queen of the seas. Some wanted to know how
fast she was going. Was she out to set a new record for the
westward crossing? "Pretty soft berth for you, old man,"
they remarked to Jack Phillips, the Titanic *s chief operator.
News of the Titanic's departure from England received
quite a play in the New York papers, but after the first
stories the liner faded out of the news. Nothing was ex-
pected to be heard of her until she reported herself by
wireless, which she did at fifteen minutes after two o'clock
on the morning of Sunday, April 14. The message was
from Captain Smith to the New York offices of the White
Star Line. He gave the Titanic* s position as 1,285 miles
east of Sandy Hook, reported all was well, and indicated
that with continued fair weather he would pass ' Sandy
Hook about four o'clock Tuesday afternoon and dock his
ship early that evening.
Officers, crew and passengers were delighted with the
ship's performance. She was after no speed records on this
voyage. They would let her out on later trips after she was
well shaken down and running smoothly.
On Saturday night there had been a concert and dance
in the grand ballroom. Later, in the mahogany-paneled
smokeroom, there had been champagne and Scotch and
soda. A huge open fire, blazing there, felt good; outside
there was a penetrating chill in the air a wet, haunting
chill.
The usual religious services were held in the ballroom
Sunday morning and again in the afternoon when passen-
gers joined in singing Nearer My Gad to Thee. Passengers
who had been exercising on deck said they had seen small
patches of drifting ice close to the ship. To seasoned trav-
TITANIC 153
elers this was not unusual. Liners on the northern express
routes almost always encountered ice at this time of year.
Sometimes even large bergs could be seen in the distance
drifting silently and stealthily southward in a diaphanous
mist.
Although the Titanic had not yet sighted anything even
resembling a berg, a sharp lookout was maintained. Two
men were in the bows of the ship and two more in the
crow's nest. British shipowners had not yet got around to
equipping these men with binoculars. If they had, the Ti-
tanic might still be plying the North Atlantic passenger
lanes.
Sunday passed quietly. Dinner was served in the middle
of the day and during the long afternoon the decks were
almost deserted. Many of the passengers retired early, for
sleep comes easily at sea.
All day Sunday the temperature had been dropping
steadily as the Titanic drew closer to the ice floes she had
not yet sighted. In the midst of one of these floes rode the
giant berg on which she was to strike. Throughout the day
hourly tests of the water had been made but these, in the
opinion of the officers, failed to indicate that icebergs were
close at hand.
The weather was fine and clear; the heavens were ablaze
with stars. At 8:55 Captain Smith came on the bridge and
talked with his second officer. Both remarked the brilliance
of the night. The sea was so calm that the ship had in-
creased her speed from twenty-one to twenty-one and a
half knots.
Captain Smith informed the bridge that he had just re-
ceived wireless warnings of ice fields and bergs ahead. One
warning had come from the Titanic** sister ship, the
Olympic, headed east. Another was from the White Star
liner Baltic, which had just passed a large berg accompa-
nied by two smaller ones.
Captain Smith was not alarmed. If these ships had got
through safely he saw no reason why the Titanic couldn't.
154 DISASTER!
Leaving the second officer in charge of the bridge, the cap-
tain went below after leaving instructions to have the ship
kept on her course. It was then 9:25.
A half -hour later the second officer was relieved by
Chief Officer Murdock. The bridge thermometer showed
thirty-one degrees considered normal for the region
through which the Titanic was passing. Murdock studied
the latest wireless warnings. These gave the latitude and
longitude in which icebergs had been sighted. He figured
that at the Titanic's present rate of speed the bergs would
be visible from the bridge in about an hour.
It was Frederick Fleet, one of the two men in the crow's
nest, who first sighted the fatal iceberg. He grabbed the
telephone connecting the crow's nest with the bridge and
shouted desperately: "Iceberg a point on the starboard
bow! Iceberg ahead!'*
Fleet had hardly dropped the phone before he felt the
great ship swerve under him and saw her bow edge off to
port, point by point. The reaction on the bridge had been
prompt and swift but not swift enough. As the liner
veered to port, a slight impact was felt, followed by a
scraping sound along the starboard side. It was so slight
that the officers on the bridge heaved a sigh of relief*
Down below, the passengers all but one were unaware
that anything unusual had taken place.
In their cabin on B-deck on the starboard side were Mr.
and Mrs. Frederick M. Hoyt of Larchmont, N.Y. Hoyt
was a naval architect on whose board the lines of many
famous vessels had been drawn.
Mrs. Hoyt was in bed and her husband was in his pa-
jamas and bathrobe reading when he felt the ship rock
slightly and heard a far-off grating sound that seemed to
start somewhere under the starboard bow and run along
the ship's side. To the sensitive ear of the naval architect
and sailor that sound had a sinister significance. It fastened
his mind on only one thing. Ice.
Putting aside his book, Hoyt dressed hurriedly, putting
TITANIC 155
on his warmest clothes. Then he awakened Mrs. Hoyt and
said: "I think this ship is in trouble. I'm going up to the
bridge to see Captain Smith. Dress quickly, and wear your
wannest things. Then wait here until I come back. Don't
leave this cabin.*'
Hoyt didn't encounter a soul as he hurried along the
long corridor and stepped out on deck. As he reached the
deck an officer and several sailors passed him running aft.
By the starboard companionway he made his way to the
bridge. He noticed that the Titanic was rapidly losing
headway and he thought he could detect a slight starboard
list.
On the bridge the first man he met was Captain Smith,
who wasted no words. "I think we're in a bad way/* he
said frankly. "Fouled an iceberg. I have ordered all passen-
gers into the boats. No. 2 boat on the starboard side will
be leaving in five minutes. Get yourself and Mrs. Hoyt
into it immediately."
Returning to his cabin, Hoyt found his wife already
dressed. He stopped only long enough to fill a pint flask
with brandy. This he gave to bis wife and guided her to
the No. 2 lifeboat.
The scene on deck had changed, but nobody seemed
alarmed. Passengers, many still in evening clothes, seemed
to regard the situation as rather humorous. The cry of
"All passengers into the boats!" seemed a little ridiculous.
"What was the use of being lowered away in a lifeboat? They
would only have to be hauled back again when the officers
remembered that the Titanic was unsinkable.
It was not yet midnight. A number of passengers re-
turned to the smokeroom where they had left half -finished
drinks but the drinks were beginning to slide, off the
tables. Everything appeared to be at an unseemly slant
and the slant was increasing.
Outside, officers and crew were having difficulty herding
reluctant passengers to the boatdeck. Many still seemed to
regard the whole thing as a chilly midnight farce. After
1 56 DISASTER!
the passengers were finally driven to the gunwales of the
boats many of them refused to get in although the Titanic
was now listed so sharply to starboard that it was almost
impossible to lower away on her port side. Her head was
also settling deeper and deeper into the water. But her
lights were still burning brilliantly and from somewhere
came the distant strains of the orchestra.
At the lifeboats the women were giving the crew
trouble. Some flatly refused to get into the boats. Others
said they would go if their men could go with them, but
the officers would not permit this. So they argued while
foot by foot the ship's head settled deeper and deeper into
the sea.
Elderly Isidor Straus argued quietly with his wife. An
officer had hold of her arm ready to help her into one of
the boats.
"Won't you please go?" her husband begged.
She looked up at him and said, "No."
They walked off together along the slanted deck and
entered the main companionway. They were not seen again.
Some of the boats were sent away only half -filled. Once
on the surface of the sea, the decks of the Titanic were still
so high above them that the occupants of the boats be-
lieved that they were the ones in real danger. They waved
forlornly at the white faces that lined the rail far above
them the faces of the Titanic*s dead.
At boat No. 2, Hoyt had been giving two ship's officers
a hand in helping women and children over the side. When
the order came to lower away there was still plenty of
room in the boat but no more passengers could be induced
to enter it.
"You'd better get in, Mr. Hoyt plenty of room for
you," an officer said.
Hoyt shook his head. "No," he said, "I'll give a hand
with the other boats. You'll probably need it."
"Stand by to lower!" the officer shouted.
TITANIC 1 57
The davits groaned and creaked as the boat was pushed
over the side and lowered slowly into the sea.
Mrs. Hoyt had been the last woman to enter the boat.
It is likely that she was the last woman to leave the Ti-
tanic's deck.
Frederick Hoyt stood at the rail watching the big
double-ended craft as it rose and fell in the long ground-
s^ell. He looked aft along the Titanic* s deck and saw that
all the other boats were either free of the ship or being
lowered. Down below him he saw the boats idling near-by,
many with empty seats, their crews gazing up, fascinated,,
at the great stricken vessel.
By this time the Titanic** bow was far down in the
water. Hoyt looked about him. Officers and passengers had
disappeared from that part of the boat deck. He was alone.
Down below him the lifeboat with his wife in it was still
lying there; it still had many empty seats. Hoyt removed
his overcoat. Climbing over the rail, he stood poised for a
moment; then he waved to his wife and dropped feet-first
into the sea.
The water was cold but it was marvelously buoyant; he
came up almost as fast as he had gone down. Close at hand
was one of the Titanic? s boats. A few swift strokes brought
him close enough to grasp the gunwale. In another mo-
ment he was hauled aboard and his wife's arms were about
him as she pressed the brandy flask to his lips.
Those in the boats could see the Titanic's stern rising
steadily as her bow gradually buried itself. Strange noises
were coming from inside the ship muffled explosions,
short, sharp reports like pistol shots. Many in the boats
thought that the bow of the joo-foot ship would strike
bottom before her stern went under. They did not know
that the ocean's bottom in that locality was more than two
miles below the keels of the tiny craft in which they were
floating.
As the great rounded stern rose toward the perpendicu-
lar, the muffled uproar within the ship increased. Gravity
158 DISASTER!
was hurling every movable object down into the sinking
bow tons of heavy furniture, tables, hand-carved beds,
grand pianos, oil paintings, luxurious leather lounges, pas-
sengers 5 trunks, tons of china and silverware, hundreds of
deck-chairs and a wild, crashing confusion of ship's gear.
The hundreds of chalk-white faces that had lined the
rail suddenly disappeared from view. Losing their footing
on the steeply slanted deck, the doomed slid down into the
descending bow like beads off a broken string. A great
wailing cry arose as they dropped from view a last de-
spairing note that was to haunt the memory of Titanic
survivors for years.
One by one the four giant buff-colored funnels moved
downward and disappeared majestically into the sea. The
stern, with its huge bronze propellers turned skyward,
seemed to hesitate a moment and then it, too, vanished in
a mighty upheaval of frothing air bubbles. The Titanic
was gone, but for hours afterward those bubbles continued
to break the surface of the sea creating a brilliant phos-
phorescent disc in which floated the bodies of her dead.
Drifting among the drowned was the body of the man
to whom all those in the boats were to owe their lives. Jack
Phillips, the chief wireless operator, had flashed out his
tragic call for help before the sea came up to strangle his in-
strument. He remained at his key too long to save his
own life but it was his hand that beat off death for those
in the boats.
The Titanic** voyage had been a busy one for Phillips
and his assistant, twenty-two-year-old Harold Bride. Bride
was asleep when the Titanic scraped the fatal berg asleep
in a small cabin adjoining the main radio room. Worn out
with hours of continuous sending, he was restless and slept
fitfully. For a long while he lay awake listening to Phillips
sending commercial messages to Cape Race. They would be
relayed from there. Silly and pointless a lot of the messages
sounded as Phillips rapped them off. One man wanted a
box reserved for a Broadway hit, another asked for com-
TITANIC 159
plete details on the redecorating of his Newport villa. A
woman asked her lawyer to meet her at the pier.
Unable to sleep, Bride decided to give Phillips a hand*
Slipping on a bathrobe, he went into the sending room.
He was standing over his chief suggesting that he lay off
for an hour or two when Captain Smith appeared suddenly
in the doorway. "We've struck an iceberg,** he said. "Be
ready to send out a call for assistance. But wait until I give
the word. It may not be necessary."
Phillips and Bride were amazed. Neither had felt the
slightest jar.
Ten minutes later Captain Smith again appeared. The
command he gave was short, sharp and crisp: "Send that
call for assistance!"
Phillips began tapping out the international distress sig-
nal the code letters C.Q.D. As he tapped out the message,
he looked up at Bride and said: "Nobody will ever be-
lieve it."
The steamship Frankfort, hundreds of miles away, was
the first to pick up the Titanic? s flash. Her operator appar-
ently couldn't believe his ears, but said he would tell his
captain about it. Then he closed his key and the Titanic*s
operators heard nothing more from the Frankfort.
A moment later Phillips was talking to Thomas Harold
Cottam, wireless man on the Carpathia. With the Titanic's
distress call came the message: "Come at once we have
struck an iceberg." Then followed the ship's latitude and
longitude, repeated several times.
In his cabin abaft the Carpathians bridge, Captain Arthur
H. Rostron was preparing to take advantage of a clear
night and a smooth sea to get a little sleep. Lying in his
berth, he could feel the gentle vibration as the old ship
plodded wearily on. He could smell the mixed fumes of
stale wine, garlic and spaghetti sauce with which the vessel
seemed saturated the inevitable odors of the Mediter-
ranean trade. He thought of how clean and new the Titanic
must smell.
160 DISASTER!
Captain Rostron fell asleep thinking of the Titanic reel-
ing off the knots on her triumphant voyage to New York.
Bands would be playing when she docked flags flying,
ships blowing shrill salutations to the new queen of the
seas. There would be a state dinner a visit from the
Mayor.
There was a sharp knock on the door. It was pushed
open as he reached up and switched on the light. Standing
there was the first officer with Cottam, the Marconi man,
beside him.
"We have received a C.Q.D. from the Titanic, sir," the
officer said. "She seems to have fouled an iceberg. She is
asking for immediate assistance."
Captain Rostron gave the orders that turned the Car-
pathia from her course and started her lumbering and
wheezing toward the Titanic. But there wasn't a man
among the Carpathicts officers who thought for a moment
that the great liner was actually sinking.
The Carpathian log was to show that on her historic
dash to the aid of the Titanic she was at one time stagger-
ing along at a fraction under eighteen knots, a speed she
had never attained before and would never do again. Her
steel plates groaned and shuddered under the tremendous
vibration. She coughed and she panted and she wheezed
and strange hissing sounds came from her hold. Her pas-
sengers, startled by this midnight upheaval, scrambled out
of bed and demanded to know what had happened. Where
were they rushing to?
The ship's officers had no time to explain. A new mes-
sage had come through from the Titanic saying she was
sinking fast. Captain Rostron had ordered cabins made
ready for survivors if there were any. The Carpathicfs
shabby little smokeroom was converted into a sick bay and
stocked with blankets and medicines. On deck the lifeboats
were swung out and made ready for lowering.
On the Carpathians bridge the officers were sweeping the
horizon with their glasses as the ship surged toward the
TITANIC l6l
spot where the Titanic had last reported herself. The great
hull of the "White Star liner and her four towering funnels
would be visible a long way off.
It was not until -they sighted the lifeboats, white specks
on a gently heaving sea, that the Carpathians men realized
that the Titanic was gone. Only the lifeboats and giant air
bubbles marked the spot where the queen of the North
Atlantic had met her end.
It was 4:10 A.M. when the Carpathia hove on the scene
and the approaching dawn was throwing a pale, ghastly
light over the silent boats. Three and a half hours later the
last of the Titanic's living passengers had been lifted
aboard the Cunarder and she started her slow voyage to
New York, the empty boats of the lost ship strung out in
a long line astern.
It was not until 8:30 Monday evening that P. A. S.
Franklin, head of the International Mercantile Marine
Company, owners of the Titanic, got around to admitting
that the great ship was lost. All that day officials of the
White Star Line had tried to appear optimistic. They con-
tinued to point out that the Titanic was unsinkable and
would be able to make port under her own steam.
Then came the statement from Franklin that the ship
had gone down.
The Carpathufs arrival in New York Harbor was an
event that gripped the entire city. Veteran reporters could
remember other big news stories, but here was one that oc-
cupied entire editions to the exclusion of everything else.
Even paid advertising was thrown out. In addition to the
facts printed in the papers, lists of the saved, the known
dead and the unaccounted-for were posted in the lobbies
of hotels, theaters and in public buildings.
Hundreds waited at the Cunard Line pier for the Car-
patbia to arrive. By seven o'clock in the evening the crowd
outside the pier was rapidly getting beyond the control of
the police. Those with pier passes found it almost impos-
sible to battle their way through the mobs of the morbidly
i6z DISASTER!
curious. Finally police lines were established as far east as
Ninth Avenue. On the lower deck of Pier 60 the Red
Cross and Salvation Army had established bases. Drawn
up outside were ambulances from every hospital in the
city.
The Carpathia appeared to be taking her time, approach-
ing the end of her historic voyage at a slow and mournful
pace. It was 6:10 in the evening when she was reported
passing Sandy Hook and an hour and a half later when she
nosed into Quarantine and paused long enough to take on
doctors and government officials.
It was after eight o'clock when the Carpathia passed the
Battery where the seawall was lined with silent thousands.
At a snail's pace, she crawled up the North River. Off her
pier she stopped, her propellers turning over just fast
enough to hold her nose into the ebbing tide. After what
seemed like an endless wait, a tug hove under her stern and
relieved her of the trailing lifeboats. Then the boats in the
davits were lowered slowly, inch by inch, and finally the
tug started upstream with them to the White Star Line
pier where the Titanic herself would have docked fifteen
white orphans of the lost mother ship.
With agonizing slowness the Carpathia was warped in
on the north side of her pier and made fast. A section of
rail was removed from her main deck and after another
long wait longshoremen hoisted a gangway into position
and finally made it fast. The Carpathians deck was jammed
with silent men and women, her own passengers and those
from the Titanic. The only sound was that of anguished
sobbing coming from the pier.
The first Titanic survivor to come down the gangplank
was a woman, a sailor's oilskin coat thrown over her shoul-
ders, At the foot of the gangplank a man faced her with
outstretched arms. She collapsed in his arms and he car-
ried her away, a Red Cross nurse trotting after them.
The woman was followed off the ship by the rest of the
TITANIC 163
Titanic** company, some giving way to their emotions
while others tried grimly to smile through their tears.
Few of these people had anything but a confused idea of
what had happened aboard the Titanic. Those who had re-
mained calm and collected while the great ship was sinking
under them seemed now to have completely lost their bear-
ings. The fact that they were at last safe ashore seemed to
bewilder them. Not one could tell a clear and connected
story. The average Titanic survivor that night acted like a
person trying to piece together the hideous details of a
grisly dream.
For at least ten days after the Carpathians arrival the
echoes of the Titanic story continued to disturb the peace-
ful atmosphere of the Ships News office. The reporters had
long ago wearied of the subject. To them, too, it seemed
like some maritime phantasm that had never actually hap-
pened.
Frank Deuprey, enjoying his first hour of quiet leisure
in many days, resurrected his tattered copy of Mrs. Brown-
ing's Sonnets from the Portuguese and opened it languidly.
A white square fell from its pages and the reporter picked
it up
THE INTERNATIONAL MERCANTILE MARINE COMPANY
REQUESTS THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY
AT LUNCHEON
ABOARD THE NEW WHITE STAR LINER
TITANIC
PIER FIFTY-NINE, NORTH RIVER
AT
ONE O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON
FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1912.
Deuprey dropped the invitation into the old iron stove
and turned to his book.
Fury on the
Great Lakes
By Walter Havighurst
GREAT LAKES, November, 1913 The government
weather forecast for the upper lakes as published in Cleve-
land on November 8, 1913, was: "Snow or rain and
colder, Saturday, with west to southwest winds. Sunday,
unsettled/'
There was nothing to worry about in that forecast, but
Milton Smith, assistant engineer of the steamer Charles F.
Price y\&d an uneasy feeling. It was only three weeks till
the end of the season, when the Price would tie up for the
winter and the crew would receive their bonus along with
the regular pay. But there was that gnawing in Milton
Smith's mind. Despite the protests of John Groundwater,
his chief engineer, he paid off the Price, packed his bag and
walked ashore. Twenty-seven hours later the Charles F.
Price went down with all hands. In the next three days
forty vessels were wrecked and 235 lives were lost on the
Great Lakes.
On Saturday morning, November 8, an early winter
storm struck Lake Superior. Vessels remained in port or
kept under shelter of land until its violence was spent.
Early Sunday morning the wind died to a breeze and the
sea heaved slowly. Ships that had waited in the St. Mary's
put out onto Lake Huron. Schedules had to be fulfilled
even if the wind kicked up again. The crews battened
down, stretched their life lines from the forespar to the
boiler-room bulkheads, and watched the slate-colored sea.
From The Long Ships Passing by Walter Havighurst. Copyright 1942 by The
Macmillan Company and used with their permission.
FURY ON THE GREAT LAKES
Far out on the plains of Manitoba a new wind was
growing. At the weather stations of De Tour and Macki-
nac, at Cheboygan and Bay City and Harbor Beach, storm
signals were flying, the red flags flat against the hurrying
sky.
At noon the wind freshened and changed direction. It
swung abruptly from northwest to north, with increasing
pressure, and then quickly to northeast. From that quarter
it struck. Suddenly it was a hurricane, blowing at eighty
miles an hour. Vessels on Lake Huron headed for shelter of
the east shore, but the wind changed direction and beat
them off their courses. Seas poured over cargo decks and
pounded at the upper works. The wind brought a fury of
snow, and waves ran higher. The most violent storm in
history had struck the lakes.
It was a storm of cyclonic character. The wipid swung
from one quarter to another and the seas were a battering
confusion. Masters who survived the storm said they had
never experienced such violence, waves running one way
and the wind another, with the ship assaulted between
them. It lasted all afternoon and all night with never-
slackening fury. Winds of that velocity had never held for
longer than five hours, but this storm maintained for six-
teen hours a velocity above sixty miles per hour. Waves
rose to unprecedented heights. Many masters stated that
waves thirty-five feet high, following in quick succession,
often three in a sequence, hurled and battered their vessels.
In that ordeal eight staunch ships totally disappeared from
Lake Huron and two from Lake Superior. There were no
survivors to tell of the punishment those ships took before
they foundered. In addition, two barges sank in Lake
Michigan, and a lightship was lost in Lake Erie. Twenty-
six other steamers were driven ashore and mangled by the
terrific seas.
The storm lashed every mile of shore from Duluth to
Chicago and Buffalo. Beaches on Lake Huron were de-
stroyed for scores of miles, gutted for hundreds of feet
166 DISASTER!
above the normal shoreline. At Chicago, whole sections of
the newly made shore at Jackson Park were washed away.
The Chicago Park Commission had spent eight years in
construction of the land; it was destroyed in as many
hours. In one of the Chicago water cribs, windows twenty
feet above lake level were shattered and heavy furniture
was licked out like driftwood. Miles of sea walls, terraces
and piling washed away from Chicago's waterfront. At
Milwaukee, a massive breakwater, part of the new harbor
project, was battered to rubble. In Cleveland, twenty-one
inches of snow blanketed the city and communications
were cut off for two days. At the Buffalo harbor entrance,
the lightship was torn from its moorings and no trace of it
was ever found. Another lightship at the entrance to Port
Huron was torn loose and thrown upon the Canadian
shore.
But the full fury and destruction were borne by the
vessels in open water on the long traffic lanes.
The steamer L. C. Waldo, loaded with iron ore at Two
Harbors, was midway across Lake Superior when the wind
struck. Green-gray seas swamped her deck and the driving
spray froze over all her upper works. The windows of the
pilothouse iced over. Then darkness came, and the wind
screamed higher.
At midnight Captain Duddleson, a native of the Soo,
was bent over his chart in the pilothouse, laying a compass
course for Manitou Island, off the point of Keweenaw. His
hope was to gain the island's shelter from the blasting
wind. Thunderous seas smashed at the wallowing vessel.
Each time, the ship staggered and drove on. But a dark
sea, masthead-high, was gathering. It struck with the solid
weight of a hundred tons of water. The captain and his
wheelsman clung to a stanchion as the bulkheads gave way.
Sea water poured over them. There was a wrenching roar.
The ship lurched and straightened. But her pilothouse was
gone, wiped off like a crate of cabbages from her deck.
Worse than that, her compass was demolished and her
. FURY ON THE GREAT LAKES 167
steering gear was damaged so that she could not maintain
a course against the wind.
Captain Duddleson sent his wheelsman aft, over the
pitching ice-sheathed deck, to get a compass from the life-
boats. For four hours they steered the Waldo by hand
compass in the flickering light of a hurricane lantern. With
the wind dead aft, seas broke over her stern till only the
ship's stack was visible, pouring black smoke into the
storm of snow.
With broken steering gear and hand compass, Captain
Duddleson almost made his desperate passage between Gull
Rock and the point of Keweenaw. He held his course to
within a half mile of his reckoning. But that half-mile was
ruinous. Just before daylight the Waldo fetched up on a
reef running out from Gull Rock.
Now the seas battered her with an insane fury. Under
those terrible blows the after deckhouse began to crumple.
The crew went forward, clinging to the life line while the
waves broke over them. For two days and nights they
crouched in the battered forward house. They burned the
wooden furnishings in a bathtub to keep from freezing
and ate the last of their provisions. On the third day the
wind abated and the seas heaved with their spent anger.
Help came from the Coast Guard crews of Portage and
Eagle Harbor.
Other ships fought the same fight, with no survivors to
recount their struggle. The James Carruthers was a big
new freighter, commissioned a month before. On her third
voyage, loaded with grain, she stood out from Fort "Wil-
liam, between Pie Island and the humped form of the
Sleeping Giant. Then a wind came up and hurried her
across Lake Superior. She waited a few hours in the St.
Mary's River till the weather was reported breaking. Out
into Lake Huron she sailed on that dreadful Sunday. She
was never seen again. Some twisted wreckage and the
bodies of a few of her men were found on the ravaged
Huron shore.
1 68 DISASTER!
To Captain Paddington and seventeen men in the
steamer Turret Chief came one of the most harrowing or-
deals in all lakes history. The Turret Chief, a wooden ship
of 4,000 tons, bound light for Fort William, was driven
off her course and disabled by the Saturday gale. After
drifting fifty miles she was cast up on the rugged coast of
Keweenaw Peninsula, six miles north of Copper Harbor.
The seas drove her high on the rocks and left her wedged
there with the wave crests lashing at her. The crew, dead
beat after hours of struggle, had fallen asleep in their
bunkrooms just before the ship piled up. They tumbled
out to find themselves hard aground and the old wooden
hull groaning in every joint. She would break up at any
minute. Without time to gather food or clothing they
threw lines over the side and went down like spiders. They
picked their way over the storm-swept rocks. On the
wooded shore they beat life into their numbed bodies and
built a shelter of boughs and driftwood. Here, without
food or fire, with a blizzard raging around them, they
huddled from Saturday night till Monday morning. They
grew grim with hunger and gray with cold. Eighteen men
were crouched in that bleak shelter. They avoided each
other's eyes, but the knowledge of death was in all their
faces. Then a man stared incredulous over the desolate
shore. A file of Indians came tramping over the snow. Two
hours later Captain Paddington and his men were drinking
coffee around a barrel stove in Copper Harbor.
Meanwhile, the steamer William Nottingham, bound
down from Fort William with a cargo of grain, fought for
her life on Lake Superior. After forty-eight hours of the
punishing seas she was still afloat. But her bunkers were
empty. The coal-passers raked out the last corner banks
of fuel and the firemen threw it into their dying furnaces.
The steam had dropped in the gauges and the Nottingham
was swinging in the long seas. Without her engines she
would be hurled on the rocks of Coppermine Point. Des-
perate, her master ordered his crew to open the hatches.
FURY ON THE GREAT LAKES 1 6$
While the seas washed in they shoveled grain up on deck
and down the bunker hatch. In the boiler rooms the shovels
clanged again as wheat went into the fire doors. The flames
smoldered and hesitated. The drafts whined and the fire-
men raked with their slice bars. At last the heated wheat
took fire; there was a low roar under the boilers and the
drafts whined higher. The gauges lifted a little. Soon the
Nottingham swung round till the wind was on her quar-
ter. Stubbornly she labored into Whitefish Bay. It looked
as though she would make the Soo in safety. But she struck
a shoal four miles east of the steamship lane. There the seas
threatened to break her to pieces. Three of her men per-
ished while trying to launch a lifeboat. A few hours later
the Coast Guard took the rest of them to shore.
Two big freighters floundering through the ravenous
seas of Lake Huron were lost just thirteen miles from the
shelter of the St. Clair River. They were the Regina and
the Charles F. Price. After the storm was over, the Price
was found with her io,ooo-ton hull floating bottomside up
a few miles off the Huron shore. It was days before anyone
could identify her.
Milton Smith, who on November 8 had an uneasy feel-
ing, had stayed ashore in Cleveland when the Price cast off
her lines. Five days later he arrived in Port Huron to iden-
tify his former shipmates. The first body he recognized was
that of John Groundwater, the Price's chief engineer.
"Are you sure? 3 ' demanded the coroner.
Smith was certain. He knew John Groundwater well,
even after Lake Huron had put its somber mark upon him.
"John Groundwater, chief engineer of the Charles F.
Price," the coroner repeated.
Smith nodded.
"Well," said the coroner, "this man had one of the
Regina*s life preservers wrapped around his body."
There was only one explanation. The Regina and the
Price, laboring to keep afloat, had collided in the storm's
fury and foundered together. Men from both crews strug-
170 DISASTER!
gled in the "water. Life belts were thrown down and they
floundered into them with their last numb movements.
Bodies of the men in the two crews were cast up together
on the shore, some even clasped in each other's arms. Her-
bert Jones of Superior City, the Price's steward, was found
with his apron frozen stiff around him, as though he were
about to prepare a meal.
There was nothing more to do for those chaps, after the
bodies were identified. So Milton Smith went back to
Cleveland. He still had an uneasy feeling.
Tragic Queen
of the Lakes
By Harriet K. Nye
The drawbridges across the Chicago River split and
reared upward, applying an abrupt tourniquet to the traf-
fic circulating in and out of Chicago's Loop. On the water
below, a squat tugboat was towing the trim U.S.S. Wil-
mette to its graveyard in the south branch of the river.
The traffic waited.
At the Clark Street bridge a newspaper cameraman
waited, too, for a picture of this funeral cortege which in
the autumn of 1946 was passing the spot where, thirty-one
years before, under another name, the Wilmette alias the
Eastland had toppled on its side.
In number of lives lost, the capsizing of the Eastland
was the third costliest disaster in U.S. maritime history.
For grisly drama the Eastland's story is unmatched. In
1915 even Austria-Hungary turned its attention from
battle-torn Europe to offer condolences.
It was in 1903 that the excursion steamer Eastland was
first launched on its career as a Great Lakes pleasure boat.
Its builders boasted that it was as staunch and luxurious as
any ocean liner. The Eastland was indeed tall and sleekly
lined 269 feet long, thirty-six feet in beam, with twin
propellers.
On its hurricane deck the ship carried a steam calliope
which sent the melodies of Bedelia and The Good Old
Summer Time bouncing over the waves. The ship could
do twenty-two miles an hour, a figure which meant some-
thing to a public beginning to be motor-minded and speed-
172 DISASTER!
conscioiw. Altogether, the Eastland's future as a gay pleas-
ure boat seemed assured for at least forty years.
Then, in 1914, the Eastland, which had operated out of
Cleveland on Lake Erie, appeared on Lake Michigan. Pur-
chased by Chicago interests, she was now owned by the St.
Joseph and Chicago Steamship Company, captained by
Harry Pedersen and ready to serve the holiday moods of
the Middle West. Still trim and speedy, the Eastland was
at that time an eleven-year-old "y oun ster " with a past
pleasantly filled with romance and moonlit excursions,
though rumors of the ship's misbehavior occasionally
drifted about the lake front.
Early on the morning of July 24, 1915, employees of
the Western Electric Company trooped down to the Clark
Street dock in Chicago where the Eastland was the first
boat to load and the dock was still crowded. On board a
band was playing loudly. Many women took their children
below into the cabins. Ten girls settled down for a party in
one of the staterooms. But most of the carefree voyagers
remained on deck, watching the sailors cast off, calling
good-bye to those on shore. Then at 7:20 A.M. the gang-
plank was hauled away.
The stern line slacked off. Almost immediately the pas-
sengers noticed a strange slant to the decks. The Eastland
rolled slightly and then stopped. Some who had been on
steamships before frowned and appeared worried, but land-
lubbers jostled one another and laughed. The music
-faltered.
The boat wobbled again. This time the list increased.
Deck chairs began sliding to the port side. A refrigerator
broke loose and toppled. A woman's scream was followed
by a frenzied chorus of shrieks. Then the voices of the
ship's officers, shouting a belated warning to the passen-
gers, were lost in a bedlam of noise.
Thrown from their feet, passengers clawed for a hold
on the smooth, slowly upending deck. Husbands shouted
frantically to their wives. Mothers cried out to their chil-
TRAGIC QUEEN OF THE LAKES 173
dren. Helplessly everyone slid and tumbled and struggled
against the port rail.
Joe Brozak was standing on the Eastland's deck with
three of his party when the boat began to topple. With
his friends Joe started to fall toward the port side. Then
abruptly his fall was checked. His coat had caught on a
nail. While his companions drowned before his eyes, Joe
Brozak was held fast with his head just above water,
H. A. Thayer was also on the upper deck with his wife
and two children. All of them were tossed into the Chicago
River. Thayer disappeared, but Mrs. Thayer, a good swim-
mer, managed to clutch her children, the boy with her
right arm, the girl with her left. It was a fierce struggle
trying to keep three heads above water. Then Mrs. Thayer
became aware of a growing numbness in her left arm. It
went slack, and the horrified mother saw her small daugh-
ter slide beneath the surface.
The scene inside the boat was even more terrible. Here
there was no escape. Mothers and children were hurled
against the inner walls of their cabins as the Eastland set-
tled on its side at the bottom of the river. The water rose
quickly in the boat.
One woman felt herself sucked below the water. She
fought her way back to the surface in time to glimpse two
hands reaching through a porthole. Clutching those hands,
she was hauled to safety, leaving her husband and son lost
in the suffocating depths below.
The passengers on deck fared better. Of the hundreds
hurled into the river, those who could swim struck out for
shore only a few yards away. Others clung to chairs and
loose pieces of wood that had floated overboard. From the
steamer Theodore Roosevelt, tied near-by, life preservers
were thrown to the survivors thrashing about in the water.
In the melee more than a thousand persons reached
safety. Just a few feet from shore were the drowned and
drowning while in the background, like a stranded whale,
the Eastland lay with her starboard side flat about fifteen
174 DISASTER!
feet above water. It had taken only a few minutes be-
tween five and fifteen for the ship to topple.
Sirens added to the hysteria as firemen and police rushed
to the dock. In a rowboat city policeman Sessher began
picking half -dead bodies out of the water and bringing
them to shore. He kept score until he reached fifty.
A small army of doctors arrived. Pulmotors were set up,
and the steamer Roosevelt became a morgue with 150
dead, most of them women, lined up on her deck. In a
drizzling rain priests administered last rites to the dying.
Department stores sent blankets to warm the shivering
survivors.
Soon spectators were drawn to the disaster in such num-
bers that the Clark Street bridge was closed for fear the
weight of the crowds would cause it to collapse. A movie
cameraman dashed up to grind out a record of the scene.
Business south of Water Street was halted and the build-
ings pressed into service as morgues, the Armory serving
as a central morgue.
When the surface of the water had been cleared of liv-
ing and dead, another phase of the rescue work began.
Men with blowtorches scrambled up the sides of the great
silent coffin. They cut holes through the sheet of steel that
lay above the water, and divers let themselves down into
the boat's interior.
What they found there was heart-rending. Mothers
drowned beside their babies, bodies stacked on top of one
another. Of the ten girls who were partying in the state-
room, nine were dead. A diver, submerged for an hour,
brought up five young girls and three babies.
On shore the process of identification proceeded. Six
hours after the accident, rescuers were still taking bodies
through the holes in the hull. By 2:00 P.M., 679 bodies
had been recovered, and many were still missing.
After the holes in the hull were patched and the East-
land righted, the grisly task of recovery continued. More
TRAGIC QUEEN OF THE LAKES 175
dead were found inside. Then the tally was taken: 812
lives lost! Twenty-two entire families wiped out!
Who was to blame?
Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis headed the investiga-
tion. A grand jury held officials of the steamship company,
Captain Pedersen and his chief engineer for manslaughter.
Theories were exploded as quickly as they were advanced.
It was said that there had been trouble with the water
ballast compartments. Some quarters claimed that the ship
had been overcrowded. It was even said that the people
themselves had capsized the boat by rushing to one side.
Then, like troublesome ghosts, old rumors came to life.
In the late summer of 1910, the Cleveland Plain Dealer
had carried an ad which by innuendo suggested that all
was not shipshape on the pleasure boat Eastland.
The ship's Cleveland owners grandly announced that
they would give $5,000 to anyone who could prove thait
the boat was not the staunchest, fastest on the Great Lakes.
No record shows that the owners were taken up on their
offer. Perhaps the ad was not enough to bolster the ship's
reputation, because four years later the queen of the ex-
cursion boats was sold and transferred to Lake Michigan.
Then a reputable lake captain, John Morrison, came
forward to tell how the Eastland had balked, snapped her
ropes and almost toppled at the docks two days before the
fatal sinking. That definitely put the seaworthiness of the
ship under scrutiny.
By the mayor's proclamation Chicago went into a day of
official mourning. Excursion trips vanished from the lake.
And the newsreel of the tragedy, which the cameraman
had so laboriously ground out in the rain, was banned in
many towns because the city fathers disapproved of "com-
mercializing on the grief of our neighbors."
Gradually the disaster passed from the first simple stage
of heartbreak, personal and public, into the complicated
heartbreak of court procedure.
i? 6 DISASTER!
In the meantime the Eastland was put up for sale, since
her attempted suicide in the Chicago River would forever
bar her from the pleasure lanes. The Government put in
its bid, and the Eastland passed into the possession of the
Navy.
From stem to stern the boat was reconditioned. Then,
rechristened the U.S.S. Wilmette, she began a second
career as a naval training ship. Her berth was the pier of
the Naval Reserve Armory on the inner harbor at Chicago
within sight of the spot where she had ended her life as a
pleasure craft. But if the Eastland was able to forget her
past, the public was not.
In the summer of 1935 the Cleveland Plain Dealer car-
ried the headline, "Eastland Case Bobs Up Again." This
promised to be a farewell performance, because the court
held that the steamship company was not liable. The boat,
this court said, was seaworthy. It added a few lines which
would end for all time that particular controversy. The
responsibility for the sinking was laid upon an engineer
who had neglected to fill the ballast tanks properly.
And that was that for another eleven years until a
small beetle of a tug hauled the U.S.S. Wilmette past the
Clark Street bridge and the scene of the half -forgotten
tragedy. Once again the Eastland was in the news, but the
spotlights and fanfare were missing as the old ship was led
to the executioners in the scrap yard.
Kidney Pills
Wreck a Train
By Stewart H. Hdbroak
IVANHOE, IND., June 22, 1918 It is safe to say
that no one connected with American railroads in 1918
ever in his wildest moments thought of kidney pills in
relation to disaster on the rails.
The tragedy happened just before dawn of the clear and
star-flecked night of June 22. The second section of the
train hauling the Hagenbeck- Wallace circus left Michigan
City, Indiana, with orders to detour onto the Gary &
Western road at Ivanhoe. The train had fourteen flatcars,
seven stock or animal cars, four sleepers and a caboose. All
cars were of wood, the sleepers being rebuilt old Pullmans
with three tiers of berths, dimly lighted by lanterns hung
above the center aisles. Although it was three o'clock in
the morning, Charles Dollmer, circus manager, was still
working over the show's books. The berths were filled
with performers and roustabouts, all getting the sleep they
would need for the show in Hammond next day*
Miss Rose Borland, the featured equestrienne who was
said to receive $25,000 a season for her work on the backs
of Hagenbeck- Wallace's wonderful horses, had a berth to
herself. So did Hercules Navarro, The Strongest Man Since
Sandow; and Joe Coyle, boss clown, whose wife and two
babies were in an upper. Another of the sleeping cars was
crammed double with the pretty and agile members of
Hagenbeck- Wallace's ballet of "100 Dancing Girls, Count
Them."
From The Story of American Railroads by Stewart H. Holbrook, copyright
1947 by Crown Publishers. Reprinted by permission of Crown Publishers.
*77
i/8 DISASTER!
Just east of tiny Ivanhoe, doubtless named by some
Hoosier lover of the Waverly novels, Conductor R. "W.
Johnson of the circus train thought he caught the aroma
of an overheated journal. He signaled the engineer to stop,
and the train halted a few feet from the crossing of the
Elgin, Joliet & Eastern. Flagman Trimm promptly got off
and went back to protect the rear of his train.
In the meantime, what had been a troop train but was
now empty of soldiers had cleared Michigan City twenty-
seven minutes after the circus had pulled out of there. The
margin was large enough for almost any contingency that
a railroad man could have conjured up. The night was
quite clear. All signal lights were showing. Jogging along
at around thirty miles an hour, the trooper passed, some
two miles east of Ivanhoe, an automatic signal set at cau-
tion. It did not even slow its pace. Soon it came abreast of
and passed another automatic signal, this one shining
bright crimson. On it pounded, and Flagman Trimm could
hardly believe his eyes. Here he was, well back from his
own train, watching a big headlight coming swiftly at
him. He knew it must have already passed a caution signal.
Now he saw it pass a red signal.
I can idly put myself in Flagman Trimm's place and
wonder what I would have thought to see that dazzling
beam coming straight and true down the track toward
me, and to feel the tremble of the ties and the ground, to
hear the singing of the rails, to know that close behind me
was a cargo of humanity and another cargo of strange
beasts from the outlands of the earth. Being in Flagman
Trimm's place, I should have been a railroad man and thus
have taken in the full horror of it, indeed the hideous
knowledge that it simply could not happen, that it must
be some form of insane hallucination that had suddenly
taken charge of all my faculties.
It must have been a terrible moment in Flagman
Trimm's life. There he stood, helpless now except for his
KIDNEY PILLS WRECK A TRAIN 1 79
own efforts. He put them into use at once. He swung his
bright red lantern as he had never swung it before swung
it wildly in great arcs, swung it desperately and, at last,
hopelessly. This mad and possibly illusionary train came
pounding on, relentless, certain, never slackening. In a last
effort as the trooper passed him, Trimm hurled a flaming
red fusee plumb into the cab of the locomotive. An in-
stant later the mad train plowed like a battering ram into
the rear of the circus extra.
It was a mighty crash, a clap of sudden thunder that
woke all in sleeping Ivanhoe. It also woke almost every-
body in the circus train, but not all, for a few were
crushed as they slept and never knew what happened.
Close on the crash came the flames from the swinging lan-
terns in the cars. The heap of matchwood started to burn
at once, while the dark was made more dreadful by the
fearful noises of the beasts of the far corners of the earth
that were here assembled on Indiana soil. Higher pitched
than the roars of the animals were the cries that came from
the telescoped and splintered sleeping cars. The girls of the
ballet One Hundred Beauties were dying horribly and
too slowly in the licking flames, many of them already
mangled beyond knowing.
Pretty and dainty Rose Borland never cried. She was
beyond crying and probably never roused. But Hercules
the Strong Man roused. He could lift a ton, said his bill-
ing, but he was no match for Engine Number 8485 as
operated by Alonzo Sargent, for Hercules crumpled like
so much cardboard. He was crushed completely to pulp
from the waist down, and when they found him his great
arm muscles could barely twitch as he begged one of the
rescuers to kill tim. ...
Joe Coyle, the famous clown, survived, though his wife
and two babies died in the berth above him. Nor were they
alone, for a dozen of the lovely ballet girls died where they
lay sleeping. The Rooney Family of bareback riders was
wiped out. So were the Famous Meyers, animal trainers;
i8o DISASTER!
the Cotterell Family, horsemen and horsewomen par excel-
lence; and three old-time joeys, veteran clowns.
As the flames rose higher from the burning wood and
flesh, dawn came to Indiana to find disaster and chaos
spread on the tracks at Ivanhoe and in the fields. The
grass and cinders were strewn with the gauds and tinsels
of the world of the circus spangles, shreds of tights and
ballet dresses, tin crescents, stars, fleurs-de-lis, and the
ridiculous great shoes and pantaloons of the clowns, funny
no longer, but peculiarly tragic in their present situation.
Ivanhoe turned out to give such succor as it could. The
tracks from Gary were cleared, and a hastily assembled
special brought doctors and nurses. Another came loaded
from Hammond. But no water was handy, and the great
mass of debris burned on and on while brave men tried
desperately and often futilely to save those who were
trapped in the jumble. The survivors were put aboard a
train and taken to Hammond, where many were hospital-
ized and the others filed past a gilt circus wagon set up in
an open lot where Manager Dollmer checked the living
against the names on the circus pay roll. Sixty-eight had
died, one way or another, by being crushed, suffocated or
burned. One hundred and twenty-seven others went to
the hospital. There was no show that day in Hammond.
Five days later investigators met in Hammond to deter-
mine responsibility for the wreck. Conductor Johnson of
the circus extra testified that his train was stopped to fix
a hotbox when he saw the engine of the troop train com-
ing headlong. He had seen his flagman, the trusty Trimm,
give the washout, the emergency stop signal, by swinging
a red lantern. Trimm himself took the stand to relate his
story.
The chief witness, of course, was Engineer Alonzo K.
Sargent of the troop train. He testified that he had little
or no sleep for twpnty-four hours prior to the wreck. He
said he had eaten a couple of heavy meals before going on
the fatal trip. He said the wind had been high that night,
KIDNEY PILLS WRECK A TRAIN l8l
and lie had closed the cab window to make the place com-
fortable.
The questioning of Engineer Sargent continued. He said
he had taken "some kidney pills" just before he started the
run. Doctors testified that most, if not all, kidney pills
contained a narcotic that "tended to produce unavoidable
drowsiness." The investigation was at last getting some-
where.
Filled with the drug, Engineer Sargent, a railroad man
of long experience, had put his hand on the throttle to pull
out of Michigan City and had kept it there. He admitted
he had then dozed and been dozing when he ran past the
caution signal. He was still dozing when he passed the
automatic red signal. He had never seen Flagman Trimm
with his waving lantern. Even the thrown fusee had failed
to wake him. The. first warning of danger he got, he
vowed, was -when he saw the tail lights of the stalled circus
train.
Meanwhile, Sargent's fireman, a new employee, had
either not seen the automatic signals or had not recognized
their import. He had continued to shovel coal, as a good
fireman should, and kept the steam well up in the gauge,
while Engineer Sargent, his kidneys at last eased by the
soothing effect of drugs, had slumbered long enough to
perpetrate the greatest circus train disaster in the annals of
the three-ring sawilust world.
The Flu Epidemic
of 1918
By Frederick Lewis Allen
As every newspaperman, publicity man, and politician
knows, a big news event is sometimes thrust out of public
notice by a still bigger or more exciting event which
happens at the same time. If he wants his story to land on
the front page, he prays that there will be no grave threat
of war, no great disaster, no juicy murder to compete with
it for public attention. There is relativity in news. When,
for example, a Hindenburg disaster [see The Last Flight
of the Hindenbwrgy page 258] takes place, even a struggle
between the President and Congress over the Supreme
Court sinks for a time into comparative insignificance in
newspaper readers' minds.
Now and then the same sort of thing happens in the
larger field of history. An event of great historical impor-
tance is crowded off the front pages and out of people's
memories by other simultaneous happenings. Could one
find a better example than the fact that the most terrific
epidemic which ever visited the United States the epi-
demic which brought death to a half -million Americans
never became the big news event of its day, was only
sparingly written about, and was soon half -forgotten?
Readers who were grown up in 1918 will recall the
great influenza epidemic of 1918 more or less vaguely, as
a sudden scourge of a particularly virulent form of grippe
(known at the time as Spanish influenza) which swept the
country during the last two months of "World War I those
Condensed from Scribner's Magazine; copyright 193 S by Charles Scribner>s
Sons, New York, N. Y.
182
THE FLU EPIDEMIC OF 1918 183
months of late September, October and early November,
when the Allied troops were victoriously thrusting the
Germans back across the ruined countryside of France and
Belgium, when the central European empires were crum-
bling, when Woodrow Wilson was laying down the in-
exorable terms of armistice to a frantic German Chancellor,
when the Fourth Liberty Loan campaign was arousing a
new frenzy of war enthusiasm, and when the American
public was wondering if the fighting would soon be over.
These readers will remember how friends and members
of their families and fellow office workers were taken ill,
how the influenza often turned to pneumonia, how doctors
and nurses were overworked (if obtainable at all) , how
people went about with white cotton masks over their
faces. Some readers will remember going home with a high
fever and aching bones and a cough, and being warned to
stay in bed lest pneumonia develop as it often did. Ex-
soldiers may recall that their regiments at the training
camp or at Brest or in the trenches were depleted by sud-
den illness. But even these older readers will perhaps be
surprised at how widespread and destructive the plague
was.
The epidemic took at least a half -million American
lives ten times as many as the Germans took during the
war. In the Army camps in the United States, every fourth
man came down with influenza, every twenty- fourth man
got pneumonia, and every sixty-seventh man died from
the combined effects of the two diseases.
Nor was this an American epidemic only. It was world-
wide. In India it killed some 5,000,000 people. It spread
simultaneously to the remotest regions Africa, upper
Labrador, the Philippines, the South Seas. In Alaska whole
villages of Eskimos lost their entire adult population; in
Western Samoa the epidemic took, directly or indirectly,
7,000 lives out of a population of 30,000; in Fiji some 85
or 90 per cent of the population of Suva fell ill. Although
the total loss of life the world over cannot possibly be
184 DISASTER!
computed, certainly it was much larger, in a few months,
than the total loss of life in the many years of fighting in
World War I.
According to no less sober and cautious an authority
than the British Ministry of Health, the epidemic ranks
"not lower than third, and perhaps second, upon the roll
of great pestilences" of all recorded history. "No epidemic
of smallpox or cholera," says a report issued by this Min-
istry in 1920, "not even the typhus periods of the earlier
years of the ith century, can vie with the influenza
epidemic of 1918-19 as agents of destruction." The only
two rivals in history, it seems, are the plague of Justinian's
reign and the 14th-century Black Death.
Yet so completely did the end of the war displace this
great plague in popular attention and destroy the memory
of it that you will find only the most fleeting mention of
it if at all in the history books.
Since there was a war going on at the time and hysteria
ran high, it was natural that many credulous Americans
should have imagined that influenza germs had been
brought to America by German agents. One gentleman,
Lieutenant Colonel Philip S. Doane of the Shipping Board,
suggested an even more definite possibility. "We know,"
he was quoted as saying, "that men have been ashore from
German submarine boats, for they have been seen in New
York and other places. It would be quite easy for one of
these German agents to turn loose Spanish influenza germs
in a theater or some other place where large numbers of
people are assembled. The Germans have started epidemics
in Europe, and there is no reason why they should be par-
ticularly gentle with America." Unfortunately for this
delightful theory, careful postwar research shows that one
of the places where the epidemic was first reported in the
whole world was Camp Funston, in Kansas.
Did the epidemic actually start in Kansas? To ask that
question is to find oneself confronting one of the riddles
of medicine. As everybody knows, there are periodic waves
THE FLU EPIDEMIC OF 1918 l8j
of diseases or groups of diseases variously known as in-
fluenza or grippe. Sometimes these waves are big, and the
disease is frighteningly severe; it was very widespread and
very bad, for example, in 188990, and pretty bad in
1928. Sometimes it is comparatively mild. The epidemic of
1918 began in a rather mild form in the spring of the year.
It was recorded at Camp Funston on March $, spread
quickly through the camp, passed off. On March 1 8 it hit
the Oglethorpe camps. In the same month the same disease
or what looked like it appeared in such widely sepa-
rated places as China, the Japanese navy, and the French
village of Chaumont.
That is a strange set of facts to build a theory upon.
They suggest that possibly the influenza broke out in no
one place, but in several places simultaneously. What fol-
lowed was even stranger.
By April the disease had reached the American troops
at Brest, apparently having been carried there from Amer-
ican Army camps. It had broken out also among the
British troops, and among the German troops on the West-
ern front. In May it was reported not only from France
but from Spain, Scotland, Greece, Macedonia, Egypt and
the Italian Navy. By June it had taken hold in Germany,
Austria, Norway and India. It was running wildly through
Europe, and no wonder, for most of Europe was fighting,
and troop trains and ships were constantly transporting
men hither and yon in quantity. Spain had a hard time of
it before the end of May; hence the label "Spanish influ-
enza." And as it spread it increased in virulence. During
those summer weeks of 1918, when LudendorfPs final
thrusts into French territory were being turned back at
Chateau Thierry and Compiegne and Hazebrouck, and
Foch was beginning the counterattack which never stopped
for long until the war was over, few Americans heard
much about the influenza epidemic, but it was moving
fast and taking an increasing toll abroad.
Then it moved westward again back across the At-
1 86 DISASTER!
lantic. And all at once it was no longer a mild diseai
either in the United States or in the other countries j
over the world. Now it was terrifying.
Toward the end of August, some fifty cases sudden
appeared among the men at the Naval Station at COE
monwealth Pier, Boston. Within a week there were 2,oc
men down with influenza in the naval forces of the Fir
Naval District, centering in Boston. Sailors often ming
with soldiers: on September 7 or 8 influenza had broke
out at Camp Devens near Boston. The scourge was begii
ning its real American onslaught.
In each camp the first few cases appeared to be mil
but presently one case in six or seven turned into pnei
monia; and this took so severe a form that a pneumon
patient had only two chances in three of pulling througl
The disease spread from the military through the civilia
population, doing its greatest damage among young me
and women. It leaped from one end of the country to tit
other. By the first of October the epidemic had reache
its peak in Boston (and simultaneously in Bombay, IE
dia) ; by the middle of October it had reached its peak i
Philadelphia and Baltimore (and also, for variety, i
Liverpool and Vienna) ; during the next week, from th
ijth to the 26th of October, it came to its climax in Nei
York (as well as in Berlin, Paris and Stockholm) . Anothe
week, and Cleveland was seeing the worst of it (along wit
London) ; still another, and Pittsburgh, Spokane, Edin
burgh and Amsterdam were having their crises. Mean
while, influenza and pneumonia were running through al
the other American cities, through the Army camps i
America, and through the troops in a half-dozen theater
of war.
To meet the crisis, Congress made a special appropria
tion of $1,000,000 for the Public Health Service, and th<
Red Cross appropriated $575,000, Though nobody knev
just how the disease was communicated, the coming to-
gether of people seemed to have something to do with it
THE FLU EPIDEMIC OF Il8 187
and therefore football games and boxing matches were
canceled, the Kentucky races were called off, and theaters
and other places of amusement were closed, stranding
thousands of actors on the road. All releases of motion
pictures were canceled until the epidemic should abate.
In Boston and Washington the public schools were
closed. The New York Public Library discontinued the
circulation of books. The New York Telephone Company,
with no less than 1,600 of its operators ill, asked its sub-
scribers not to use the telephone except for the most urgent
calls. Dr. Royal S. Copeland, then Health Commissioner
of New York City, asked businesses to stagger their hours
of opening and closing so as to relieve congestion in the
subway and other transit lines. A political campaign was
under way, but political meetings were few. In Seattle and
many other cities, every place of public assembly was
closed. Even war plans were delayed: the Provost Marshal
General canceled orders for the entrainment of 142,000
draft registrants because conditions in the training camps
were appalling.
Meanwhile the health authorities lectured their fright-
ened communities on hygiene and thus provided a little
comic relief from the stress of illness and worry, as when
Dr. Copeland warned New Yorkers not to kiss except
through a handkerchief and, taking his cue from the cus-
tom of observing heatless days and motorless Sundays to
save fuel for war purposes, called for "spitless Sundays."
Five hundred New Yorkers were arrested for spitting. The
New York Medical Society warned against handshaking.
In Washington and elsewhere one saw people wearing
strange-looking white cotton masks in offices and shops.
Barbers generally put on masks, but even so they were re-
garded with such suspicion that the sale of safety razors
boomed. Nor was ingenuity asleep: in Popular Science
Monthly, Edward T. Duncan suggested that you could
smoke a cigarette through a mask if you put two corn-
plasters on the mask, one inside and one outside, and cut
i88 DISASTER!
a hole through the mask to fit the holes in the plasters.
The holes would be corked when not in use.
Yet all precautions seemed useless. So savage was the at-
tack of the epidemic that mines and factories and ship-
yards were crippled by sick leaves. More than half the
population of San Antonio, Texas, fell ill. In other cities
one person in three or four was laid up. The death rate in
Camp Sherman approached those of the plague in London
in 1665 and of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793.
Doctors and nurses everywhere were overwhelmed. A
physician would answer a call and instead of treating one
patient would have to treat ten or fifteen members of
the family and neighbors before he could leave. Hospital
conditions were a nightmare: wards designed for thirty
people were jammed with seventy, half of them dying;
when the day nurses came on duty they would find many
new faces in the beds replacements for those who had
died in the night. Doctors and nurses were falling ill them-
selves, some to die in three days. Panic was everywhere. A
nurse who had had but two months of training was
offered $100 by telephone to come and look after a man
and his wife who were both ill. Dr. Copeland appealed to
every woman in New York with any knowledge of nurs-
ing to volunteer for immediate service; and in Philadel-
phia, which was harder hit than any other big city, the
Council of Defense advertised for help from "any person
with two hands and a willingness to work."
It had to be willingness to face grim scenes, too: one
nurse in Philadelphia found a house in which a lone woman
had been dead and unburied for a week; another found a
husband dead in the same room where his wife was lying
with newborn twin babies: life and death had come to that
house together. Cemeteries appealed for more grave-
diggers. In several cities there was a serious shortage of
coffins; in Philadelphia the J. G. Brill Company, manufac-
turers of streetcars, turned its woodworking shop over to
THE FLU EPIDEMIC OF IJlS 189
coffin-making as the bodies piled up in the morgue. Mid-
October was a grim time in hundreds of communities.
The disease was no respecter of persons. Among the
millions of Americans who came down with it was the
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a young man named
Franklin D. Roosevelt; arriving at New York from a two
months' visit to Europe, he was taken to his mother's
house in an ambulance.
The most important sufferer from the influenza and
unhappily, perhaps, for the theory that the enemy had
arranged the whole thing was not an American, but the
German Chancellor. On October 23, when Germany's
Bulgarian allies had already surrendered, when her Turkish
allies were on the verge of surrender, and her Austrian
allies were likewise pressing for peace negotiations; when
it was already clear that Germany was menaced not only
by Foch's advancing armies but also by disaffection at
home; and when the new German Chancellor, Prince Max
of Baden, was already appealing to Woodrow Wilson for
peace and was being told categorically that if Germany
wanted peace she must overthrow the Kaiser at this criti-
cal juncture Prince Max came down with the flu. Before
he could resume any sort of work German sailors had
mutinied at Kiel and events were rushing headlong toward
their mighty conclusion.
In America the influenza struck furiously but briefly.
The graphs which show death rates in most American cities
week by week during October, 1918, look like cross sec-
tions of a city with one skyscraper towering high above
everything else. A few cases one week, a few more the
next; then a terrific increase with a vast number of deaths;
then, during the next two weeks, a rapid subsidence
toward normal.
With the rapid subsidence of the epidemic came a rapid
recovery of morale. And no wonder; for* by the beginning
of November it was clear even to the most skeptical Amer-
190 DISASTER!
lean mind not only that the influenza was on the way out,
but also that the war was ending and ending in a victory
bewilderingly sudden and complete.
Once the influenza was clearly on the wane it was well-
nigh forgotten except in those families where someone
had been taken. To the mass of Americans, what was a
passing epidemic when the headlines were daily blaring
forth the unbelievable news the American and Allied
troops routing a demoralized enemy, Austria accepting an
armistice, mutiny and rebellion spreading in Germany?
Minor upsurges of influenza were to come that winter and
the next spring, but in most places the disease was to take
a milder form than it had during October and who cared
now anyhow?
On November 7 came the false news that an armistice
had been signed, and America poured out of its shops and
ofl&ces and homes, singing and shouting and blowing tin
horns, while ticker tape showered down out of the win-
dows.
On November ir came the real news, and there -was a
mad celebration all over again. Influenza? Masks? Keeping
away from crowds? All that seemed a remote and unim-
portant nightmare now to cheering multitudes in the
streets.
Only one thing mattered. The war was over!
The Great
Wall Street Explosion
By Alan Hynd
NEW YORK, N.Y., September 16, 1920 The hour
of noon had just been tolled by the bells of New York
City's Trinity Church on Thursday, September 16, 1920,
when a weatherbeaten wagon standing in front of the
United States Assay Office, on Wall Street, exploded with
a roar heard for ten miles. In the next few minutes the
neighborhood was obscured by thick smoke. When the pall
lifted, there were 29 dead and more than 100 critically
injured four fatally.
Not a window for blocks around remained unbroken.
Facades of buildings were scarred, as if from bomb frag-
ments. The only object in range of the explosion which
escaped unscathed was the statue of George Washington
on the steps of the Sub-Treasury.
While infantry troops with fixed bayonets rushed in to
guard the Assay Office (repository of $900,000,000 in
gold bullion) and the Sub-Treasury, in the fear that the
explosion might be a prelude to robbery, more than 100
detectives moved methodically through the area. Dwight
W. Morrow, a Morgan partner, told the sleuths that he had
noticed a decrepit delivery wagon, drawn by a sagging
bay horse, standing in front of the Assay Office shortly
before noon.
Any doubt that the explosion had been incendiary was
dispelled when detectives noticed some of the dead had
been struck by forcefully propelled pieces of junk metal.
Copyright 1945 by Esquire, Inc., Coronet Building, Chicago 1, Ilk (Coronet,
May, 1945.)
191
DISASTER!
Such junk must have come from an infernal device in the
wagon.
Hoping to find a clue to the origin of the contrivance,
the police department ordered the street-cleaning depart-
ment to deliver all debris found within several blocks of
the Assay Office. The magnitude of the task was typified
by the fact that a piece of sash weight obviously from a
lethal contraption was found atop the forty-story Equi-
table Building.
The wagon in which the explosion originated had been
blown to bits, but fragments of it were found more than
a block away. The carcass of the horse was virtually intact,
and an autopsy disclosed it had recently eaten a large
quantity of fresh grass. Apparently it had been stabled
outside the city, where there were pastures.
The animal's front shoes were old and well worn, and
blacksmiths believed they had been made in non-union
shops. The hind shoes, however, were new, and bore the
trade-mark of the National Horseshoers Association.
By nightfall detectives had begun a canvass of black-
smith shops throughout New York City and neighboring
areas, including northern New Jersey, in a search for the
man who had shod the horse hitched to the death wagon.
A blacksmith, they knew, often imparts to his work dis-
tinctive characteristics which he can later recognize.
Mayor John F. Hylan, popularly know as Red Mike,
appealed to all citizens for any information that could be
of value in running down the perpetrators of the crime.
The mayor's appeal brought forth a pedestrian who had
been walking west on Wall Street, toward Broad, at about
seven minutes before noon. He had drawn abreast of the
wagon just as it had come to a stop. The driver a small,
dark man of uncertain age had alighted and, before
hurrying away, had said to the pedestrian, "You better
get out of here quick!" The man had thought little about
the warning until he heard the terrific detonation.
The informant was taken to a motion-picture projection
THE GREAT WALL STREET EXPLOSION 193
room to view Pathe News scenes of the blast vicinity
which were made just after the explosion. They clearly
showed the faces of hundreds of the morbidly curious. The
police theorized that the driver of the wagon might have
returned to the scene of his crime.
As the driver wasn't in evidence in the films, the police
did the next best thing: they had an artist draw a picture
of the man, based on the pedestrian's description. Thou-
sands of facsimiles were sent to police departments all
over the nation.
Some ten tons of debris, taken to police headquarters,
were painstakingly examined. Among the clues worth fol-
lowing were pieces of tin smelling of gasoline. The Amer-
ican Can Company sent experts to examine the tin. They
concluded that, among other explosives in the wagon, there
had been two five-gallon cans of gasoline. A further anal-
ysis of the tin fragments established the fact that the cans
had been made by the Atlas Can Company of Brooklyn
but that concern had made so many five-gallon containers
that tracing them was impossible.
The clue of the horse's hind shoes led to a blacksmith
shop operated by two Italians on Elizabeth Street in Man-
hattan's lower East Side. The smithies identified the shoes
as those they had put on a bay mare the day before the
explosion. The horse had been drawing a one-ton, single-
top delivery wagon which answered the description of the
vehicle that Dwight Morrow and others had seen standing
in front of the Assay Office. The blacksmiths promptly
identified the artist's drawing on the police flier as that
of the man who had had the horse shod. Unfortunately
they had no idea who he was.
As time wore on, the wagon itself was reconstructed
from fragments of its wheels, tailboard, framework and
metal parts. The condition of the parts indicated that the
vehicle had been at least fifteen years old, which made
tracing its ownership a remote possibility. But there was a
clue in the reconstructed wagon. The width between its
194 DISASTER!
wheels was four inches greater than the width between
trolley tracks in New York City. Since most wagons in
Manhattan were built so that their wheels could utilize the
trolley tracks, it seemed the vehicle had probably been
used outside the city. This corroborated the clue of the
fresh grass in the horse's stomach.
The harness of the horse was eventually traced to its
manufacture in Kingston, New York, over a decade pre-
viously. Time was again operating against the man-hunters.
Government investigators had now entered the case.
Detectives of the New York police department investi-
gated settlements as far distant as the Pennsylvania anthra-
cite fields, particularly localities where sash weights of the
type that had been part of the infernal machine were used
in homes.
J. P. Morgan, who was in Scotland the day Wall Street
ran red with death, couldn't shake off the feeling that the
plot had been directed against him, so he put private de-
tectives on the case. The plain-clothes sleuths produced a
tip that sent them scurrying to Poland on the trail of
a man who had left New York for Warsaw just after the
explosion. When found, the man had an airtight alibi.
Another lead was the small knob of a safe, which had
been part of the infernal device and had struck a street
cleaner a block away from the Assay Office. Safe manufac-
turers were circularized and the knob was identified as the
product of a company in Cincinnati.
Sales records disclosed that a safe of the same serial num-
ber as that shown on the knob had been sold years previ-
ously to the United States Army. Army records showed
the safe had been sent to a barracks at Jeffersonville, In-
diana. An officer who had been attached to the Jefferson-
ville barracks at the time the safe was sent there was now
living in Omaha, Nebraska. This officer recalled that the
safe had been transferred from Jeffersonville to New Or-
leans.
From New Orleans the trail led to War Department
THE GREAT WALL STREET EXPLOSION 195
archives in Washington, D. C., and disclosed that the safe
had gone to France with an A.E.F. company in the first
World War. The sleuth traced the company through the
war and back to its point of disembarkation in Hoboken,
New Jersey. There the adventurous record of the safe
came to an end.
For years after the crime, suspects were picked up regu-
larly, then exonerated. Detectives followed leads to the
ends of the earth. Today, more than a quarter of a century
later, New York's biggest murder mystery still remains
unsolved.
Mississippi
Rampage
By Harnett T. Kane
NEW ORLEANS, LA., 1922-27 The Mississippi
was "high, high"; men gazed at their levees and won-
dered. Outside New Orleans the whirling yellow tide,
heavy with the springtime scourings of the continent,
reached nearer to the top than at any time in the memory
of the elders. In St. Bernard parish the residents had been
giving special attention to their high, green-clad embank-
ments. On April 27, 1922, officials completed a tour of
inspection; they met no signs of weakness, no disturbing
trickles at the landward bases. Delta people went to bed
that pleasant spring evening without anything unusual to
concern them.
Shortly before three o'clock the next morning, a mem-
ber of the levee patrol passed near the old Poydras planta-
tion, about fifteen miles below the city on the east shore.
The night was clear; the restless water gurgled close to his
horse's hoofs, but no closer than it had come for a day or
so. Another long watch was nearly over. Bien. Fifteen min-
utes later a truck farmer drove by the spot with a wagon-
load of vegetables for French Market. He heard a deep
rumble, like far thunder on the Gulf. But it seemed some-
how close at hand. His eye caught a movement of some
kind; in a moment the earth of the levee "seemed kind of
pushing out, toward me." Great handfuls of soil shot up-
ward. Out of the mound poured thick mud and grass,
and a spout of water. He spurred on his horse; already the
Reprinted by permission of the publishers, 'Duett, Sloan & Pearce, Inc.; copy-
right 1944 by Harnett T. Kane.
MISSISSIPPI RAMPAGE 197
earth about them was covered by a thin stream. The rum-
ble became a roar; looking back he could make out a kind
of waterfall over what had been the slope of the bank.
Men raced from their houses. Levee going, fast! Some
did not require notice. One resident, who lived nearly a
quarter-mile away, was wakened by an unaccustomed
noise; when he reached his gate, water was in front of the
house. Crowds hurried to the scene, then drew back as
the earth on each side of the crevasse cracked before them.
The water was moving in a deeper, more threatening flow
with every few minutes; now it was a violent torrent that
meant death to anyone who approached too close.
By dawn workers with trucks, wooden pilings, and
heavy sandbags were at the break. Engineers made a quick
inspection, then shook their heads. The river made a bend
near by, and the flow rushed upon the crevasse with a
plunging force accumulated in a straight sweep of several
miles. The breach could not be closed; all that they might
do was to "tie" the ends in an effort to keep it from widen-
ing. The new current moved eastward toward the Gulf; a
belt several miles wide was soon to be covered some of
the best truck-gardening land in the South.
Hundreds were looking toward the river in dismay. In
the distance they heard the water on its way; within a few
hours the land was darkening before them, as a line of wet-
ness crept in their direction. About their yards the chickens
were flapping, jumping up the steps or whatever higher
roosts they could find. Dogs scratched at doors, horses and
cows shifted about in alarm. Over the fields the moisture
trickled between the pale green rows of lettuce and cab-
bage. Farmers ran about frantically, pulling up the vege-
tables, tossing them into baskets. They were in a losing
race with the Mississippi. As they worked, the lower leaves
began to disappear, then the whole heads. Before many of
them could reach the end of the first line, all was under
water.
One fanner had been planning for a week to harvest his
DISASTER!
produce. Each day he had looked at it, growing bigger in
the balmy, dew-covered morning, and had decided to wait
a little longer. Now the river swallowed his livelihood. In
the house were seventy-five cents and a few pounds of
flour, for eight people. What was to be done? He gazed
down again at the water, and knew the answer. Already it
was up to the doors and a trickle reached into the kitchen.
An official approached in a boat. They were right in the
path; they had better go, certainement.
With trembling hands the family gathered its things
bedding, clothes, food, the picture that Grandpere had
left; then they realized that they could never take it all.
The big skiff was drawn from under the house. Maman
was crying now, the bitter tears of a woman who must
leave her home. Her aged mother sat in the corner, saying
her beads, talking between prayers about other, earlier
occasions that had not been entirely different. The chil-
dren drew up about their mother, frightened by her
weeping.
Papa announced that as soon as he had put them all in
a safe place, he would come back to guard the house.
Maman cried harder at this. Non, non> he would die. The
building would fall, or he would catch a disease in this
terrible wetness. Well, they would see. Papa tried to com-
fort her; the boat was ready now. Eh bien, it might be
worse, maybe!
Setting forth gingerly, he rowed to the front gate, care-
fully opened it, rowed through and told the boy in the
stern to close it tightly. Then he advanced up what he
judged to be the road. As the family drew away, they
could hear noises within the house. The water was begin-
ning to move their belongings about, knocking them over.
It was a sound that made Maman shudder.
First they must get to the levee, always the highest place.
On it, some distance from the break, they would be safe
until someone came. Maman whispered that maybe if they
jus* stay' there a couple of days, the flood would go down.
MISSISSIPPI RAMPAGE
But when she and the others listened to the pound of the
water through the opening many yards off, they knew this
to be a futile hope.
Emergency shelters were being set up along the upper
borders of the parish. Motorboats, luggers, and barges
moved out to pick up the people. Many had to wait long
hours, a damp day and night, before help came. Whenever
a boat approached, the men waved their arms and called
for help. Often they were told to be patient. A message
had arrived that groups of families were marooned to the
back; or there was a sick man, with his family, alone in a
threatened home; the boat would be back. The flood was
rising. Near Lake Borgne eighty people huddled in a few
shacks; scores had crowded into several of the canning
factories, seating themselves first on benches and then on
tables as the waters lifted.
The spreading waves now approached the Gulf, moving
across ponds and bayous, overwhelming canals and their
bridges. They added a paler coloration to the green-black
liquids of the swamps, then swept over the marshes and
into the blue salt currents. As they went they brought
ruin, at least temporarily, to hunting and trapping grounds
and to oyster beds. The fishermen toward the lakes were
accustomed to frequent intrusions of salt from the sea.
But this silt-burdened stream was worse than any that they
had known.
Owners of small properties sometimes gathered with
their neighbors and tried to build levees in a ring about
them. After twenty-four hours or so, the river casually
washed it all away. A baker, turning out thousands of
loaves for the flood victims, kept his machinery running
for several days, until suddenly the protection fell apart
and a sheet of water broke in. At another point a factory
force of hundreds labored at the borders of a man-made
island in the yellow sea. No sandbags or other materials
for building a levee were at hand; some were on the way,
but meanwhile the men must struggle as best they could,
200 DISASTER!
using shovels, scraping up the earth with buckets. Their
energy was desperate; hour by hour they kept at it, halt-
ing only for brief intervals of rest on the ground.
The women stayed at the men's sides. The flood crept
higher, an inch or two at a time. At dawn one morning
they realized that hope was lessening rapidly. A section six
feet long began to give way. All hands rushed to the weak-
ened spot and saved it. Then the men scattered again, each
to his section of the mud wall. "We prayed, over and over ?
for them to send fresh help," one worker sighed. "We
knew it was promised, but when?" The water was edging
to the top; here and there it slipped over in pale stream-
lets. Still they worked, panting, sweating, silent. Then
down the river came the dim outlines of a relief boat
with supplies and eighty or more additional men.
But they were too late. The water was topping the levee
at all points, and it was crumbling. "Make for your
houses!" The men ran, and the river poured after them.
Soon it was five feet high, and over everything. Those
whose quarters had second stories fled to them; some were
so exhausted that they fell helpless upon their beds while
the women furiously packed what they could. Further
orders came; they must go at once; the pent-up strength
of the current was terrific. They left most of their belong-
ings behind.
Meanwhile cattle faced danger up and down the river
bank. Thousands headed to the main levees and a precari-
ous refuge, while others moved ahead of the water toward
the lakes and their doom. Some fell into hidden canals, to
drown in their exhaustion. Men went out in barges to
round up as many animals as they could; accidents multi-
plied; barges carrying men and cattle capsized with heavy
losses. Vessels advancing toward the back areas were forced
into the Gulf by the surge of the river waters. At the
front, the break still grew. Already a third as wide as the
Mississippi itself, it dug forty-five feet into the ground as
its force struck immediately behind the levee. The crevasse
MISSISSIPPI RAMPAGE 2OI
created a peril for ships in the river. Even in midstream,
pilots felt a pull to the side, and smaller ships fought hard
to prevent being sucked into the hole.
Up in New Orleans, people told each other that the
crevasse at Poydras had been a godsend. The volume of
water withdrawn from the stream rapidly lowered the level
at the city. The Delta, whatever the feelings of its people,
had rescued the metropolis. But those among the eddying
waters could only say, as did one while he watched his
house disappear, "This flood, she is the poor man's hell."
The date was now 1927, five short years later the year
that has been termed the grimmest in the history of the
valley. Unprecedently heavy surges of water were rushing
into the lower river. Upstream levees were breaking; thou-
sands were fleeing their homes in districts that had never
known serious flood. New Orleans was frightened, more
frightened perhaps than at any previous time. Few Deltans
appeared fearful on this occasion. Their upper levees had
been rebuilt and strengthened; the banks would hold.
At the city, thousands of sandbags were stacked along
the river. Engineers did not like what they saw. Hundreds
labored in the sun; still the stream rose, and the crest was
not yet in sight. Some recalled the way the levee down at
Poydras had broken without warning in 1922. It might
happen like that at New Orleans, any day, any night.
Nursing units, first aid, and emergency police were organ-
ized; but the men and women on the streets asked for
more than that. Ways must be found to save the city.
Millions in wealth were endangered; a population of a half-
million was alarmed.
A note of hysteria entered the voices of the people be-
hind the levees. Confidential messages were conveyed by
city officials to the Governor and to the United States
engineers in general charge of the river protection. Reports
spread by word of mouth. Yes, there was a way to protect
New Orleans . . . The Deltans realized suddenly what the
202 DISASTER!
city had in mind the Delta; specifically, a crevasse to
draw the water out of the Mississippi just as the last one
had done, a man-made break below the city! It was the
interests of a metropolis against those of the farmers and
fishermen. Washington was even then being asked for
permission.
The Deltans cried out in astonishment. It would be a
shame, a crime in the sight of le Bon Dieu! Who did those
people think they were that they could act like this to
others? Let them watch their levee; we watch ours. Out,
they got fine house* and nice thing'. We got ours, too.
Faces grew sullen, and eyes bitter. It was bad enough when
it happened by itself; but for somebody to come along
and make a levee go! The men talked of forming lines at
the parish border and shooting it out with any who tried
to get at their embankments.
The city's representatives worked hastily. The peak of
the river was coming; they could not delay much longer.
Emissaries went to the Delta. Look, everything would be
arranged to lessen the blow. The city agreed to give full
compensation for losses; merchants would put up the
money. Central headquarters would be set up at the Army
supply base below the city. The Deltans could even remove
their furniture and it would be stored and ticketed with
their names and addresses, see. The children would go to
school; city ladies would cook meals for them. Stage shows
every week, a daily newspaper for the family. Wasn't it
all fair?
The Deltans listened and said Non. Would you give up
your house and everything you got, mister, for somebody
else? New Orleans knew about the trappers' fights; well,
they would be picnics compared to what would happen
now! Delta officials sent committees to New Orleans, tele-
grams to Washington. Couldn't something else be done,
in God's name? They had just recovered from the last
flood. Appeals failed. The water swirled higher by the day;
the city's pressure grew.
MISSISSIPPI RAMPAGE 203
Then "Washington gave its approval Soldiers assembled
and a decision was reached to blast open the levee at Caer-
narvon, not far from the previous break. The Delta offi-
cials gave in. A farmer shrugged and nodded. Trappers
and fishermen muttered, and walked slowly back to their
homes. The Deltans gave way because it was all they could
do. "We got pick between pay crevasse and crevasse with-
out no pay. We better take pay."
The women thought of that day of the last levee break.
When it had to be done so fast, and unexpectedly, it seemed
easier. Now, though they could take everything, the
weight on their hearts was greater. A few hurriedly dug
up their vegetables for a quick run to the market. The
remainder left behind their partly ripened crops; they
would now feed only the river fish. Trucks and wagons
called for their belongings, bearing bright banners on their
sides: "Flood Relief." "What flood?" demanded unrecon-
structed Deltans.
An intense woman, wetting white lips with her tongue,
talked as many others thought. Shutting her gate, she told
the Army driver: "I don* think we'll ever come back. We
been here so long. My own Mere was born here . . . We had
to leave at the las 9 break, but when we got back I fix 9 it
nice. We even put an inside bathtub. Now they say water
might take the whole place. I guess you ain 9 never had
somebody move you out like this?* 9 The soldier said he was
sorry. Her husband took her arm and led her away.
It was an exodus of men and animals, trucks piled with
tables and vases, blankets, boxes, and chairs; rattling cars,
people on horseback, on muleback, a few driving oxen
before them, others with chickens in coops, or hogs and
cattle. They left their animals at Jackson Barracks just
below the city, and pressed on to the great building in
which they would stay. If they wished, they could board
with relatives; at the last minute some chose this rather
than the life that would be so different from what they
had known. The men and women carried their small bun-
204 DISASTER!
dies, the children their pets. Well, here was where the
party broke up. Merci, we keep in touch with that office
like you say. We will get along, we guess. Now, Marie ?
you ain't crying again?
A few refused to go despite everything. Let the water
drown them if it wanted. Toward the lakes a number of
the bootlegging operators were reluctant. With everyone
watching, it was impossible to move their commodities;
none had any thought of deserting such valuables. In at
least one instance, a rescue barge brought a large quantity,
covered with fish. Most of the men stayed, with guns close
at hand.
As the time for action on the levee arrived, the Army
checked every vehicle entering or leaving the east side of
the Delta, turning away thousands of die curious. New
Orleans received high government officials, engineers and
construction authorities, to observe a feat of extraordinary
interest. On April 29 at midday a tense group watched.
Negro workmen prepared the soil, sank dynamite into the
holes, and connected the fuses. A roar, a small puff of
smoke and dust, and only a thin stream or two. More
dynamite, and another tiny flow. Again and again, and
the Mississippi refused to break through as men ordained*
Deltans made remarks in French, in Spanish, in Italian, in
Slavic. One winked and snickered: "The river, she fool
New Orlean'. She don't wan* run out, do she?"
A call went up to the city for more explosives, as Amer-
ica waited to receive the news. Eventually it worked; the
opening broadened, and the current threw out the mud in
several directions. The dull hum changed to a growl. Here
came the Mississippi; let her roar! A Delta official spoke
solemnly to all who listened: "You are witnessing the
public execution of a parish."
In the city there was jubilation and there was thanks-
giving; among the Deltans it was heartbreak. One of the
truck fanners shook his head: "This was the twice that we
rescue* New OrleanV The damage spread downward
MISSISSIPPI RAMPAGE 205
across the Plaquemines parish line; the flood was worse
than the last, and its effect more than physical. As some
predicted, they did not return. Compensation was pro-
vided, but it seemed to slip away before the families knew
it. Certain ones profited; the average man, considering the
disruptions and their aftermaths, came out the loser. Many
who went back attempted farming again, but often they
felt that their hearts were "not in it any more." They
shifted to fishing, to shrimping at the Gulf fringes; or
they took odd jobs or went on relief during the depression
that struck shortly afterward. Welfare records contain
repeatedly the words, "Tried truck gardening again,
failed . . ." "Does not wish to make attempt a third
.- - _ 39
time . *
An observant merchant, who lived in the Middle "West
during the drought and crop failures of the 19305, says
that he found among such Deltans the same dejection, the
same conviction of helplessness, that had spread among his
own people. One St. Bernard man asked me, when he fin-
ished a recital of those years, "Eb, whatcha gonna do?"
The S-4
Has Been Sunk!
By Mary Heaton Vorse
PROVINCETOWN, MASS., December 17, 1927 -
On a December afternoon in 1927, a neighbor put his head
in my door long enough to shout: "The $-4 has been sunk
off Wood End!"
The news ran like fire through the town, and by night-
fall there was no consciousness of anything else in Province-
town, Massachusetts, except the men under the water.
That first night was a strange one. People all over town
kept vigil with the men on the $-4. Lights burned through
the night in houses along the street, and as some of the
townsmen who had been out on guard passed by, they
stopped in with a little more news.
"Fve been over to Wood End, talking to Frank Simonds.
He saw it all. The 8-4 was making its trial trip and cruis-
ing between those two can buoys. By and by he saw the
Paulding rounding Race Point light. Pretty soon Captain
Gracie came into the observation tower and asked Frank if
he'd seen the submarine lately. Then he swung the telescope
around and saw a stream of spray from the periscope. He
dropped the telescope and yelled: 'There's going to be a
collision!'"
The holidays were near and rumrunners were busy, so
the destroyer Paulding had come out of Boston looking for
them. Frank Simonds at the telescope saw the Paulding
swing to starboard, trying to reverse engines. As he
watched, the submarine broke surface under the port bow
Excerpted, from the book Time and the Town, published at $3.00 by the
Dial Press, New York, N. Y,; copyright 1942 by Mary Heaton Vorse.
2O6
THE 8-4 HAS BEEN SUNK! 2OJ
of the Paulding. The destroyer's bow rose with a terrific
crash and the stern of the submarine hove above the sur-
face. The Paulding stopped and a boat was lowered, but
the $-4 had gone down.
Captain Gracie launched the surf boat in just a few min-
utes. He dropped a grapnel and commenced sweeping the
bottom, working back and forth over the spot where the
8-4 had gone down. At last, after four hours, he struck
with his grappling hook. At three in the morning the
grapnel gave way and his boat went adrift.
The only salvage ship the Navy had in the Atlantic, the
Falcon, was in New London, a part of her crew ashore on
liberty. But the Bushnell, the submarine's mother ship,
hurried from Portsmouth* "When his grapnel gave way,
Captain Gracie got better grappling equipment from the
Busbnell and went back to work through the rising storm.
He lowered his new grapnel in the freezing spray and dark-
ness and began dragging under the searchlights of the
Navy mine sweepers,
On the street the next morning, knots of people were
talking in low tones. "Why ain't they done nothing? We'd
save these men with our own hands." It was as if one had
gone into a town in mourning. Wherever one went, people
were crying.
All through the freezing night Captain Gracie dragged
his grapnel back and forth. The divers from Newport had
come down the Cape overland and at seven o'clock the
salvage vessel Falcon got to Provincetown and stood by
with the divers. There was no use going down until the
S-4 had been located and the lines hooked over the vessel's
side to guide the divers.
Not until 10:45 did Captain Grade's grapnel catch
again, and at 1:30 twenty-four hours after the $-4 had
sunk the first diver went over the side. There was a head
sea but in the sea's depth there was no sound but the
diver's weights against the steel hull. Through the silence
a faint signal was heard from the torpedo room.
208 DISASTER!
The diver went across the torn deck toward the sound.
He banged on the cover of the hatch, and from inside
came six raps clear and distinct. Six men were alive in
that torpedo room. The diver signaled the news, then went
aft to the conning tower and signaled there. Only silence.
He went to the steel hatch over the engine room and sig-
naled again. Again silence.
Admiral Brumby, flag officer of the Control Force to
which the 8-4 belonged, had arrived on the Falcon. He
consulted with the other officers as to what steps to take.
They knew that six members were alive forward. The rest
of the crew might be alive in the rear battery room. There
were two emergency air lines, one leading to the ballast
tanks and one to the crew compartments. Edward Ellsberg,
the famous diver, later wrote in Harper's Magazine:
"To which of these two emergency connections
should the next diver hook the air line? . . . Carefully
the situation was discussed. That no sounds came from
aft probably indicated, Brumby thought, not that
the stern was flooded, but that so many men crowded
in a small space aft were either unconscious or so weak
from bad air they could not answer. If so, prompt
lifting of the stern was all that would ever save those
aft ... The decision to blow ballasts first and try and
float up the undamaged stern was concurred with by
all present (but which turned out to be wrong be-
cause two compartments were flooded; in addition a
ballast tank was ruptured) and was promptly put
into execution.**
This decision was a death warrant for the six men still
alive. With a rising storm, a desperate attempt was made to
connect a hose to the compartment air line to feed air to
the torpedo room. The attempt of the divers to accomplish
this from the Falcon is an epic story which has been over-
shadowed by the tragedy of the men entombed in the 8-4.
Mired to their waists in muck, entangled in broken wreck-
THE 8-4 HAS BEEN SUNK! 209
age, frozen in icy waters, one gallant attempt after another
was made.
Chief Torpedoman Fred Michels, Chief Boatswain's
Mates Carr and Thomas Eadie were later joined in their
heroic efforts by Edward Ellsberg. To save the life of
Michels, who had been brought up unconscious and frozen
stiff, the Falcon left for Boston. Its reason for leaving was
not understood in Provincetown, and the townspeople
were openly cursing the Navy.
By now much time had been lost. The greatest wreck-
ing concern in Boston offered its services to the Navy the
day of the accident and sent its wrecking machinery over
at once. The Navy's wrecking equipment was in New
York, but it would have been against all precedent for the
Navy to allow a private wrecking concern to raise the 8-4.
And because of bad weather it took the Navy equipment
three days to reach Provincetown.
Now that it was known that men were alive down there,
a fury against the Navy seized the town. The fishermen
said they could raise the vessel themselves. As if by wire-
less, the messages sent by the Falcon and answered by the
men on the submarine flew through the town.
The Falcon signaled, "Is there any gas"
They answered, "No, but the air is bad. How long will
you be now?"
"How many are there?"
"There are six. Please hurry."
The Falcon replied, "Compartment salvage air line is
being hooked up now."
The air connection was never made. The divers could
not go down. Because the weather was sunny and seemed
calm enough for some salvage work, the town's fury rose
higher and higher.
Meantime, weakening calls for help came from the men
on the submarine. The town had become the center of the
whole world. Vessels of every kind had arrived. Town Hall
2io DISASTER!
had been made into headquarters for the press. Relatives
of the men, too, had come to Provincetown. Admiral
Brumby had forbidden small boats to go to the scene of
the disaster. When he peremptorily sent back the father
of one of the entombed boys, anger again swept through
the town.
The days dragged on and nothing seemed done. The
feeling ran so high that to lessen the tension one of the
townsmen invited officers of the Bushnell, the Falcon and
other vessels to meet with captains of local fishing vessels
to explain the technical difficulties which prevented rescue.
The officers explained that the bad weather had prevented
any diving. When the fishermen got up to go, they were
told: "Don't go so soon."
"We got to go fishing," they answered simply. The
weather, they implied, might be too bad for the Navy, but
not for fishermen.
They did not realize that the short, choppy sea would
have banged the divers to death. Certainly it was a hard
situation for the town to understand. The weather was
good enough for small boats to go over the surface under
which lay the 8-4. Until they were forbidden, boys in
rowboats offered to take out passengers. Little motorboats
cruised freely. The wrecker belonging to the private com-
pany was anchored in Provincetown Harbor and the Navy
wrecker hadn't arrived. Meanwhile the town was being
aroused to frenzy by the messages still being tapped out.
"How is the weather?" they asked.
"Choppy."
Later on, "Is there any hope?"
The answer came, "There is hope. Everything possible is
being done."
It seemed to Provincetown that nothing was being done.
The Navy Department ordered a message sent to Lieu-
tenant Fitch, "Your wife and mother are constantly pray-
ing for you."
THE S-4 HAS BEEN SUNK! 211
All through the night they kept on tapping the message
through the water, through the silent ship.
"Lieutenant Fitch, your wife and mother are constantly
praying for you/'
At last, early Tuesday morning, the last word came
from the men on the 8-4. "We understand."
But the town did not understand. They did not under-
stand why the line to the 8-4 was lost again or why the
divers didn't connect any air hose to the torpedo room.
Later, on March 3, three months after she sank, the $-4,
a tomb of thirty-four men, was brought to the surface.
The tragedy could then be reconstructed.
First of all, it was established that the 8-4 could have
been saved only if the stern had been lifted immediately.
The submarine went down bow first at a steep angle and
struck the bottom hard. She leveled off at even keel and
there lay waiting for the rescue which didn't come.
When finally she was raised, it was discovered that a
strange, unforeseeable accident had caused the death of
most of the men. When they leveled off, Lieutenant Fitch
and his five torpedo men were forward. Lieutenant Com-
mander Jones was in the control room. The majority of the
crew were safe. They had possession of the control room
and its machinery. Banks three and four were undamaged.
When water suddenly came in and they tried to close the
forward ventilation valves, the bulkhead valve would not
close. What must have happened is this:
The sudden pressure of the sea caused the collapse of
the ventilation duct in the battery room. Water rose on the
floor. The captain's stateroom was just forward of the
control bulkhead and the door was draped with a green
baize curtain. Water flowing in floated up the curtain; the
curtain got tangled with the valve body, and the valve
disks could not close.
Men must have fought to close it as the sea streamed in,
but they were beaten by a valve in which a harmless green
212. DISASTER!
curtain had lodged. The flood of water from the entangled
valve drove them into the engine room, forcing them out
of the control room, with its compressed air and controls,
where they could have remained alive. And there in this
small black hole they poisoned each other and died long
before help could reach them.
A green baize curtain and human error had killed them
all!
Death
in the Everglades
By Ralph Wallace
FLORIDA, September 16, 1928- As savage a hurri-
cane as this continent has ever known swept over the
Florida Everglades in 1928, and in a few hours at least
2,000 people lost their lives while a region the size of
Delaware was utterly devastated. The barometer dropped
to the lowest point ever recorded in America. Gales
whipped to more than 100 miles an hour.
That September the Everglades had been booming as
never before. In the heart of the 'Glades, the persistent
overflows of Lake Okeechobee, which had made the 'Glades
an oozing swampland, appeared to have been controlled by
dikes and drainage canals. The district's biggest planting
of winter vegetables had just begun. Tractors growled
through the muck fields like terriers; in seed stores and
supply houses, clerks labored half the night. Although
stillwild country, infested with water moccasins, alliga-
tors and wildcats, the region ranked with the world's best
farming land. Rich crops, as many as three a season, seemed
to spring up at the touch of a plow. Sales of produce to
northern. markets ran more than $2,500,000 a year.
Yet for all its prosperity, the region lay fearfully vul-
nerable to storms. From Lake Okeechobee eastward to
Palm Beach the land stretches flat as a floor a made-to-
order arena for wild winds and floods. Jammed in shacks
and tents on that lowland lived some 5,000 itinerant field
laborers. Few could be reached by telephone; not one fam-
Reprmted by permission of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Reader's Di-
gest; copyright 1945 by the Pulitzer Publishing Co., St. Louis, Ma.
213
214 DISASTER!
ily in a hundred owned a radio. Okeechobee, thirty miles
in diameter, lay above the level of most of the farms, but
new levees circled the lake. Unfortunately the levees, built
of muck and mari, were about as durable as porridge, and
rose only a few feet above the lake's high-water mark.
There had been a warning; in the 1926 hurricane the
levees had broken near Moore Haven and 400 had drowned.
Still, nobody worried.
During August and early September, 1928, three feet
of rain fell on the lake and on the 'Glades. The half-dozen
canals from Okeechobee ran bank-full. The lake waters
crept closer and closer to the crest of the levees. Let a high
wind rise, and the levees would go. Meanwhile, 3,500 miles
away, near the coast of Africa, a storm was lazily gather-
ing momentum.
The first hint of this tempest came from the American
freighter S.S. Commack, lunging through massive swells
off Barbados on the morning of September 10. The wor-
ried captain noted that the barometer had fallen sharply
and flashed a report.
On Wednesday, September 12, the storm screamed into
the island of Guadeloupe. When it turned out to sea, 660
were dead.
By now the hurricane had become a giant 235 miles in
diameter, with gales whose ferocity appalled observers. It
hit Puerto Rico on Thursday morning. By evening more
than 200,000 people were homeless; uncounted hundreds
had died.
The storm now developed an elephantine capriciousness.
% For the next two days Friday and Saturday it seemed
the great wind funnel intended to pass east of the Ba-
hamas. Up to Saturday, the Weather Bureau, watching
the storm's path curve eastward, was predicting that the
hurricane would not hit Florida at all. Not until noon
Sunday did the people of the Everglades learn that the
storm had suddenly veered toward them.
There were only a few hours to prepare. In the little
DEATH IN THE EVERGLADES 215
farming communities bordering Lake Okeechobee to the
south and east, couriers quickly organized to spread the
alarm. Businessmen of South Bay drove about the country-
side, collected 211 men, women and children, and placed
them on a big barge in the lake for safety. Dr. William
J. Buck of Belle Glade dispatched trucks to outlying sec-
tions to round up everyone who could be induced to leave
home. Many stubbornly refused. But by late afternoon
500 people had been crammed into the two-story Glades
Hotel and 150 more into the Belle Glade Hotel, across the
road.
In mid-afternoon, the wind began to blow steadily out
of the north. By 6:00 J?.M. it was a howling gale. The hud-
dled groups in the two hotels watched in awe as the
wind tipped over automobiles and rolled them down the
street. A huge roof sailed by at tree-top height; a farm
wagon rose, its wheels gently turning, and disappeared
skyward. Only the loudest shout could b.e heard above the
hollow, drumlike tolling of the wind. Hysterical women,
shrieking prayers, could not be heard at all. Then, at the
storm's height, came a deluge of rain that drove horizon-
tally in bullet-like fus^lades.
On Okeechobee the gale pushed thousands of tons of
water relentlessly before it. At the north end the lake lit-
erally blew from its bottom. Roaring crests, high as two-
story buildings, scudded southward to rip and chew at the
levees. Along twenty-one miles of the southeastern shore,
waves suddenly topped the dikes. They crumbled, and out
swept an avalanche of water ten feet high, rumbling
hoarsely above the wind.
Within a few minutes the flood raged over Belle Glade,
its crest toothed with telephone poles, uprooted trees, whole
buildings. The Belle Glade Hotel was smashed from its
foundations then it grounded and held. In the Glades
Hotel, Dr. Buck and other men moved women and chil-
dren to the second floor. Men were placed on the stairs ac-
cording to height; the water crept to within a foot and a
2i 6 DISASTER!
half of the first-floor ceiling. Outside, houses slid past with
survivors raising imploring arms; bodies eddied in the
hotel's doorway, then disappeared. Of Belle Glade's fifty
homes and business buildings, only the two hotels and a
warehouse survived, Almost all of the inhabitants who had
failed to seek refuge in the hotels met death.
In the town of Pelican Bay, not one building was strong
enough to withstand the hurricane. Half the town's 450
people stuck in their homes; the rest started on foot to
Belle Glade. Flood and wind struck both groups, and every
soul perished.
Elsewhere the tragic pattern was repeated. In their home
on Ritta Island in Lake Okeechobee, C. E. Thomas and his
wife and six children had no warning of the storm until
the wind began to whip up huge combers. No boat could
live to reach the mainland. Soon water began to bubble up
through the floor boards. Hysterically, the family scram-
bled onto furniture, then up to the attic as ceiling-high
waves raced through the living-room. The father chopped
a hole in the roof with an ax, climbed out, and turned to
hoist up the first child.
"Spray coming over the ridge pole half -blinded me," he
said later, *'and the wind tried to pry under my body and
lift me clear. Just as I reached down through the hole in
the roof I saw the butt end of an immense tree coming to-
ward the house, and a split second later it struck."
The tree smashed through the building. Thomas rode
free on a section of roof, as the house and his family dis-
appeared in a welter of water. The next day, battered and
half -conscious, he was rescued by a boat. The bodies of
his wife and children were ultimately found miles away.
As the night wore on, horror piled on horror. On every
hummock, fear-crazed poisonous snakes struck and writhed
among the survivors. Dennis Flynn, a Pahokee farmer,
sought refuge in a tree after his house blew away. All night
he had to battle snakes which sought the same refuge. One
father, who had fled with his little boy to high ground,
DEATH IN THE EVERGLADES
held the child out of reach of the snakes until, bitten re-
peatedly, he fell unconscious; in a few minutes both boy
and father had perished.
Toward midnight the wind and wild waters rose to &
crescendo; it seemed nothing living could escape. On Tor-
rey Island in the lake, twenty-one persons clambered to the
ceiling timbers of a packing house as the flood stemmed in.
The building disintegrated under grinding waves and nine
of the twenty-one died.
The wind blew on and on. All lights had gone long
since; over the churning, rain-pocked waves was nothing
but the whistling gale and terror.
The night held epics of courage. One of the most heart-
warming was the story of twelve-year-old Thelma Martin.
When the flood burst the Martins' flimsy bungalow apart,
Thelma seized her two-year-old brother Aaron and her
seven-year-old sister Ernestine and fought her way to a
floating log. The log boomed off in the darkness; finally
the little group, lodged against a banyan tree. Pinned be-
neath debris throughout the night, Thelma saved Aaron
from drowning by holding him up against the tree with
her one free hand. When morning and rescue came, Thel-
ma's legs were so battered that she could not walk. At the
hospital, she learned that her mother had been drowned
and her thirteen-year-old brother killed by a flying timber.
Miraculously, some families survived the wind and flood
in safety. J. R. Reese, his wife and eight children rode out
the wild night in the attic of their home as it floated for
hours in the torrent. When the house finally grounded, the
family tore a hole in the roof and peered out. They had
come to rest on the edge of a canal, only five feet from a
millrace of water crashing by at express-train speed.
Soon after midnight the wind slackened and died. At
dawn the survivors peered out at the continuing rain as
the flood still rose. Bodies were lodged at grotesque angles
on every mud bank; nudging against them were carcasses
of horses, cattle and hogs. From Lake Okeechobee to Palm
2i 8 DISASTER!
Beach a distance of forty-five miles scarcely a human
habitation remained standing.
Rescue crews who pushed into the flooded 'Glades by
boat looked upon scenes that suggested the end of the
world. Muck-blackened waters nine feet deep covered
much of the region. Only hulks of shattered houses re-
mained.
The crews tied floating bodies together and towed them
to concentration points. Occasionally, as the rafts of the
dead passed the canal banks, a frantically searching sur-
vivor would recognize a husband, wife or child by familiar
clothing. The raft would be eased into the bank for a mo-
ment until identification was complete. Then the corpses,
revolving slowly in the propeller wash, would glide on.
For years afterward, Everglades farmers plowed up
bodies in their fields. Many corpses had been buried for-
ever in mud banks or beneath tons of debris. Because so
many of the victims were itinerant workers, no census of
the missing was possible. Residents estimated that 2,500
had perished.
Under the glaring September sun, bodies began to de-
compose. The stench poisoned the air and the specter of
disease spread. In West Palm Beach the roar of steam
shovels digging burial trenches for the 'Glades* dead could
be heard throughout the night. Nearly 700 lay in one such
grave. By the fourth day, bodies could no longer be iden-
tified; they were simply dumped wherever a high spot of
ground could be found, saturated with oil and set afire.
Crazed and sleepless survivors, still seeking missing rela-
tives, had to be forced from these funeral pyres by brute
force.
Radio and newspapers dramatized the catastrophe to
the nation. A special train carrying supplies came from
Miami; shows in New York set aside the proceeds of per-
formances for the sufferers; the American Legion raised
$87,000 to help ruined 'Glades dwellers buy seeds, ferti-
lizer and tools.
DEATH IN THE EVERGLADES
But even the terror of that devastating storm failed to
crush the people's spirits. They had only one question:
when could they go home again?
Today they are home, and the 'Glades are roaring -with
prosperity. In 1943 the War Food Administration awarded
the region's farmers its ce A" flag for their achievements in
raising desperately needed food. The following year vege-
table sales alone totaled $2.0,000,000.
Although another hurricane can always strike, authori-
ties believe that Lake Okeechobee is barred forever from
rampaging over the farms. A great dike has been built,
eighty-five miles long and twenty feet above the normal
level of the lake. The land acre for acre the richest in the
nation is safe from a repetition of the terror and tragedy
of the terrible hurricane of '2,8.
Ohio's
Prison Horror
By Charles Suters
COLUMBUS, OHIO, April 21, 1930 In 1929, the
annual handbook of the National Society of Penal Infor-
mation singled out the Ohio State Penitentiary at Colum-
bus, one of the largest in the country, as also being one of
the most overcrowded. "The need of another institution
in the Ohio penal system," the handbook said, "has been
apparent for many years, but the state is only now taking
steps to alleviate the conditions. . . . Not only can Colum-
bus not care for an increased population, but it is already
too large a prison to be operated on any other lines than
those of blanket treatment. Even with the completion of
the present building program, it will be able to care for its
present population only under conditions that fall far
below accepted standards for housing prisoners."
But prison officials, Ohio executives and legislators paid
scant attention, if any, to the report. Almost 5,000 men
continued to be crowded into accomodations designed for
1,500. A new cell block was being built in the peniten-
tiary. That would offer some relief, though not enough to
make any substantial difference.
Thenj on the evening of April 21, 1930, disaster struck
and the Society's report assumed sudden significance.
At sundown of that pleasant spring day some 800 pris-
oners were marched back from supper to their cells in the
west block of the penitentiary. Guards were locking them
in for the night when a sudden burst of flame, followed by
a cloud of dense smoke, heralded the beginning of catas-
trophe. The fire began on the northwest corner of the roof
220
OHIO S PRISON HORROR 221
and, fanned by the wind, swept through oil-soaked rafters
and burned down, setting fire to bunk mattresses and
bedding.
Describing what happened next would even have taxed
the literary talents of O. Henry, who spent three years in
that penitentiary: the suffocating smoke, the flames, the
screaming sirens, the frightened shouts of the trapped con-
victs rattling the bars of their cells, begging to be saved.
Thousands of prisoners poured out into the prison yard
where state and Federal troops, augmented by the prison
guard, used bayonets to prick the crazy mob into sullen
obedience. Outside the prison gates, thousands of citizens
milled around watching the spectacle of death.
In the west block, the shrieks of the trapped men being
grilled alive stopped suddenly when the roof collapsed.
Prisoners and guards worked side by side dragging out the
dead and dying.
For hours, as firemen battled the flames and fought back
rebellious convicts who cut their hose, prisoners milled
about the prison enclosure until finally they were driven
back into their cells or into other prison buildings.
Three hundred and twenty men died that day, and
more than 230 others, burned and choked by smoke, were
sent to the hospital. On the damp grass in the prison yard
lay the bodies of those who had perished horribly of fire
and suffocation, trapped in their locked cells.
Several of the convicts proved again that heroes are
produced in the most unlikely places when the need for
heroism arises. With the fire raging at its worst, one pris-
oner grabbed a sledge hammer and battered the locks off
cell doors, releasing 136 fellow convicts. Another who was
serving life for murder dashed through the cell block
breaking locks and pulling out screaming men whose hair
and clothes were afire. One convict, blinded by smoke,
worked for a half-hour to get another prisoner out of the
holocaust; on the lawn of the prison grounds he discov-
ered that the man he had rescued was his brother. A no-
222 DISASTER!
torious gunman carried twelve men to safety before tie
collapsed and died.
One of the guards said: "I saw faces at the windows
wreathed in smoke that poured through the broken glass.
With others I tried to get at them, but we could not move
the bars. Soon flames broke into the cellroom and the con-
victs dropped to the floor. They were literally burned alive
before our eyes."
Two of the dead men had cut their throats, "driven to
suicide by the terror that grew on them as the flames
mowed down their prison mates," wrote a correspondent
for the Cleveland News.
One man who was being lowered to safety was acci-
dentally hanged when the rope slipped.
In all the horror and confusion, only one prisoner es-
caped. He calmly donned a civilian suit and walked away
unnoticed.
Two sessions of the Board of Inquiry appointed and
headed by Governor Myers Y. Cooper brought out several
points which tended to place responsibility for the disaster
on the prison administration. Witnesses testified:
That Thomas Watkinson, guard in the cell blocks where
men on the upper tiers were suffocated, refused to hand
over his keys to other guards who finally took them from
him by force and carried on rescue work until stricken.
Watkinson was suspended by the prison warden.
That no lives need have been lost except for Watkin-
son's refusal to hand over his keys. (Watkinson testified
that he had followed specific instructions of his captain,
John Hall, but the latter denied his story.)
That Warden Thomas assigned his seventy-one-year-old
chief deputy, J. C. Woodward, to command within the
walls, while he took a post outside the prison.
That prison personnel had never received instructions
for a routine to follow in case of fire and that no fire drill
had been held among the prisoners within the memory of
the warden.
OHIO S PRISON HORROR 22 3
That the first alarm came from a box outside the prison,
indicating delay on the part of those inside the peniten-
tiary in sounding an alarm.
Guard Hubert L. Richardson startled the committee
when he testified that the cage door leading to the cells
never was kept locked, inferring that someone locked the
door after the fire started and that ari argument among
other guards as to whether it should be opened again was
the reason for the delay*
Before the inquiry opened, members of the board in-
spected the fireswept cell blocks and found ample evidence
of the speed with which the flames had spread. On the
floors of blackened and vacant cells lay half -eaten candies,
overturned checkerboards and open books, indicating that
the men were enjoying their recreation period when the
flames and smoke swept in on them.
At first it was believed that the fire had been started by
a short-circuited wire hanging from the ceiling of the cell
block in which most of the victims died. One convict wit-
ness said the wire, burning white-hot, was visible through
the dense smoke, twisting and squirming among the wooden
rafters, setting them ablaze one after another.
Almost a year later, however, two convicts confessed
setting the fire in protest against being made to work on
the new cell block being built. They said the fire was set
with a lighted candle, then oil was poured over wood. The
candle came from the prison chapel, supplied by other
prisoners who knew nothing of the plot. The two con-
fessed arsonists pleaded guilty to second-degree murder
and were sentenced to life imprisonment.
But in spite of the incendiary origin of the fire, the fin-
ger of guilt for one of the worst prison disasters in Amer-
ican history was also pointed at die Ohio state legislature,
which had had ample warning that a catastrophe might
occur but had done nothing to prevent it. Warden Thomas
revealed that for twelve years he had urged successive leg-
islatures to relieve the overcrowding in the penitentiary.
224 DISASTER!
And the Ohio State Journal supported Warden Thomas'
stand in an editorial which declared: "Men in Columbus
have pleaded with the legislature many times for better-
ment of prison plants and conditions, but their pleas fell
on deaf ears." The Columbus Evening Dispatch placed re-
sponsibility for the holocaust "squarely upon the State.
For many, many successive legislatures have dawdled over
the prison problem, . . . while defenseless human lives have
remained in jeopardy/*
Another Ohio newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
expressed the sentiments of shocked citizens throughout
the nation when it asserted that the disaster meant that the
State "must abandon a policy of neglect and indiffer-
ence . . . the cries of men behind steel bars, held in a vise
for creeping flames to devour, are ringing in Ohio ears.
The State is more cruel than we believe if the cries are
unanswered.'*
Hotel Fire
at Sea
By Mary Evans Andrews
ASBURY PARK, N.J., September 8, 1934 In late
afternoon, September 5, 1934, the luxury liner SS Morro
Castle steamed proudly out of Havana harbor, headed for
her home port, New York. Still new, with long sleek lines,
she was a vacation cruise ship appointed like a floating
Waldorf-Astoria. No one seeing her that day guessed that
she was on her last voyage. No one aboard read that final
name on her passenger list the invisible, indelible signa-
ture of Death.
Some said the Morro Castle was a jinx ship. In Septem-
ber 1933 she had all but foundered off North Carolina's
dread Cape Hatteras, in a hurricane that churned the
ocean into sixty-five-foot waves, In November of that
year, during a brief Cuban revolt, her superstructure was
sprayed with bullets when she was caught in the cross fire
between gunboats in Havana harbor and a shore battery.
Twice her cargo holds had been damaged by fires of sus-
picious origin. But they were soon discovered and put out,
thanks to an automatic fire-detection system which pro-
tected all parts of the ship except its public rooms.
The Morro Castle was in fact equipped with the most
up-to-date gadgets to detect, confine and extinguish fires.
All her apparatus had passed Federal inspection on Au-
gust 4.
Secure in this knowledge, Captain Wilmott ordered only
two stations to respond to the perfunctory fire drills held
From Pageant magazine for Agwt 1948; copyright 1948 by Hillman Peri-
odicals Inc.
225
226 DISASTER!
weekly. The men merely went to their posts and answered
a roll call. The only drill of the present cruise was held
during a tea-dance the day after sailing, and few passen-
gers were aware of it. The captain had vetoed the sugges-
tion that they participate in fire drills. The steamship line
had also been told of his decision not to lower the boats.
Such activity might, he thought, "cause undue anxiety**
among the customers, who were scarce in these Depression
years.
"Besides," said Captain Wilmott, "they're safer here
than they would be crossing Times Square/'
September 7, last night of the cruise, was squally. Rain
and intermittent banks of fog, driving before a northeast
wind, hid the choppy sea. The liner's deserted decks were
silent except for the dismal wail of the fog horn. But her
big dining salon was festive with colored lights, balloons,
gay music and guests in evening clothes, having a final
fling at the captain's traditional farewell dinner.
During the first course, Captain Wilmott collapsed, a
victim of acute indigestion. As he was carried from the
room, the noise of bells and buzzers died away. Gay con-
fetti streamers flying from table to table drifted down in
silence. The dinner ended on a subdued note.
Before dancing was to begin, an officer announced that
the captain had died of a heart attack. All further festivity
was canceled. Some of the guests adjourned to private
' drinking parties j but by 2:00 A.M. nearly everyone was in
bed.
First Officer William Warms, whom death had pro-
moted to command of the ship, was keeping watch on the
bridge. Between 2:30 and 2:45 on the morning of Sep-
tember 8, the deck night watchman ran up to him.
"Smoke and sparks coming from a port ventilator
amidships, sir!" he reported.
Warms dispatched Officer Hackney, his second in com-
mand, to investigate. On the steps, Hackney met the salon
night watchman running up.
HOTEL FIRE AT SEA 2 27
"Fire in the writing room, sir!" he panted.
Together the three raced aft on B deck. At the far end
of the writing room, flames were leaping from a storage
locker, licking at near-by veneer-paneled walls, scorching
highly inflammable hangings and furniture.
Hackney exhausted a fire extinguisher on the blaze be-
fore returning to the bridge. It was already apparent that
hose would have to be used.
Minutes later, members of the aroused crew, responding
to the fire alarm, ran past the heavy steel fire-doors de-
signed to divide the ship into flame-tight compartments.
If closed at once, these doors might have confined the fire
to the area of the writing room. But no one had been as-
signed to shut them. The night watchman later testified
that he did not even know their location.
Swiftly the flames ate through the beautiful but flimsy
ceiling of the writing room, racing into the air space be-
tween ceiling and uninsulated steel deck above. Suction
spread the fire with incredible speed through the hollow
ceilings of the B deck salons.
Built for the tropic trade, the Marro Castle was honey-
combed with air vents, portholes, ventilators, doors, stair-
ways and elevator shafts. For a full half -hour she sped on
at eighteen knots in a twenty-mile wind. As by forced
draft, the flames were sucked down the ventilating system,
which was not immediately shut off. Choking black smoke
began penetrating into all parts of the ship.
At 2:56 A.M. the general alarm was sounded. But al-
ready it was too late to save many passengers. A few were
too intoxicated or too seasick to respond. Women who
stopped to dress were trapped in their cabins. No effort
was made to guide passengers to safety by inside service
stairs known only to the crew. Most of them, finding the
familiar forward stairways ablaze, ran aft. The fire amid-
ships soon became an impassable barrier, cutting off many
of the passengers from the help of most crewmen, who had
gone forward to fight the flames.
228 DISASTER!
The remaining crew members and stewards broke win-
dows of staterooms opening on deck and pulled people out,
herding them into the nearest lifeboats. Many refused to
dash from the corridors across smoking decks to the star-
board boats. In panic they ran below again and thrust their
heads through portholes, screaming for help that could not
reach them.
On the port side of the ship, two lifeboats were already
burning at their davits. A steward broke the screws hold-
ing a third boat. Three women passengers and six crewmen
scrambled in with him. No one else was on that part of
the deck. Quickly they lowered the boat beyond reach of
the licking flames, but a few feet above the water its for-
ward hook jammed. The craft hung at a forty-five-degree
angle, while its occupants clung to the thwarts. Bursting
windows on the upper decks showered them with hot glass
and smoking embers.
Desperately the steward hacked at the fouled tackle.
With a jerk the boat fell free. The men pulled at the oars
with all their strength to escape the moving liner's suction.
Blinded by smoke and the glare of the fire, they could see
no one struggling in the water. So they struck out for
shore ten people in a lifeboat designed to save sixty-eight.
Eight of the Morro Castle's twelve lifeboats were
launched, but of her 318 passengers, only eighty-five
reached safety in them.
Most of the remaining passengers were now huddled
near the stern rails on B, C, and D decks. A small group
of women sang "Hail, hail, the gang's all here . . ." Others
prayed aloud or stared in silent horror as the crackling
flames burned closer. The Morro Castle plowed on, fanning
the fire toward them. Those who gave way to panic and
jumped were sucked under by the churning screws or
quickly left behind to drown.
Meanwhile, in the radio cabin, fifty feet aft of the
bridge, Chief Operator Rogers tensely awaited the com-
mand to send an SOS, Assistant Operator Alagna, dis-
HOTEL FIRE AT SEA
patched to the acting-Captain for orders, had failed to
get any.
Apparently Captain Warms still thought the fire could
be brought under control. An SOS cost a company big
money, and would cost the man who sent an unnecessary
one his job.
At 3:10 A.M., Rogers was startled to hear the freighter
SS Andrea Luckenbach, seven miles away, calling the Coast
Guard Station at Tuckerton, New Jersey.
"Any news of a large ship afire off Sea Girt?" the Luck-
enbacb's operator asked.
The Coast Guard had none.
Smoke was now curling up through the floor boards,
fogging the radio room. Alagna wet a towel for Rogers to
breathe through and hurried back to the Captain. He soon
returned.
"They're running around like madmen on the bridge . . .
I can't get any cooperation," he reported.
It was 3:15 A.M. On his own initiative, Rogers sent out
a CQ ("stand by") message, to clear the air for the SOS
he was sure would follow. At 3:19 A.M. he got permission
to repeat the CQ. Seconds later the fire disabled his main
transmitter.
Frantically Rogers and Alagna Uooked up the emer-
gency set. Smoke was now so thick they could barely see
the hands of the radio room clock.
"Try the Captain again," Rogers told Alagna. "If you
don't get an order this time, it'll be too late!"
In five minutes Alagna dashed back with the long-
delayed command. At 3:24 A.M. Rogers, using the emer-
gency transmitter, sent the first and only call for help
from the doomed ship.
pf Mom> Castle afire twenty miles south of Scotland
Light ... SOS . . . SOS . . . Fire under radio room. Can't
hold out much longer."
Then Alagna raced to the bridge to report, while Rog-
ers, fighting off suffocation, stuck to his key. Emergency
230 DISASTER!
batteries, bursting from the intense heat, threw sulphuric
acid on the hot floor. Asphyxiating gas billowed up, stupe-
fying Rogers. If I'm supposed to be dying, he thought, it
doesn't hurt very much. Fm just getting awfully sleepy . . .
Then he heard Alagna's voice. "Okay Chief, let's get
out of here . . . Captain's orders!" The assistant half-
dragged him from the room as the furniture burst into
flames.
At 3:29 A.M., electrical current had failed all over the
ship. Electric pumps stopped; fire hose went limp and dry.
The ship's communication system was silenced. Her elec-
tric steering gear ceased to function. The Morro Castle was
in darkness and out of control.
Seconds earlier the bridge had signaled the engine room
to stop the propellers. Smoke billowing down the venti-
lators was slowly suffocating the engine crew. Now with-
out light, except for the flickering glare of the fire driven
over the ship's sides by the wind, the men groped for their
controls. They shut down the boilers to keep the liner
from blowing up, connected auxiliary pumps to restore
pressure in the fire hose, then crawled upward through an
escape tunnel to the after decks.
At 3:31 A.M. the propellers whirled to a stop.
When the lights failed, panic increased among passen-
gers massed on the stern decks. Prayers and cries of the
terrified mingled with the screams of those who had been
burned.
Among ^hose at the rail stood a New York couple and
their grown son. Through the rain they peered intently at
the friendly lights of the Jersey coast. Father and son had
often cruised these waters.
The father recognized Scotland and Ambrose lights.
to We can't be more than seven miles out," he was saying.
"The wind's directly on shore . . . Come on, I'm sure we
can make it!"
In the semi-darkness the parents had failed to see that
their son had no life belt.
HOTEL FIRE AT SEA 231
"You and mother go ahead," he insisted* "I'm going to
stay a while longer."
"Promise me you'll leave before the fire eats through
that last partition . . . Good luck, boy!" his father shouted
above the wind. His mother was too moved to speak.
The young man helped his parents over the rail and
watched them leap together through black space into cold
black water below. He knew there were no more life pre-
servers. After waiting as long as he dared, he slid down a
hawser trailing from the stern of the Morro Castle.
Two lifeboats passed half -empty as he and a dozen
others clung desperately to trailing ropes. Flying embers
and molten paint from the ship's hull pelted their arms
and heads, while the seas grew constantly heavier. Toward
dawn the fire burst through the partition of the dining-
salon on C deck. A veritable rain of people leaped over the
side, striking one another as they fell. Many sank at once*
Half an hour later the first lifeboat from the SS Andrea
Luckenbacb reached those struggling in the water. The
young New Yorker was rescued after clinging to his rope
for six hours.
First help to reach the Morro Castle from shore was a
twenty-six-foot motor surfboat manned by five Coast
Guardsmen. Half a mile from the liner they found the
ocean lit by the glare of the fire and alive with tired swim-
mers begging for rescue. So many hands grasped the little
boat's gunwales that she was nearly swamped. In five min-
utes she was overloaded. The Luckenbach, nearest of the
rescue ships, lay two and one-half miles away. The surf-
boat headed for it, leaving behind as many people as she
had picked up.
"The way their faces looked as they rose on the crest of
a wave with the flickering firelight on them was awful,"
said a Coast Guardsman later. "But men and women were
stacked like cordwood even across our engine box and we
couldn't hold another one."
Her human cargo safely aboard the Luckenbach, the
232 DISASTER!
launch hurried back. The liners Monarch of Bermuda and
City of Savannah had now come up, and the little launch
continued shuttling people to the big ships as long as her
gas supply held out. In all, her heroic crew saved 112 lives.
Three fishing smacks, putting out for their morning
catch, joined the rescue fleet and pulled eighty-seven ex-
hausted people from the rough gray water, but some died
on the way to port.
As a foggy dawn broke on the beaches, the lifeboats
began to arrive, staggering and plunging through a heavy
surf. Relief workers built bonfires, opened first-aid sta-
tions, welcomed survivors with hot drinks and dry clothing.
Out of one of the first boats jumped a mongrel pup,
the ship's mascot. A seaman, offered a blanket by a Red
Cross worker, solemnly wrapped up the drenched puppy.
All day the hissing breakers washed in the dead. Tempo-
rary morgues were established at three points along the
coast. The largest, at Camp Moore near Sea Girt, held
forty-seven bodies.
At the Ward Line's Pier 13 in the East River, desper-
ately worried friends and relatives waited for rescue vessels
to dock. Those who did not find their loved ones turned
away with leaden hearts to await a funeral train bringing
the dead from coastal morgues to Jersey City.
After everyone else had been removed from the Morro
Castle, Captain Warms and thirteen of his crew, including
Rogers and Alagna, stayed on the liner's forecastle head.
The Coast Guard Cutter Tampa took her in tow. But the
wind rose to a thirty-five-mile gale and the towing cable
snapped. At Asbury Park the ruined liner beached herself.
The cutter, which earlier had taken off the last handful
of the exhausted crew, brought them to New York.
In the bright sunlight of Sunday morning, upon a gen-
tle sea, the death ship towered over Asbury Park's Con-
vention Pier which her stern had missed by only 100 feet.
A crowd of 350,000 jammed the highways and lined the
HOTEL FIRE AT SEA 233
beach to stare at her. Boardwalk concessions reopened to
do a half-million dollar business.
Fire still smouldered in the holds of the gutted ship.
Three warped lifeboats swung at crazy angles from her
port davits. Deck planking was burned out except in the
extreme afterpart of three decks where shoes, coats and
handbags lay as their fleeing owners had dropped them.
Only one body was recovered from the ship, which had
also been the funeral pyre of her dead Captain.
One hundred and thirty-four people had made their last
cruise aboard the Morro Castle.
As facts began to emerge from the inquiry, public in-
dignation ran high. The cause of the fire was never deter-
mined, but the fact that human fallibility had let it get
out of control was obvious.
The Acting Captain and Chief Engineer were sentenced
to prison for incompetence and neglect of duty. The
steamship line was fined $15,000 for failure to enforce
safety regulations and for placing the ship in charge of
unqualified personnel. The palatial liner was a total loss.
Not until April, 1937, were the Acting Captain and
Engineer finally cleared by a Federal Appellate Court
which held that, had Captain Wilmott maintained proper
discipline, the crew -would have functioned in spite of his
death.
Meanwhile Congress launched an investigation described
as "the most exhaustive ever undertaken by any govern-
ment in regard to its merchant marine.*' United States
laws protecting life and property at sea were found to lag
behind those of all other great maritime nations. A whole
new body of protective legislation was drawn up, covering
every phase of ship construction and operation.
The use of fire-retardant materials and the installation
of sprinkler systems throughout passenger vessels became
mandatory. The Federal Marine Inspection Service was re-
organized and enlarged. Radio communications laws were
modernized.
234 DISASTER!
Even more vital was the far-reaching reform, of laws
affecting merchant-marine personnel. Higher qualifications
were demanded. Pay was raised and hours of work limited.
Living quarters and working conditions were improved.
The Morro Castle had been a fiery beacon by which men
read again one of the oldest lessons of the sea that human
failure is more costly than mechanical failure. Those who
died aboard her did not lose their lives in vain. They be-
queathed to the traveling American public safer ships
manned by abler crews.
Pageant
of the Poor
By Robert J. Casey
LAMAR, COL., March 30, 1935 The trails o cov-
ered wagon days were slowly filling today with the van-
guard of a people outward bound, defeated by the dust.
For hundreds of miles along the Kansas-Colorado border
stretches the desolation of a dead planet. The black bliz-
zards swirl about toward the lost horizons and into a yel-
low sky. The bare bones of ruined farmlands lie gray and
stark between the hummocks of dust. Forgotten fowl
wander in and out of abandoned homes and the doors of
vacant barns boom in the wind.
So comes to a tragic but seemingly inevitable close the
cycle that began with the winning of the West.
The movement has not yet become a general exodus.
Here a horse-drawn wagon driven by a dead-eyed, under-
nourished woman a wagon filled with ragged children
and the relics of a home; farther on a group of overbur-
dened flivvers grinding their bearings to pieces in the grit.
On the railroads a carload or two of scrawny cattle. But
the relief authorities know that this is only the beginning.
Fear has come to the people, not so much the fear of star-
vation, which has become familiar during the four years
of cropless drought, but fear of the malign forces which
can destroy, almost overnight, the work of many accumu-
lated lifetimes.
There is no direction, no objective, to the flight from
the encroaching desert. The grim faces of the migrants are
Reprinted by permission of The Chicago Daily News; copyright 1935 by The
Chicago Daily News, Inc., 400 West Madison Street, Chicago, III.
235
256 DISASTER!
set upon a vision: cool green fields, with water flowing
from them, somewhere beyond the murk-mirrors, ironi-
cally enough the same vision that brought their forefathers
out across the plains two generations ago.
An old man stopped his flivver at a filling station on
No. 50, near the Kansas line. He needed oil and the at-
tendant gave him the crank-case drainings of another car.
He needed gasoline and he spread out a few pennies on a
leathery palm. He needed food, but he was prepared to get
along without that a while longer.
"People are pretty good," he said. "They'll always help
you out when they can. The only trouble is that most of
them need help themselves. I guess maybe there's nobody
but poor people left in the world."
He was on his way to Ohio. He had come from there in
the early nineties.
"Maybe I should have stayed there/* he observed, more
in conversation with himself than with anyone else. "Liv-
ing was pretty tough where I came from. Grasshoppers
and blight used to ruin the crops, but the farms never
blew away that I remember. And there wasn't any of this
dust."
His wife died last year. He guessed that maybe the
struggle against the drought had been too much for an
old lady. His children were all dead; he had had three of
them. The last one, a son, had gone out with pneumonia a
month ago.
"There weren't any crops, and the soil dried out and
drifted off in the air," he said. "The cattle I had ate dusty
fodder and they died off. There was no way to save any-
thing; no money to do anything with; no chance of get-
ting any, and the winds that take your farm and your liv-
ing never blow away the mortgages. I could have stayed
on relief; three-quarters of the people in my county are
on relief, so there was no disgrace in that. But the dust was
always there. And I didn't have the heart to stay and see
PAGEANT OF THE POOR 237
people suffer any more. I want to die some place where I
can see the sun."
His aged car staggered off toward the east. The filling
station attendant looked after him. "He's the fifteenth
I've had this week/' he commented. "Each day brings
more of them. And I don't see any end to it.**
Nor could anyone else see any end to it. Kenneth Welch,
relief administrator, who cared for most of the population
of Braca County, Colorado, has been quoted as saying that
that region is virtually uninhabitable. Erosion control such
as the Federal engineers, under Dr. F. L. Duley, have dem-
onstrated at Mankato, Kansas, is the only hope for the
country. But the maintenance of the people during the
several years required for such rehabilitation is a problem
to which the Colorado authorities have, so far, found no
solution.
One whole township, near Garden City, Kansas, is on
relief. Every man, woman and child in it is in the bread
line.
Ninety per cent of the population of a county close to
the Oklahoma line would starve to death save for the dole.
Brent, Braca, and Powers counties, Colorado, have been
hard put to care for the hundreds of families no longer
able to provide for themselves. So has started the exodus.
The menace of the dust is not confined to the great
plains region. A report from the Federal soil erosion con-
trol project, in the fertile belt that extends northward
f^orn Salina to Mankato, points out that last summer
ninety per cent of the wells on the 629 farms in the region
served by the project were dry. Water had to be carried
from community wells located and dug by the govern-
ment. Under such conditions it was impossible to keep
livestock, and now one of the most productive regions in
Kansas is virtually without cattle.
The wheat is coming up fairly well, but cannot live
without the rain which no one can promise. And the gov-
238 DISASTER!
ernment is facing the acute problem of saving a hopeless
people as well as their shifting lands.
In the creek bottoms west of Colby, Kansas, lie strewn
the carcasses of crows, smothered by the dust that over-
took them in mid-air. No one talks of the jack-rabbit
plague any more, and there are rumors that the dust has
killed them, too. State health authorities in the arid re-
gions agree that the black blizzards do not carry pneu-
monia germs. But six persons died last week near Springfield,
Colorado, and pneumonia cases are numerous in western
Kansas.
Thousands of families survived last year because the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration gave them com-
pensation for agreeing not to produce anything on certain
specified acres of farms that were not going to produce
anything anyway.
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration is now at
work to provide employment for them on their own
farms. The Department of Agriculture is preparing to
mobilize thousands of tractors on the dust frontier for
strip-listing to dig the riffles that perhaps may anchor,
temporarily at least, the flying soil. These factors, plus
man's unwillingness to uproot himself from the places
where he once prospered, have kept many farming com-
munities of this region intact. But the rain never falls, and
the crops fail to come up, and the dust goes on forever.
And one vast section of the West is getting tired of a fu-
tile struggle.
So the roads are filling with rusty cars that seem to have
been disentombed from the burying places of the pioneer
flivvers. Homes are emptying. Thin men stand on high-
ways, with their thumbs pointed east outriders in the
pageant of the poor.
EDITORS' NOTE: Spurred into action by the disastrous dust
storms 0/1935 and 1936, Congress in 15137 enacted a far-
reaching, multimillion-dollar program to ff harness the black
PAGEANT OF THE POOR 239
blizzards" and bring the Dust Bowl back to fertility.
Contour planting and other erosion-control -measures were
put into effect, along with a carefully designed -water-
conservation program. Wheat farmers were insured against
losses due to weather, and government loans were made
available to help tenants buy the farms they worked. Some
four million acres of land in the Great Plains area were
contour-listed in an effort to reclaim them- from the dust.
By 1939, the results were already apparent. Less than a
quarter as much land was blowing as had blown in 1935
and 1936, and more than three-quarters of the planted
wheat acreage was harvested. In 1940 and 19419 conditions
were even better. The dust had been defeated, temporarily,
at least. But during the war controls over wheat production
were removed, and plows again began tearing up the earth,
including more than two million acres which the Soil Con-
servation Service had classified as unsuitable for cultivation.
In February, 1946, a committee of the Department of
Agriculture reported that 3,425,000 acres in Kansas, Ok-
lahoma, Texas and New Mexico were again "in condition
to blow." By early March they were blowing. And in
April, 1948, the Associated Press reported a severe dust
storm in western Kansas the worst since the early 9 $os
with strong winds that sometimes reached fifty miles an
hour.
It looked as if the " black blizzards" were back.
Five O'clock,
Off California
By George W. Campbell (Lieutenant, United States Navy.)
POINT SUR, GAL., February 12, 1935 Whooo-
ee whooo-ee whooo-ee I The siren splits the darkness.
The foghorn voice of the master-at-arms follows through:
"Hit the deck! All you cloud busters, rise and shine!'*
We tumble out, methodically put on our flying clothes,
step out into the crisp dawn of the Sunnyvale base*
The first streaks of morning sift into the hangar as the
huge doors, 200 feet high, roll back and expose the great
bulk of the Macon.
' Roaring in unison, her eight engines spin the propellers.
The engines warm up, signal bells clang, throttles close.
The staccato beat of each twelve-cylinder unit dies to a
cough, a final chug.
"All departments ready for flight, Captain," the officer
of the deck reports.
Captain Wiley nods to the mooring officer. Two hun-
dred men stand ready for action. They comprise the
ground crew and man the mooring gear. The mooring offi-
cer blows his whistle.
"Walk the ship out!" he calls through a megaphone.
Four hundred tons of mooring gear steadily draw the
78 5 -foot giant from the hangar.
We swing the Macon into the wind. The last hatches
are closed for the take-off.
"Get ready aft! Get ready forward!" commands the
captain.
Excerpted from The Saturday Evening Post of May 15, 1937; copyright 1937
by the Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia, Pa.
240
FIVE O CLOCK, OFF CALIFORNIA 241
"Heavy aft!" reports the officer in charge of that station.
"Two thousand pounds heavy forward!" calls out a
member of the mooring party atop the mast.
The first lieutenant jerks the toggles controlling the
water-ballast valves. Tons of water gush from bow and
stern.
"Two thousand pounds light forward, sir!"
"Two thousand light aft, sir."
She's ready, buoyant.
Here in the control car, the captain glances quickly
around. Every man is at his station the rudder man for-
ward at the wheel, the engineering officer at the engine-
room telegraphs, the elevator man at the port side, the
wheel firmly in hand, and the first lieutenant beside him.
The officer of the deck is bending over his log, the radio
man at his telephone.
"Up ship!"
At bow and stern, the ground crew goes into action.
Holding-down bolts and securing lugs are released. A dis-
tinct metallic click comes from the nose as it jerks loose
from the mooring cup.
"Four engines, up standard speed," orders Captain
Wiley.
Engine-room bells clash on signal from the control car.
A rhythmic roar echoes over the field. The three-bladed
propellers, each more than sixteen feet in diameter, spin.
"Rising 200 feet per minute," says the first lieutenant.
"Increasing, sir."
"We are free, air borne, as free as the winds in which we
move.
We set our course over the Santa Clara Valley. It is our
short cut to the sea, where we will join the fleet.
We climb into the dreary heavens. At 2,000 feet we
level off.
Four specks rise from the ground and dart toward us:
our four fighting planes, which nest ashore in their sepa-
rate hangars and join us only when we are well under way.
242. DISASTER!
In a few minutes they are droning around us like hornets
waiting to hive.
We call our hornets by radio. "No. i stand by to hook
on ... Calling No. 2 ... Calling No. 3 ... No. 4 No. 4.
Calling you. Come aboard in succession."
The planes break formation, swoop to the rear. They
stretch out in a long line as they approach "the groove/'
preparatory to hooking on.
In our airplane hangars back in the Macon belly, two
members of the handling crew loaf nonchalantly on a six-
inch girder above the trapeze. The wind beats their slap-
ping pants legs viciously.
"On your toes, hangar crew!" shouts the officer in
charge of operations.
Shaky Davis and Pete shift postures on their girder.
Only a fine sense of footing prevents them from plunging
into 2,000 feet of space below.
But they are veterans not only of the Macon but of
countless air cruises before, as are numerous others scat-
tered through the vast hull. Captain Herbert Wiley, the
skipper, is the only officer survivor of the Akron. But
others of us Lieutenant Harold Miller, Lieutenant An-
thony Danis, myself, numbers of the petty officers and
enlisted men had had many months of service on the
Akron, some of them even on the old Los Angeles, before
we commissioned the Macon.
It is late in the afternoon of our second day out, Febru-
ary 12, 1935. In the smoking room, I inhale the last drags
from a cigarette. Eight bells, nearly time for my trick on
deck in the control car.
I see a long squall line. For most of the afternoon we
have been in soupy weather. Fog banks roll in from the
west and northwest, obliterating the coast line. Far to the
east, only the highest peaks appear above the cloud forma-
tions.
The squall line lies directly in our homeward path. As
far as the eye can see, it extends across our bow. Its lower
FIVE O CLOCK, OFF CALIFORNIA 243
fringe is jagged. Long wisps of ominous black strands hang
down to clutch the spume of a choppy sea. It rolls and
twists, breaks into fragments and then rejoins the con-
formation. Black, dirty weather.
"Here comes No. x!"
A lone plane circles the ship. The pilot is Lieutenant Min
Miller, just returned from a reconnaissance flight over the
fleet, fifty miles north of us. In spite of the sour weather
he has performed his mission, and now returns from the
mists which swallowed him several hours before.
Min comes scrambling down the ladder which leads to
the smoking room from the interior of the ship. His heavy
flying suit is spattered with rain. He swings his benumbed
arms, chilled and cramped from the narrow cockpit. Un-
friendly blasts have left their marks on his face. Deep lines
appear when he yanks off his helmet and goggles.
"Right nasty out/* I grin, and offer him a cigarette.
"If you think this is bad, you should see what those poor
battle-wagon sailors are taking down below!" He lights
the cigarette. A long stream of smoke curls from his
mouth. "I saw 'em aU. The entire fleet is ahead. And are
those ships taking a pounding!"
I put out my cigarette. The hands of the clock are
pointing to five minutes of four.
"Back to the grind," I say as I open the door to go on
watch.
The ship is flying easily. "We decrease altitude from
1,750 to 1,250 feet to get under a lowering ceiling. The
wind is kicking up. To keep schedule, we cut in two more
engines and speed up.
The squall line moves in. Howling winds strike with
malicious might to turn the ship from her course. The
compass needle swings dizzily, but comes back quickly to
meridian as the rudder man strains at his spokes.
In a few minutes we run out of the squall. We hold our
course along the coast. Presently we sight the fleet, en
route to San Francisco. The 3 5,000- ton battleships bob
244 DISASTER!
like corks. Green seas break over their bows. Curtains of
flying spray almost shut them from view. Cruisers and
destroyers cut crests and dive with mad abandon.
We run into a second squall line. This disturbance
strikes with less violence. For a short period we are in the
total darkness of the cloud. Heavy rain pours from the
sky. It falls from the rain strip around the underside of
the ship in long streams. On the other side of the troubled
area, we break into smooth air. The wind decreases.
"There's Point Sur! It's two points on the starboard
bow, sir" our navigator points the light out to the cap-
tain.
It is five o'clock.
In a whistle and a jump, we'll be home. A snappy,
happy landing, the ship housed in the hangar. Then for a
shower and a bed with springs, a bed that doesn't heave
with every blast of wind.
Point Sur's kindly light is giving us warm welcome,
guiding us home.
It happens.
A thundering clap reverberates through the ship. A
murderous gust strikes the ship aft. It grabs the tail like
a giant hand and shakes the ship as if it were a willow
wand. We hang on to keep our footing. The nose dips at a
sickening angle to starboard and heads for the sea. Simul-
taneously a crackling report of destruction rings from
stern to bow.
It can't be she can't be breaking up!
But I have heard that growl of annihilation once before
some three Februarys before, when the Akron snapped
her mooring cables like spider webs. The sound is never
forgotten!
Instantly my arms reach the engine-room telegraphs,
and with one swoop I bring all engines to idle. If we are
going to crash, we aren't going in at full speed, to rip and
tear and strew the ocean's floor with the pieces for miles.
FIVE O CLOCK, OFF CALIFORNIA 24 J
"Elevators don't answer!" yells the elevator man, Con-
over, metal smith first-class.
"Rudders don't answer!" repeats Clarke, coxswain.
"Report as soon as they answer," commands the skipper
crisply.
The stricken Macon hesitates. After long seconds, her
nose rises; she comes to an even keel. But immediately
afterward, the tail, more than 500 feet aft of us, begins to
settle toward the sea, the nose rises, goes up and up. She is
at a giddy angle; the bubble slides to 22 degrees and then
goes off the scale.
The telephone rings. "This is Davis, sir" old Shaky,
who flew them all. "Part of the top fin is carried away,
sir. I was right there when she went. 9 *
The top fin gone from the ship! Sounds incredible.
"The place where I was stepping on went with it. No. I
gas cell carried away. Fm comin' forward." The voice is
more than 100 feet above me and several hundred feet
back in the top keel.
The ship crumbling, breaking. "Why, we've been in
much worse weather than this and survived!
"Ballast aft," commands the skipper.
Lieutenant Commander Bolster, the Macon's first lieu-
tenant, reaches up and grabs a handful of toggles.
"Dropping emergencies aft," he replies, Water spills
from the stern section in i,ooo-pound splashes.
"Drop slip tanks aft," Captain Wiley orders, and I re-
peat the command over the telephone.
The riggers along the side keels snip the holding wires,
and from the control car we sight the slip tanks fuel
tanks each holding 720 pounds of gasoline, crash through
the fabric cover like fat bombs and go spinning into the
frothy sea.
"Hold hard down elevator . . . Rudder amidships." The
skipper has full command of the situation.
The angle increases. For a moment it seems that the
Macon will stand on her tail. Ballast rains down from the
246 DISASTER!
broken section; fuel tanks, removable weights shower the
ocean.
We must keep her in the air, free from the sea that will
claw her, tear her into bits and then swallow her. If we
can only get the tail up. Fly her out and get her home.
If . We are not thinking of our lives. We must save the
ship.
"Radio the fleet," the skipper commands. "To Com-
mander-in-Chief. Macon in distress ten miles southwest
Point Sur."
Over the voice tube to the radio room overhead, I repeat
the message. The radio man repeats back, calmly cold. In a
flash, the fleet has the news.
The altimeter needle moves steadily to higher altitudes.
At least we are spared the possibility of an immediate
crash . . . Now 2,000 feet. We enter clouds, thick as paste.
We try the engines. The speed increases the angle. We
slow 2,joo feet . . . 3,700 ... we hit 4,600 feet.
"Stopped rising, captain."
"Very well. Order all hands that can be spared from
aft to move forward. That'll help trim her."
The message is shouted over the telephone and men
move forward.
To hold the tail up, the elevator man throws the wheel
full down. He grits his teeth and braces himself. He's
wondering if he can hold out. It's asking a lot of two arms
two arms against 1,200 square feet of control surface
pounded by a beating wind.
"Try a little longer," I say.
He smiles and the muscles in his arms stand out like
cables.
*'No. 2 gas cell carried away."
Each report brings news of destruction. The ship settles
down down 3,600 feet. We stay there, but not long.
We are drifting into the coast. The wind has slewed us
around. We don't want to crash along the coast line of
high granite-sided peaks.
FIVE O'CLOCK, OFF CALIFORNIA 247
"Ahead on the port engines, idle starboard/'
The captain is turning her with engine power. We are
headed back to sea; the stuff outside is still thick.
Reports continue to flow into the control car. Discipline
discipline as it should be.
"Airplane hangar manned and ready to launch planes."
Launch planes? We can't at this speed and inclination.
It would be suicide. The ship's nose is pointed at the
moon if there is one or ever will be again. Besides, we
need the weight of those planes, 14,000 pounds, right
where it is forward, to trim the ship.
Bells clash in the engine rooms as we call for speed. "We
have control and we are buoyant. But this angle it per-
sists.
The ship rises to 5,000. She teeters from bow to stern.
Her movements are those of a punch-drunk fighter.
"Zero cell carried away! Tail structure collapsing!"
Disintegrating at 5,000 feet and no parachutes on
board! Airships never carry them. We'll have to ride her
down and take a chance on setting her in easy. We must
set her in easy. If we don't, it will be the last ride for a lot
of us.
"Permission to valve forward, sir?"
"Granted," is the captain's terse reply.
We valve from the forward cells. It tends to restore the
trim. We start down 4,000 feet. The nose jerks up; she
begins to climb again.
"Tail carrying away aft!"
"Valve forward."
"Aye, aye, sir; valving Cells 8 and 9!"
She settles. The red liquid in the variometer slides down;
we hit the scale where it reads 1,000 feet per minute.
Down down. At 2,000 feet we break into a clearing. We
stop valving and check the rate of fall. The angle of in-
clination is still holding.
We cannot fly her out!
248 DISASTER!
"All hands stand by to abandon ship. Launch life rafts
as soon as we are in the water."
Conover still holds the elevator wheel. He rivets his eyes
on the altimeter. He has no thought of quitting her she
is still in the air and he has the wheel.
"Ballast forward . . . Check her fall." The skipper is as
calm as when making a landing at the base.
Commander Kenworthy, executive officer, heaves flares
over the side to show our position. The torches dot the
water like markers along a torn-up street.
A thousand feet settling. Schellberg, bos'n's mate first-
class, rushes into the control car and distributes life jackets.
I am still ballasting.
"Here you are, sir." He slips it around me, one arm at a
time, while my free hand still yanks ballast toggles. I hope
she hits easy gentle without great loss of life.
The captain hangs out of the window, watching the tail
section.
"Back all engines."
The air-speed meter shows less than ten knots.
"Stop all engines."
It is the captain's last command to his beloved ship.
"The tail is in the water."
Thump the jar comes from aft she strikes gently,
obedient to the end.
"All hands pick a window and jump before she hits for-
ward!" The skipper releases us from our posts of duty.
Every man for himself now. We pick our windows,
hang from the ledges; the water comes up to meet us; we
let go. Down into icy water. Whew! Gallons of it enter
my gaping mouth.
On the crest of a wave, seemingly miles away, I sight
two life rafts. I struggle to swim to them. Only my right
arm works; my legs are dead.
Captain Wiley calls to me. He is about to grab hold of
one of the rafts. He turns from safety and swims to me.
FIVE O'CLOCK, OFF CALIFORNIA 249
He grabs me by the collar and we make for the rafts. Life
begins to return to my legs. We reach the rafts.
Several men already are on board. They had been in the
side keels when the ship struck. Without further orders,
they had kicked holes in the outer cover, heaved the rafts
overboard and inflated them with the attached air bottles.
We are too spent to clamber aboard, so we hang on for a
while. The men on board are out, exhausted. Several other
shipmates swim to the raft. Together we help one another
aboard. One lad is stretched out across the center of the
raft. His arms trail in the water, and the drizzle of the
rain beats on his upturned face. We can't help him, for
we are all gasping and vomiting salt water.
Our raft is made to hold seven, but we have twelve on
board. Water slops over the gunwales under the heavy
strain. The wind drives us back toward the Macon. She is
in the water from the tail to a point about 200 feet for-
ward. Her nose is inclined at a grotesque angle. She is still
settling, and men are jumping into the sea from all parts
of the ship. We pick them up as fast as we can get to them*
A deep rumbling roar fills the air. It is a symphony of
snapping, twisting girders. Gas valves sing a high note and
release helium. It goes with a swish. Engines crash from
their bases and fall into bottomless deeps. The sky queen's
dress of silver rends in a thousand directions and dangles
piecemeal, exposing shattered ribs.
"Stand by in the rafts! We're coming down."
In the gloom of the evening I see twenty, maybe thirty,
men perched on top of the ship. Like crows they stand
silhouetted against a bitter sky. Lines drop from the bow
and men slide down them, tearing hunks of flesh from
their hands.
Men are coming down pellmell. They must hurry, for
suffocating gas is escaping around them. The ship's nose is
still high in the air nearly 1.50 feet. Directly below, a
group of men mill around in the water. They are ex-
2 jo DISASTER!
hausted and need a boat. From the mooring cone high
overhead dangles a line. Attached to it is a rubber boat,
uninflated. Men in the Macon's bow attempt to reach the
line, but they cannot.
William Bucher, ship's cook, sizes up the situation. He's
fed those men hundreds of meals. He can still serve them.
Without hesitancy, he climbs out to the mooring cone. He
sways in the breeze as he shinnies down the line. Foot by
foot nearer to the boat that is so badly needed. He reaches
it, cracks the valve on the air bottle and inflates the raft.
His fast-ebbing strength is used to cut the boat free, and it
falls to his shipmates, who are all but gone.
Bucher takes a turn around himself with the end of the
line and hangs there until the ships sinks low enough to
permit him to tumble off near a waiting raft.
The last man is off. There is nothing to do but wait.
"Lights ho!" We mount the crest of a wave and see the
lights. They appear in the southwest. A long beam sweeps
over us and for a split second shines on the disintegrating
Macon.
Then our joy suddenly turns to deep silence. A man in
my boat coughs hoarsely.
"They've turned away. Didn't see us," he says.
The Macon is about gone a few feet of her nose only
above the water, pointing directly heavenward. It stands
like an obelisk. A final crescendo of escaping gas is her
death rattle.
"There there she goes!"
She slides under and the seas close over. A man near me
brushes the back of his hand across his face.
"Damn the rain," his voice quivers.
It isn't raining any more.
The wind becomes colder. The night blacker. Gasoline
fumes are heavy in the air. The burning flares drift into
the spreading fuel and ignite it. We paddle furiously to
escape onrushing flames.
FIVE O CLOCK., OFF CALIFORNIA
Again the lights draw near. "We can see the red and
green running lights.
"Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!" We shout, scream, whistle,
wave our paddles aloft.
They see us. Anchor chains rattle down hawse pipes.
Boats are launched. We go aboard.
Our rescuers search the seas late into the night for
bodies* and wreckage. I toss fitfully in my bunk. From
the port I can see the gasoline still burning. It writes in
diabolical shapes over the sea that claimed our ship.
The beacon on top of the hangar at Sunnyvale still
flashes, waiting to welcome the ship that did not come
home.
But someday someday, maybe, it will shine for us
again. Someday, maybe, the empty field will resound again
to the command: "Up ship!"
If it does, I hope I'll be there. Because I want to see the
skipper and Min and Buck, Hammond and Bucher, Pete
and Shaky Davis. The engineers, Jake and Pat.
They'll all be there. And they won't miss any bells!
* Because of the efficient "abandon ship" maneuver aboard the Macon, only
two of her crew of eighty-three were lost. When the Akron sank in the At-
lantic Ocean in April, 1933, seventy- three officers and men went down with
her; and when the Shenandoah, first American-built rigid airship, broke in
two and crashed in Ohio in September, 1925, fourteen of her crew of forty-
three died.
The Roof
Fell In
By Seymour Parnes
NEW LONDON, TEX., March 18, 1937 On the
morning of March 18, 1937, there were ninety-two Seniors
awaiting graduation two months later from the Con-
solidated School at New London, Texas. That same after-
noon, only one of them was still alive* The other ninety-
one were among the 413 students and fourteen teachers
who were blasted to death in the worst school disaster in
America's history, far exceeding the toll of 174 when an
explosion wrecked the Lakeview School in Collinwood 2
Ohio, near Cleveland, in 1908.
The Consolidated School was a new school, a rich school
one of the finest rural education plants in the entire
country. Its brick buildings, model home-economics
kitchens, playgrounds, sewing rooms and laboratories had
been built with the handsome royalties from East Texas*
black crude oil. Its two main buildings represented an ex-
penditure of $1,000,000 to serve an area thirty miles
square. Its enrollment in 1937 was more than 1,500.
Classrooms in the school were heated by individual
radiators using natural gas. And it was an accumulation of
the highly explosive gas, possibly ignited by a spark from
a light switch, that set off the murderous charge which
reduced the school to a mass of twisted girders and broken
stone, and plunged the entire East Texas oil area into
mourning.
The primary grades had already been dismissed for the
day. The rest of the students about 690 boys and girls
in the high-school wing would have been dismissed in
252
THE ROOF FELL IN 253
another ten minutes. But the treacherous accumulation of
gas did not wait for the closing bell before exploding.
"The roof just lifted up. Then the walls fell out and the
roof fell in," was the way William C. Shaw, the school
superintendent, described it. Yes, the roof fell in, and
when it did it buried pupils and teachers in the ruins. Few
of them got out alive.
Fifteen-year-old Paula Echols and twenty other students
were in an English class when the blast came. She saw the
building shake and the roof fall in. Paula was pinned be-
neath her desk, but another student dragged her out a
window to safety.
John Nelson, seventeen, was working on a lathe in the
basement manual-arts shop. Fifteen other boys and the
manual-arts teacher were only a few feet away. Suddenly
something hit Nelson's leg and slit the front of his trousers.
"It felt like a charley horse you get playing football," he
said later.
Upstairs, watching over his mother's class of twenty-
five youngsters, was Nelson's brother Don, a twenty-four-
year-old oil worker. When the building exploded, shower-
ing his charges with plaster, Nelson herded the children
out into the open. His mother, who had gone to another
part of the building, was killed.
The schoolyard was littered with bodies as Nelson
emerged with his flock. With two other men, he crawled
back into the ruins and found ten children, badly fright-
ened but unharmed, huddled under a heavy bookcase.
Martha Harris, eighteen, was a short distance away
when the tile roof of the building soared skyward, then
fell in with a sickening crash. "I was in the home-eco-
nomics building about sixty yards from the school when I
heard a terrible roar," she said. "The earth shook and brick
and glass showered down. I looked out a window and saw
my friends dying like flies. Kids were blown out through
the top onto the roof. Some of them hung there and others
fell off two stories to the ground. I saw girls in my class
DISASTER!
jumping out windows as if they were deserting a burning
ship.
"My brother Milton jumped from the second story and
didn't get more than a bruise on his knee when he hit the
ground. I saw a girl fall out of the top story down through a
big window which opened to the outside. The glass cut off
her leg just as a sharp knife would have. The limb was
hanging by a thread.
"In the yard after the explosion, bodies were stacked up
like hot cakes. I'll never forget how my playmates' bodies
were torn; some of them were blown to bits. It was hor-
rible."
Bernice Morris, seventeen, who was in the mechanical
drawing room on the ground floor with three other stu-
dents and a teacher, was blown out of the building, but
lived. "One of the boys in the room broke through the
debris around a window, and all of them got out safely,"
she said.
For miles around, horrified parents and oil-field workers
heard the ominous roar. Pumps were shut off under der-
ricks as workmen ran toward the scene of the disaster.
Fathers and mothers, many of whom had been attending a
Parent-Teachers' Association meeting in the school gym-
nasium, rushed out, terror-stricken. Kindergarten tots
tumbled from the school buses lined up to take them
home. The scene that met their eyes was appalling. Vic-
tims of the blast looked "like rag dolls with their clothes
blown off." From beneath the wreckage came horrible
screams and cries for help.
Soon fifteen hundred workers were pulling frantically
at the debris, passing up the bodies of those obviously dead
in an effort to get to those who still lived. Oil-field laborers
set up a glaring battery of searchlights to facilitate rescue
efforts. Scores of acetylene torches bit through the twisted
steel girders which had supported the building.
Just before dawn, Mrs. Tracy Tate, a schoolteacher, was
lifted alive from the bottom of wreckage piled twenty
THE ROOF FELL IN 255
feet high. Said worker K. G. McDonald: "I put my hand
on her leg as I helped haul her from the debris, and I felt
the muscles twitch. She died as they placed her in an
ambulance."
No fire followed the explosion, though a sheet of flame
shot up momentarily. Few of the bodies bore any evidence
of burning, but many were so badly crushed that identifi-
cation was almost impossible. Many had been killed so
quickly by the concussion that they still had smiles on
their faces. But many, many more had been horribly dis-
figured. Shoes, caps, shreds of clothing and schoolbooks
lay everywhere. Grief-stricken mothers, many sobbing
hysterically, followed rescue workers or moved from group
to group of the dead in search of their own children.
In every conceivable type of vehicle the dead were
taken to morgues in towns within a fifty-mile radius to be
prepared for burial. For the living, schools, grocery stores
and churches were pressed into service as temporary hos-
pital wards. From Houston, the advanced classes of the
Landig College of Embalming rushed to the scene in a
chartered bus. There was more work for them than for
the doctors, who said that nearly every victim had died of
a fractured skull.
Governor James V. Allred, wired the news of the catas-
trophe in Austin, was at first inclined to think that it had
been "exaggerated." But he soon was convinced that, if
anything, it had been underestimated. Quickly he declared
martial law, and ordered National Guard troops from
Tyler, Longview and Marshall to the scene. Next he set up
a military court of inquiry to begin an investigation.
Meantime, Albert Evans, regional director of the Red
Cross at St. Louis, rushed by plane from Little Rock,
Arkansas, where he had been engaged in flood relief, and
plunged into the heartbreaking task of compiling an ac-
curate list of dead and injured, at the same time setting up
an emergency relief program.
A hard driving rain in the early morning hours after
256 DISASTER!
the disaster hampered the work of digging in the wreck-
age for bodies. Workers, stripped to the waist, passed
bricks and debris along an assembly line, while youngsters
darted about picking up schoolbooks that had been blown
hundreds of feet.
More than twenty-four hours after the explosion, tight-
lipped parents still plodded from morgue to morgue in
search of their children. With trembling fingers they
gently pulled away sheets and stared at the mangled fea-
tures of what might or might not have been their sons and
daughters. The task of identification was so difficult that
fingerprints of Texas school children taken the year before
at the Centennial exposition were rushed from Dallas.
For two days after the catastrophe New London's streets
were a cavalcade of death. In Pleasant Hill Cemetery,
workers labored in shifts to dig 460 graves. On Saturday
morning a deathly silence hung over the area. Every store
except the telegraph office was deserted. And on Sunday,
families buried their dead in a great mass funeral, while
nurses stood by to give first aid to mourners who collapsed
or fainted.
Then the military court of inquiry appointed by Gover-
nor Allred started its investigation. There was a mo-
mentary stir when twelve sticks of dynamite were dis-
covered in the ruins, but it was quickly established that
they had played no part in the disaster. Superintendent
Shaw, whose seventeen-year-old son was among the dead,
testified that "to save about $250 or $350 a month," the
school janitor had installed a connection to take natural
gas from the near-by waste line of the Parade Oil Com-
pany and pipe it through the basement to the school's
radiators. Officials of the oil company said they had not
given the school permission for the connection, but Shaw
replied that they had not "particularly objected."
The United Gas Company revealed that up to January
i, 1937, it had sold the New London School Board a
THE ROOF FELL IN 257
natural gas mixed with a telltale odorant that might have
prevented the blast.
Dr. E. P. Schoch, chemistry professor at the University
of Texas and an expert on gas explosions, inspected the
tangled wreckage and later asserted that many of the gas
radiators lacked proper flues. Of the six radiators left in-
tact, only one had a satisfactory vent.
"It's simple/' said Dr. Schoch. "The walls were filled
with gas that had no other exit. Then there was a spark,
and the walls burst. The condition of the bodies bears
that out. They were blown to death, not burned to death.**
Dr. Schoch added that "if only one of the seventy-two
54 -inch connection pipes through the basement -was left
flowing accidentally for seventeen hours, the maximum
saturation point would have been reached."
The court of inquiry concurred with Dr. Schoch's find-
ings, and decided that gas in the school basement had sup-
plied the charge for the murderous explosion.
The most ironic note in the entire story of the New
London tragedy was found among the wreckage. It was a
section of blackboard blown out of the shattered building.
On it someone had scrawled these words:
"Oil and natural gas are East Texas* greatest mineral
blessings. Without them this school would not be here, and
none of us would be here learning our lessons."
The Last Flight
of the Hindenburg
By Commander Charles E. Rosendabl
LAKEHURST, N.J., May 6, 1937 During the early
months of 1937, both the Hindenburg and the Graf
Zeppelin had been thoroughly overhauled and groomed in
Germany for further conquests. As the beginning of the
1937 schedule approached, the Hindenburg made several
European flights. During these, Major General Ernst Udet
of the German Air Ministry conducted experiments of
hooking his airplane onto the Hindenburg and being
launched from it in flight. Although the utility of such
complementary uses of the airplane with the airship had
been demonstrated for years by American naval airships,
Udet's experiments with the Hindenburg represented the
first practice of this kind with commercial airships.
There followed a round trip to Rio de Janeiro on which
that patriarch of airships, Dr. Hugo Eckener, went along
to participate in the formal opening of the new airship
terminal facilities at Rio. Upon the Hindenburgs return
to Frankfurt, all attention was concentrated on the open-
ing of the 1937 service over the North Atlantic and the
eyes and minds of all concerned were magnetically drawn
westward to Lakehurst, New Jersey.
Following negotiations through the usual official chan-
nels, the Navy Department of the United States had is-
sued a permit for use by the Hindenburg of certain air-
ship facilities at its airship base at Lakehurst that were not
Excerpted from the book Zeppelin, the Story of Lighter-than-air Craft, pub-
lished at $3.00 by Longmans, Green and Co., New York, N. Y.; copyright
1937 by Longmans, Green.
2J8
THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE HUSTDENBURG 259
being used by American airships. The permit was granted
in return for payment to the United States for all services
received by the Hindenburg at Lakehurst and a disclaimer
of expense or risk on the part of the United States.
The takeoff of the Hindenburg for the first scheduled
North Atlantic flight in the 1937 series took place on May
3, at 8:00 P.M. Central European Time, from the new
Rhein-Main World Airport, in ideal weather conditions.
On board were thirty-six passengers representing five na-
tionalities. The Danish Minister of Transportation, who
was to have made the trip with one of his officials, had to
cancel his reservation at the last moment. In command of
the ship was Captain Max Pruss, whose airship experience
dated back to World War I; his crew included two other
captains, Albert Sammt and Heinrich Bauer.
As Director of the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei, Captain
Ernst A. Lehmann came along on this 1937 inaugural trip;
also Captain Anton Wittemann of the Graf Zeppelin. Al-
though the normal crew of the Hindenburg was about
forty, a considerable number of younger airship men was
carried in addition for training purposes, bringing the
total crew up to sixty-one. Among them were Dr. Rudiger,
the first doctor ever to be carried regularly in the crew
of any commercial aircraft, and the first airship stewardess,
Mrs. Imhof. There were, then, 97 persons on board the
Hindenburg on this trip.
Within a short time the city of Cologne was reached,
the shadowy outline of its famous cathedral silhouetted
against the city's lights. The course then proceeded as cus-
tomary via Holland to the North Sea; there thunder-
storms over the Channel made it advisable to detour to
the north. For a while the weather remained unpleasant
but not severe, with bad visibility; neither the French nor
English coasts were sighted. Over the ocean the ship took
a course somewhat more northerly than that generally
taken by steamers at this time of year.
On the afternoon of May 5, the coast of North Amer-
260 DISASTER!
ica was first sighted near Newfoundland. Large horseshoe-
shaped ice fields pushed their way into the sea, and closer
to shore numerous icebergs of varied and fantastic forms
floated about. For the benefit of the passengers, the ship
flew over the crystal-like, glittering ice forms.
Now the ship's course was changed to a generally south-
erly direction, passing the lighthouse at Cape Race and
several lonely coastal cities. As had been experienced on
practically the entire trip, head winds persisted, now blow-
ing at forty-five- to fif ty-mile-per-hour velocity at flying
levels. However, there was no turbulence during the flight,
merely the slowing down of the ship's speed over the sur-
face because of opposing winds.
It was noon on May 6 before Boston was reached; by
three o'clock the ship was over New York City and then
soon headed southward for the vicinity of Lakehurst. Al-
though the scheduled time of arrival set many months in
advance had been 6:00 A.M* on May 6, the head winds had
caused Captain Pruss to radio that he would delay the
landing time until 6:00 P.M. that day. Hence, although
the ship arrived over the Lakehurst field at about a quar-
ter-past-four, no attempt was made to land before the an-
nounced time of 6:00 P.M. since the arrangements neces-
sarily involved not only the ground crew at a designated
time but also all those officials customarily associated with
the official entry of a foreign commercial vessel.
Meanwhile, a weather "front" accompanied by rain and
thunderstorms was moving in from the westward. Cruis-
ing in an area a few miles south and southeast of Lakehurst,
the Hindenburg awaited the passage of this front at Lake-
hurst, then proceeded westward, coming in behind the
front. Although the ground crew stood in readiness at six
o'clock, heavy rain and a thunderstorm made it advisable
for the ship to stay clear until the weather improved.
As the thunderstorm passed and the rain practically
ceased, I sent a radio message to Captain Pruss recom-
mending that he come on in and land. Hence, at about
THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE HINDENBURG 261
':oo P.M., Eastern Daylight Saving Time, the Hinden-
?wrg came into view and passed over the station on a
lortherly course at an altitude of 500 to 600 feet, to have
i look at surface conditions. The ground crew consisted of
jome ninety Navy enlisted personnel together with a pro-
portionate number of naval officers, and 138 civilians re-
cruited from the vicinity, practically all of whom had at
one time or another been employed at the station and
hence were familiar with airships and their landing and
mooring.
After circling, the Hindenburg came back over the sta-
tion, adjusted her trim and static conditions by valving
hydrogen and dropping ballast in perfectly normal fashion,
headed into the wind, descended to about 200 feet alti-
tude, backed down on her engines to check the headway
of the ship, and at 7:21:00 dropped her manila landing
ropes to the ground. It was raining almost imperceptibly,
and while the light of the sinking sun was dimmed by the
overcast cloud condition, the weather was definitely im-
proving.
On board, all members of the crew were at their sta-
tions, eager to land and reservice their proud ship and be
off again on schedule eastward over the Atlantic. In the
passageways near the gangway, the passengers' baggage had
been assembled ready to be passed out immediately upon
reaching the ground. In the spacious lounge rooms near
the open observation windows, most of the passengers
were on the starboard side with their passports and papers
ready for examination there by the boarding officials.
Nearly all of them were eagerly looking for friends on the
ground or watching the landing operation.
The ground crew at once grabbed the ship's landing
lines, connected them to corresponding ground lines and
began the operation of hauling them taut as the first step
in the landing maneuver. From the very nose of the ship,
the steel mooring cable by which the ship was to be pulled
in to its connection on the mooring mast began to make its
z6z DISASTER!
appearance. Following the passage of the thunderstorm,
the wind had become light and variable, scarcely two
miles-per-hour velocity on the surface and only some six
knots at the ship's altitude; the direction there was some
ninety degrees different from that on the surface. Before
the slack of the landing ropes could be taken in by the
ground crew, a light gust from the port side caused the
ship to move very very slowly to starboard and also
gradually tightened the port manila landing rope.
At 7:25 P.M., or just four minutes after the landing
ropes had been dropped, I saw a burst of flame on top of
the ship just forward of where the upper vertical fin at-
taches to the hull. It was a brilliant burst of flame re-
sembling a flower opening rapidly into bloom. I knew at
once that the ship was doomed, for nothing could prevent
that flame from spreading to the entire volume of hydro-
gen with which she was inflated. There was a muffled re-
port and the flames spread rapidly through the after-
quarter of the ship. In the control room, the officers were
not aware that anything was wrong until they felt a
shudder through the ship that reminded them of the snap-
ping of a landing rope, but a quick glance assured them
that it was something else. As the stern section of the ship
lost its buoyancy in the fire, it began to settle to the
ground on an almost even keel, ablaze throughout and
sending huge pillars of flame and smoke to great heights.
As the stern settled, the forward three-quarters of the
ship, still keeping its buoyancy, pointed skyward at an
angle of about forty-five degrees. Through the axial cor-
ridor of the ship, in reality a huge vent extending along
the very central axis, the flame shot upward and forward
as though it were going up a stack. The travel of the flame
was actually progressive, but it spread forward so rapidly
and it so quickly encompassed the entire length of the
ship that to some it may have seemed almost instantaneous.
The forward section was not long in following the stern
to the ground, and within less than a minute from the first
THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE HINDENBURG 263
appearance of the fire, the ship had settled, not crashed,
to the ground and lay there writhing and crackling from
the hottest flame that man knows.
The feelings of those on the ground are difficult to
describe. Visitors who stood in the assigned visiting space
several hundred yards away were stricken dumb or fled in
horror. In order not to be caught under the burning ship,
the ground crew were ordered to run from the immediate
vicinity. But even before the ship had touched the ground,
they had dashed back to effect such rescues as might be
possible.
In the ground crew were many men who were ac-
quainted with many of those on board the ship and were
also familiar with the parts where passengers and crew
were located. To such places they went immediately. On.
board the ship there was little time for warning or help.
Some were surprised in their cabins or at their posts of
duty and never knew what overtook them. Others heard
shouts from within and from without the ship to jump
through the windows, and many of the survivors got out
by this method.
At first glance, it seemed impossible that human beings
could come out alive from such an inferno. As I stood off
to one side, spellbound by this most unexpected tragedy, I
saw the flames eat rapidly along the fabric sides of the
hull, greedily devouring the illustrious name Hindenburg
letter by letter.
It is unfortunate that most of the passangers were gath-
ered on the starboard side and that they and perhaps others
on board did not realize that the wind on the surface was
blowing directly onto the port beam and hence was driv-
ing the flames to starboard. Realization of this fact might
have saved a few more lives. I was startled to see Chief
Steward Kubis, Watch Officers Ziegler and Zable, and
several others, suddenly emerge from the burning mass of
wreckage totally unharmed.
There were of course some miraculous escapes, not all of
264 DISASTER!
which will ever be recorded. One of the elderly women
passengers, as though led by a guardian angel, left the ship
by the regular hatchway with the calmness of a somnam-
bulist, receiving only minor burns. Others, hearing the
call to jump, went through the open windows and were
led to safety.
Probably the most miraculous escape was that of Werner
Franz, a fourteen-year-old cabin boy. As he jumped
through a hatch in the bottom of the ship and reached the
ground, the searing flames began to choke him. Just at that
moment, a water tank opened up immediately above him,
discharging its entire contents upon him and bringing him
to his senses. He spied an opening in the wreckage free
from flames, worked his way through it and emerged into
the open air from this fiery furnace totally unharmed and
thoroughly drenched.
Those in the control room, as had every member of the
crew, stuck to their posts in accordance with the highest
traditions. As the forward section of the ship settled to
the ground, it rebounded slightly from the resiliency of
the forward landing wheel. Then and only then came the
word "Now everybody out." There had been plenty of
quick thinking in the control car during those seconds of
descent. The normal impulse would have been to drop
water ballast to ease the impact of the ship with the
ground, but those in the control car in an instant decided
not to drop it but to let the weight of that water remain
in the ship as long as possible to bring the burning hull to
the ground in the shortest space of time.
Captain Pruss was badly burned, but not so badly as
Captain Lehmann who nevertheless was able to stagger
away from the ship. Largely because there were many tons
of fuel oil still on board, the fire raged for more than three
hours despite the efforts of all available fire-fighting ap-
paratus. Thirteen out of thirty-six passengers perished or
died subsequently from injuries; of the sixty-one crew
members, twenty-two fell victims to this awful fire and
THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE HINDENBURG 265
one civilian member of the ground crew died of burns.
To anyone having seen the tragedy, it seems remarkable
indeed that out of ninety-seven persons on board, sixty-
two survived.
It is almost impossible to recount the many deeds of
heroism performed in the emergency by members of the
armed services and civilians alike. The period immediately
following the settling of the ship to the ground was one of
individual initiative; no orders had to be given. We shall
probably never know all of the individual deeds within
the ship itself, particularly on the part of those who per-
ished. One event, however, cannot pass without mention.
On board the ship returning from a visit abroad were Mr.
and Mrs. John Pannes, he having been for many years an
official of the Hamburg American-North German Lloyd
Steamship interests in New York City. As the ship neared
the ground, someone shouted to Pannes to jump through
the open window; but glancing about for Mrs. Pannes to
go with him, he did not find her and would not go without
her; both perished within the ship.
Requests for medical assistance had gone out quickly
from the Air Station since our own dispensary, of limited
size and facilities, could hardly cope fully with the un-
anticipated volume thus thrust upon it. Quickly doctors
and ambulances came from every direction. Fire-fighting
departments, American Legionnaires, Sea Scouts, members
of the C.C.C., soldiers, sailors, members of the civilian
ground crew, all pitched in despite great danger to them-
selves in effecting rescues, in attempts to subdue the blaze,
in caring for survivors and those who had perished.
There has been and will continue to be many a conjec-
ture as to what caused the Hindenbwrg disaster. However,
this much must be definitely recognized. The ship arrived
in perfectly normal condition, made a skillful and normal
approach, and was being landed in an entirely normal
way. In my opinion, there was nothing wrong within the
ship until the fire broke out. In other words, the Hinden-
266 DISASTER!
burg was not lost as a result of any weakness or defect in
the airship as a type but, as in the case of many steamers,
airplanes and other instruments of transportation, fell prey
(through its own hydrogen) to fire and fire alone. Had
the Hindenburg been inflated with helium, no such disaster
could possibly have occurred.
The morning following the accident I went to see my
friend Ernst Lehmann as he lay in the hospital, not suffer-
ing particularly, though badly burned. We had a rather
extended conversation and then, to permit him to conserve
his strength, I departed, intending to return in the after-
noon as the medical pronouncements were that his chances
for surviving were at least even. But his injuries were
worse than had been diagnosed. In what therefore turned
out to be practically his last conversation on the subject,
I discussed with him the future of airships. Although com-
pletely baffled over the possibility of any natural phe-
nomena having caused the loss of the Hindenburg, Leh-
mann told me of his still-firm conviction that the airship
would go on.
And so I, too, am convinced that the Hindenburg dis-
aster is not by any means the last chapter in the story of
lighter-than-air craft; it is, rather, a turning point. It is
deplorable that it should have ' taken the tragic loss of
thirty-six lives to make an apathetic world "airship con-
scious** and "helium conscious/* but this it did. From
knowledge of its existence previously confined mainly to
students, helium became a byword with all who are in-
terested in the realm of aeronautics.
And so the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in the
Hindenburg has indeed not been wholly in vain.
Hurricane
in New England
NEW ENGLAND, September 21, 1938 Year in,
year out across the northern United States, great areas of
high and low pressure, each several hundred miles in di-
ameter, roll like atmospheric groundswells the lows bring-
ing overcast and rainy weather, the highs fair skies. Com-
pared to this relatively placid atmospheric topography, the
antics of West Indies weather are fantastic. In that tropi-
cal neighborhood, pits of low pressure suddenly take form,
airy abysses miles deep into which winds from the high-
pressure areas rush from all sides not at thirty, forty, fifty
miles per hour but at seventy-five, 100, even 200 miles
per hour. Such an abyss formed in September, 1938, north-
east of Puerto Rico.
Like others of its kind this pit did not remain stationary.
Usually they move northwestward till they strike the coast
of Florida or the Gulf, then turn northeastward, out over
the Atlantic. The 1938 pit started on this route, swerved
northward before it reached the coast of Florida. Off Cape
Hatteras it appeared to swing northeastward but its path
was blocked because an unusually broad high-pressure
plateau covered nearly the whole north Atlantic. Follow-
ing the course of least resistance, the pit swept northward
into a low-pressure trough across Long Island, through
the heart of New England, into Canada, finally vanishing
north of Montreal.
That was all, but for one day it made a cataclysm in the
barometric topography of the U. S. New England sud-
Courtesy of Time, copyright Time, Inc., 1938.
267
268 DISASTER!
denly found itself at the bottom of an atmospheric abyss
between two great plateaus. The effect would hardly have
been much more catastrophic had a new Grand Canyon
of the Colorado suddenly opened in the Connecticut Val-
ley.
At 2:45 P.M. on September 21, the storm reached Long
Island. More destructive hurricanes have bombarded United
States shores, but never has a hurricane struck a region so
thickly populated and so unprepared. Inattentive to
weather reports, many a landsman had his first intimation
that the wind and rain were more than an equinoctial
storm when he had a "funny feeling" in his ears the ef-
fect of sudden low pressure, like that of going up in an
elevator.
The shrieking vortex of the storm first hit Long Island
between Babylon and Patchogue where the barometer
reached an all-time low for that area, 27,95 inches. At
summer resorts on the long strip of sand dunes separating
the ocean from Great South, Moriches and Shinnecock
bays, the hurricane swept away everything not securely
anchored, including eleven wind-measuring instruments.
Following the first fierce blow came tidal waves, several in
succession, to heights of thirty or forty feet. Bath houses,
boat houses, summer cottages, Coast Guard stations, long
rows of squat and sturdy stores were swept away, ham-
mered into high windrows of kindling wood or carried
over whole to toss on the raging bay waters. Of 150 build-
ings in West Hampton Beach, six were left standing. In
the bays, even in village streets on the mainland, drown-
ing people screamed and struggled.
In swank Southampton to the east, ranks of expensive
cabanas were devoured by the sea, mansions along the
dunes buffeted and flooded by titanic waves. Streets, lined
with ancient elms that were Southampton's pride, looked
like the Argonne of 1918. East Hampton, still further
east, and Amagansett were in worse case. More than four
in every ten of their stately elms crashed. The sea rushed
HURRICANE IN NEW ENGLAND
up and over the dunes to lash even at the Maidstone
Country Club on its high bluff, obliterating the golf
course and fifty prize flower gardens. Rich summer colo-
nists and poor fisher folks suffered alike. Falling trees'
crushed the Maidstone Hotel. The Bridgehampton freight
station was shunted smack across the tracks.
Out toward naked Montauk Point, the i^o-foot Mackay
Radio tower at Napeague was flung to earth. Fishing craft
were splintered, fishermen's shacks blown to flinders.
Refugees huddled marooned in the brick-walled Montauk
Manor on high ground. On Long Island's northerly finger,
the hurricane from the South made shambles of the ship-
yards of Greenport, unroofed a full movie theater.
On the other side of the vortex, at Long Island's western
end, the violence came from the north and northwest.
From Huntington to Manhasset Bay on the north shore,
the Long Island Sound waterfront was smashed in. On the
south shore, buildings at Jones Beach were blown toward
the sea instead of back into the bays. Torrential floods
halted traffic and, like most of the Suffolk County to the
east, 95 per cent of Nassau County (population 303,000)
was in darkness. Brooklyn and New York City, catching
the fringe of winds which registered 120 miles per hour
in some gusts, were flooded and stalled. Lights went out
for an hour, subways halted, when the Hellgate power-
house was flooded by storm tide. The Staten Island ferry-
boat Knickerbocker was caught by the wind in her slip,
jammed into an iron bumper rail at an angle that drove
her 200 passengers near to panic before two tugs managed
to work her loose.
Whistling and whining across Long Island Sound, the
big wind hit New England with increased fury. (Harvard
Observatory at Blue Hill, Massachusetts, registered gusts of
1 86 miles per hour.) At Bridgeport, New Haven and New
London, the storm waves hurled shipping into the streets
and across railroad tracks. The crack Bostonian express
train had to nose a house out of its way as it crawled, half-
270 DISASTER!
submerged,, to safety, dragging telephone poles by their
fallen wires, leaving all but one car behind in a washout.
A capsized naval training ship started a fire in New Lon-
don that consumed an entire city block. Mrs. Helen E.
Lewis, Republican nominee for Connecticut Secretary of
State, was drowned with her husband when their island
cottage at Stony Creek was swept away.
At Watch Hill, Westerly and Charlestown, Rhode Is-
land, loss of life was heavy. Scores of people who took
refuge in the highest dunes were swept away by moun-
tainous seas which carved a new coastline. Well Rock
lighthouse at Point Judith was hammered down. So was
Prudence Island lighthouse, killing the tender's wife and
son. Charlestown was wiped out. Seven school children
were drowned in a bus on Jamestown Island.
The rich colony at Newport suffered worse than their
friends at Southampton. Bailey's Beach, Ocean Drive and
the Clambake Club were demolished. Mrs. Harry Payne
Whitney's sculpture studio was torn off its cliff. Mrs. Jock
Whitney's aunt, Mrs. John C. Norris, and her son were
drowned in their car as they tried to motor from Narra-
gansett Pier. In a house at Misquamicut, ten women hold-
ing a church social were drowned.
Raging up Narragansett Bay, wind and water struck
Providence, short-circuiting all power. A 3OO,ooo-cubic-
foot gas tank exploded. Short-circuited auto horns set up
a doleful din. Towns up Buzzard's Bay and along the Cape
Cod Canal were devastated. A steeple in East Bridgewater
fell point first through the roof of its own church. At
Northfield Seminary a falling chimney killed two girls,
injured twenty. "Old Ironsides," torn from her moorings
in Boston Navy Yard, was badly battered.
As the storm raced inland, veering northwest toward
Montreal, it flattened crops and orchards, wrenched away
miles of wires, acres of signboards. It blew away the famed
Jacob's Ladder trestle on Mount Washington, Dumping
trillions of tons of rain on New England, the hurricane
HURRICANE IN NEW ENGLAND 27 1
swelled riyers already swollen by three days of ordinary
rain. Highways and railroads were washed out. In the
Connecticut Valley, cities marshaled sandbag brigades.
Hartford held its breath while the dike by the Colt Arms
factory held through a flood stage of 36.45 feet. In the
Thames Valley, Norwich, Connecticut, isolated, was sup-
plied with food and medicine by airplane.
As the devastated East picked itself up, dried itself off,
began burying its dead, Harry Hopkins flew to join the six
New England governors in Boston. To $500,000 from the
Red Cross he added the promise of "unlimited funds'* and
100,000 workers from W.P.A. Disaster Loan Corporation
(subsidiary of R.F.C.) offered rehabilitation loans. After
five days, some communities were still isolated, train serv-
ice had not been restored on the full New York-to-Boston
run, the known dead had passed 600, the estimated damage
half a billion dollars.
At Vest Hampton, Long Island, Arni Benedictson,
Norwegian butler of Mr. and Mrs. William Ottman Jr.,
proved to be an Admirable Crichton straight out of Sir
James Barriers play. With meticulous calm he saved
twenty-three people by shepherding them, including the
Countess de Fontnouvelle (wife of the French consul-gen-
eral) and her infant, into the Ottman house, signaling for
help from the roof with a bed sheet. At the storm's height
he reported to the house guests: * e l am sure that our signal
was observed, but the situation is most disturbing and
perhaps I should venture outside and bring help from, the
mainland." He then fought his way through the storm to
find three stout lads who helped him lead his little band
to safety over a breaking bridge.
Forty Fathoms
Down
PORTSMOUTH, N.H., May 23, 1939 At. 6.30
A.M. May 23, 1939, the sleek, black submarine Squalus,
commissioned March i as the newest Navy "tin fish,"
churned east from the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Navy
Yard on orders to practice shallow "crash" high-speed
plunge dives. At 7:40 a radiogram crackled back to the
yard: "Preparing to descend for one hour." At 10:20 the
yard attempted to contact the Squalus again. There was no
answer. Within ten minutes her sister ship, the Sculpin, was
sent to look for the missing sub.
Eight miles out, the Sculpin slid past the seven reefs of
the Isle of Shoals through a calm, sun-freckled sea. No
sign. Five miles further "Red smudge, sir!" A moment
later the lookout spied a yellow telephone buoy such as is
released by submarines in case of emergency, and shouted
below.
The voice of the Squalus* commander, Lt. Oliver
Naquin, sounded hollow: "High induction valve open . . .
depth 240 feet . . . compartments flooded." The waves
jerked the Sculpin aside, and the telephone cable parted.
It was 12:40 P.M.
Alfred G. Prien, machinist's mate, second class, had
stood in the control room of the Squalus as the ship pre-
pared to dive fifty feet in a time test. Before him were the
red and green lights of the "Christmas tree" the instru-
ment board, nerve center of the ship.
The "rig for diving" lights flashed and the engines
Condensed from News-week.
FORTY FATHOMS DOWN 273
stopped. A siren wailed. Prien pulled the valves shut and
checked the lights. The ship began to sink . . . twenty . , .
forty . . . fifty feet. At that point, just enough to cover
the periscope, the ship leveled off. Immediately a frantic
message came from the engine room: "Water coming in!"
Prien's eardrums felt tight. He rechecked his lights; all
were correct. "Blow the ballast and ascend!" Prien jerked
the levers at the order and the ship's bow shot upward at
a forty-five-degree angle. He grabbed the handle of a
manifold valve to stay erect, still staring at the glowing
instrument board. Suddenly the lights went out the
submarine began to sink, dragged down by the tons of
water in the aft compartments.
Lloyd Maness, electrician's mate, was standing at the
bulkhead door between the control room and the aft sec-
tions. He felt the ship angle toward the bottom and saw
water roaring into the stern. Instinctively, he started to
close the bulkhead door, then heard a frenzied shout: "For
God's sake, keep it open!"
He swung it wide again and five men tumbled through,
water surging after them. By what his mates described as
a "superhuman effort," Maness shouldered the door shut
and "dogged it down." Behind, doomed, were twenty-six
other men among them his buddy, Sherman Shirley, at
whose wedding he was to have been best man the follow-
ing Sunday.
Forty fathoms above the fifty-nine entombed officers
and men, a small fleet of rescue vessels was assembling.
Among them was the veteran submarine tender, falcon.
All night, preparations went ahead conditions below were
"satisfactory, but cold" (thirty-six degrees above) .
At 9:22 next morning the first diver managed to land
on the deck of the sunken submarine, "a piece of incredible
luck." An hour and a half later, the squat ten-ton diving
bell invented by Navy men for just such disasters was low-
ered overside, guided through the cold, murky water by
shifts of divers.
274 DISASTER!
Like a huge gray spider it descended to the Squalus by
means of a cable attached to a hook beside the submarine's
forward escape hatch. It settled there, held by the 105-
pound-per-square-inch pressure of the depths and by the
clamps divers had attached; the bell crew jumped out of
the water below the hatch, yanked up the sub hatch, and
began taking in stupefied, blanket-draped men. Thirty-
three survivors in four loads of seven, nine, nine, and
eight men went up. On the last trip, the bell's cable
tangled 150 feet down and, after four hours, divers finally
cleared it away.
Next day the bell went down again, this time squatting
over the rear escape hatch. The rescuers pried it open, but
black water, sloshing over the coaming, filled it to the top.
Sadly the Navy abandoned hope for the missing twenty-
six and set about making plans to raise the $4,000,000
Squalus and hold an official court of inquiry.
While the Navy was mobilizing its forces on behalf of
the sunken sub, the press, too, had gone into action.
Within an hour after the first flash that the Squdus had
gone down, fifty reporters were at Portsmouth Navy Yard,
while at sea photographers in chartered planes were snap-
ping away at the smoke bomb marking the sunken sub's
location.
Some New York reporters were in Boston-bound air
liners; others rushed to the Navy Yard in Brooklyn. After
a slight delay in orders from Washington, the commander
of the cruiser Brooklyn was authorized to take them
aboard, and the ship left Portsmouth at 5:40. By the fol-
lowing day, 300 reporters and photographers were on the
scene.
Before dawn the day after the disaster, E. Harry
Crockett of the Associated Press Boston bureau shoved off
for the rescue zone in a chartered thirty- foot lobster boat.
According to the press service, Crockett and three staff
men from Boston A.P. newspapers fought their way
through rough seas to a Navy vessel anchored over the
FORTY FATHOMS DOWN 275
Squalw. "How many are dead down below? " shouted
Crockett to a "responsible officer." "Twenty-six" was the
reply. With the most notable beat of the disaster in hand,
the party returned ashore. There Crockett, seasick and
with a hand cut to the bone on a lobsterman's hook, tele-
phoned his story to his service.
Navy officials in Portsmouth and Washington denied
Crockett's report had any basis, but they had to back
down some hours later when the first seven survivors
brought from the sunken sub reported twenty-seven dead
a figure that later was corrected to the twenty-six in
the original Associated Press dispatch.
To raise the sunken sub and get evidence for the "in-
quest/ 5 two Navy experts, Comdr. Allen McCann who
helped perfect the diving bell used in the rescue and A. I.
McKee decided that the "quickest and safest" way to raise
the water-logged vessel was to pump out the flooded after
sections and attach pontoons to the hulk to give it addi-
tional buoyancy and float it to the top.
At the four-day Naval inquiry in Portsmouth, the
solemn-faced board heard a stream of survivor witnesses,
among them Lt. Naquin, commander of the Squalus. He
declared that apparatus to "insure" that an undersea craft
would not submerge until its ventilation valves were
sealed "would have prevented this tragedy."
Asserting that a depth-bomb explosion could rupture
the whole ventilation system of a sub, Naquin asked for
"automatic, instantaneous, snap-action" closing equipment
to stave off future disasters.
Nevertheless, in comparison with the futile attempts to
rescue the men on the S-yi in 1925 and those on the 8-4
in 1927, the sixty-hour Squalus rescue at record depths
was a miracle of speed and efficiency. But luck and fair
weather admittedly were with the workers. And though
the incident proved that rescue equipment was vastly su-
perior to that of ten years before, it also revealed that
many problems still remained to be solved*
DISASTER!
Many a landlubber wondered, for example, -why the
Navy had only five of the McCann diving bells in com-
mission; had the Squalus gone down in a less-favorable po-
sition than just outside Portsmouth, all these bells might
have been beyond call. As it was, the one used had to be
shipped from New London, Conecticut.
"When at last the sunken Squalus was brought to the
surface, after 113 days of back-breaking, heart-searing
work that twice saw the giant submersible break the sur-
face, only to sink again, the Navy salvage crew dragged
the pontoon-buoyed steel carcass into Portsmouth dry-
dock. Hospital aides removed the bodies of the dead and
reported one missing that of Robert P. Thompson, the
cook, probably swept through a hatch during salvage op-
erations. An official board of inquiry, meeting in the dank
interior, saw the two main air-induction valves tested. One
failed to close just as Lt. Naquin contended it had failed
on the fatal plunge.
Boston's Trial
by Fire
By Ben Kartman
BOSTON, MASS., November 28, 1942 There was
a war on. That was plain to see from the many men in
uniform in the Cocoanut Grove, Boston's oldest night
club, the night of November 28, 1942. But for many days
afterward, the war was temporarily and understandably
forgotten. For Boston had a headline story of its own.
Seldom had the Cocoanut Grove been so crowded. Every
available table was taken as some 800 guests waited for the
floor show to begin. It was a gala Saturday night. Many in
the crowd were celebrating the big Boston College-Holy
Cross football game of the same afternoon. Holy Cross had
won, but downtown Boston was full of men and women
looking for an outlet for their unexpended energies. And
where could they find a better place than the Cocoanut
Grove?
Crowds stood around the dimly lighted Melody Lounge
downstairs; crowds filled the tables around the upstairs
dance floor. There were soldiers and sailors, some of them
being given a sendoff to Army camps and Naval training
stations. There was a wedding party, and there were the
usual night-club devotees who need no special excuse for
an evening of fun.
In the Melody Lounge, a pianist on a raised platform in
the center of the oval bar was banging out jazz tunes. And
in the main dining room upstairs, dancers kept time to the
music of Mickey Alpert and his orchestra. Shortly after
ten o'clock, the dance floor was cleared and Bill Payne
mounted the bandstand to lead the crowd in singing The
278 DISASTER!
Star-Spangled Banner, a signal that the floor show was
about to start. But just as Alpert raised his baton, a girl
rushed across the floor screaming "Fire!"
The girl's scream and her flaming hair precipitated a
panic. The guests scrambled for the only exit they knew
the revolving door. By now huge tongues of flame were
licking at the imitation pajm trees and the garish decora-
tions on the walls. Smoke swirled through the hallways and
blazing draperies fell, setting fire to flimsy evening gowns
and hair. In the mad stampede, men and women were
hurled under tables and trampled to death. Others fell
over one another and blocked the six-foot-wide stairway
leading up from the downstairs bar. Those behind swarmed
over them to pile up in layers easy victims for the smoke
and fire. Not far from the revolving door was another
door, but it was locked tight.
A girl named Joyce Spector had been worried about her
new fur coat, so she started for the check room to make
sure it was safe. Before she got there the night club had
been turned into a shambles. Knocked down and crawling
on her hands and knees, she was somehow pushed through
a doorway into the street.
Singer Bill Payne kept his head. Because he did, twenty
were saved when he led them through the basement to a
cellar exit. Marshal Cook, a chorus boy, led thirty-five other
performers and Cocoanut Grove employees through a
second-story dressing room to an adjoining roof where
they climbed down a ladder and dropped to the ground.
Chorus girls, still wearing their scanty costumes, jumped
from windows into the arms of bystanders. A few men
and women managed to crawl through windows to safety.
Others escaped by knocking out a glass-brick wall. But
most of them were trapped in the frightful holocaust.
The fire was quickly brought under control, but not
soon enough to save the lives of 498 of the Cocoanut
Grove's guests. Among the dead was Buck Jones, veteran
star of Western films. Two hundred others were in hos-
BOSTON'S TRIAL BY FIRE 279
pitals, many of them severely burned. Of the 8oo-odd
celebrants in the night club, only 100 escaped unhurt. The
disaster was the worst of its kind in the United States since
575 persons died in Chicago's Iroquois Theater fire of i93-
For six hours after the fire was put out, charred and
broken bodies were transported to improvised morgues,
hospitals and first-aid stations, including a garage where
doctors and nurses tried to save those who were still alive.
The others were covered with newspapers and taken to a
temporary morgue in a near-by store. But there were more
bodies than the morgue could hold; some were laid out on
the streets and sidewalks amid the fire hoses.
Every available ambulance in Boston and others from
near-by communities, the Charlestown Navy Yard and the
Chelsea Naval Hospital were pressed into service, but they
were inadequate for the long rows of wounded. Private
cars, trucks, taxicabs and even a moving van were com-
mandeered to carry the horrible loads of dead and injured.
Hospitals were swamped, with bodies piling up in lobbies
while doctors and nurses ministered to those who still
lived.
Responsibility for the fire was placed on a sixteen-year-
old bus boy who struck a match while changing a light
bulb, accidentally touching off an imitation palm tree. But
the bus boy was not to blame for the Cocoanut Grove's in-
flammable decorations or for its lack of fireproof fixtures,
sprinkler systems and exit markers. The club had been in-
spected only two weeks before by the Boston fire depart-
ment.
In the first two days after the disastrous blaze, the of-
fices of the Boston Committee on Public Safety received
2,452 inquiries about 1,045 individuals who might have
been in the Cocoanut Grove that Saturday night. There
was the sailor in uniform who was looking for his pal.
"Bill and I were going to the Cocoanut Grove and we
agreed to meet in the front of the Met," he explained. "I
waited three hours and a half but he didn't show up. Now
280 DISASTER!
I don't know if he could have gone there without me. I
haven't seen him all day and we're due back on board ship
tomorrow morning."
Outside the grilled window of a mortuary a blond
young man clutched a scrap of paper. It bore the address
of the morgue, which a social worker had given him. The
young man explained that he had gone to the afternoon
football game with his wife, his sister and his sister's boy
friend. After the game they had separated, he and his wife
to go to the theater, his sister and her friend to go night-
clubbing. They had arranged to meet after the theater at
the Motor Mart where his car was parked.
The first thing he and his wife saw when they came out
of the theater were the glaring newspaper headlines. All
night and Sunday morning they had tried to trace his
sister. He described her, told what she was wearing Satur-
day night. A morgue attendant took him downstairs.
There his search for his sister ended. She was one of the
Cocoanut Grove victims.
By Monday morning offers of help started pouring in
on the Red Cross and the city of Boston. From as far away
as Chicago, Florida, California, came letters, phone calls
and telegrams offering money, blood and skin for grafting.
Homes for children orphaned by the disaster were offered
by more than 100 couples throughout the U. S.
From the Cocoanut Grove holocaust, physicians learned
several valuable lessons. Injections of blood plasma, a tech-
nique unknown only four years earlier, saved at least ijo
victims of shock. More than 1,300 units of plasma were
administered the equivalent of 1,300 blood donations.
At Boston City Hospital, where sixty-three per cent of the
victims were taken, ten units per patient were used, giving
victims more blood fluid than they had before the fire.
Not one patient who lived long enough for treatment
died of external burns alone. Most of the deaths in hos-
pitals were attributed to damaged lungs or throat, the re-
sult of inhaling flame or hot gases.
BOSTON'S TRIAL BY FIRE 281
For third-degree burn victims, who needed skin grafts,
penicillin was used. The magic drug was then still in an
experimental stage, but hospital officials voiced high praise
for its effects.
Witnesses at the fire reported that the screams from in-
side the night club had stopped suddenly, as if all inside
had lost consciousness at the same time. Some of the badly
burned victims themselves had no recollection of pain.
From this physicians concluded that they might have been
anesthetized by inhaling some gas. Their deduction was
given support by autopsies upon the lungs of the dead,
which showed effects similar to poisoning by carbon mon-
oxide, nitrous oxide and phosgene.
Thus, the sufferings of both the living and the dead
contributed to the future safety of millions of more-
fortunate fellow Americans. And strict fire inspections and
rigid safety regulations instituted throughout the nation
gave some assurance that the Cocoanut Grove disaster
would n 
