Cortland
Evening Standard, Monday, October 25, 1897.
THE LIST OF
FATALITIES.
Now
Estimated That Twenty-Eight Were Lost.
DERRICKS
RAISE THE CARS.
Engineer
and Fireman at the Bottom of Hudson River.
GARRISON, N. Y., Oct. 25.—From the sleep
that means refreshment and rest to the eternal sleep that knows no waking,
plunged in the twinkling of an eye Sunday morning 28 souls, men, women and
children. Into the slimy bed of the Hudson river a train, laden with slumbering
humanity, ploughed, dragging through the waters the helpless passengers.
There was nothing to presage the terrible
accident which so suddenly deprived these unfortunates of life. Following is a list of the dead as far as
ascertained:
THOMAS REILLY, St. Louis.
WONG GIM, a Chinaman.
Seven Chinamen, unidentified.
E. A. GREEN, Chicago.
W. H. G. MYERS, of Tremont, N. Y., or
Passaic, N. J.
Woman, unidentified.
Woman, unidentified.
GUISEPPE PADUANO of New York.
W. S. BECKER of Newark, N. Y.
Unknown man, died while being rescued.
A. G. MCKAY, private secretary to General
Superintendent Van Etten; body supposed to be in wreck.
JOHN FOYLE, engineer of East Albany; body
not recovered.
JOHN Q. TOMPKINS, fireman of East Albany; body
not recovered.
Total number of known dead, 19; estimated
number of dead, 28. The injured:
Conductor E. O. Parish of Buffalo; knocked
unconscious; severely bruised.
Chinaman, bad scalp wound and body bruised;
in hospital at Peekskill.
Chinaman, face badly cut and leg sprained; in
hospital at Peekskill.
Frank J. Degan, 239 West Thirty-fourth street,
New York city; body bruised and face cut.
Long Lee, Chinaman, badly bruised and
suffering from shock; in hospital at Peekskill.
Herman Acker of Peekskill, baggageman, bruised
and head cut.
— Shaw, express agent, New York; slightly
bruised.
John E. Ryan, 294 Barrow street, Jersey
City, badly lacerated arm and leg; in hospital at Peekskill.
Clarence Morgan of Aurora, N. Y., broken
shoulder; in hospital at Peekskill.
W. S. Langford, Bayonne, N. J., body bruised.
Charles Buchanan, John Smith and John Flood
were taken to Flower hospital, New York City.
A number of others were injured, but up to a
late hour they have not been identified.
DAWN WAS
BREAKING
Rendering
the Morning Hazy—Then Came the Plunge.
The New York Central train left Buffalo the
previous evening and had progressed for nearly nine-tenths of the distance
towards its destination.
The engineer and his fireman had just noted
the gray dawn breaking in the east, and the light streak of red betokening the sun's
appearance when, with the great engine—a servant on the rails, a devil off—plunged
into the depths of the river.
Neither engineer nor firemen will ever tell
the story of that terrible moment, for with his hand upon the throttle the
engineer plunged with his engine to the river bottom and the fireman, too, was
at his post.
Behind them came the express car, the combination
car and the sleepers and these piled on top of the engine.
It was a trifle foggy and the track was not
visible, but if there was any break in the lines of steel, it must have been of
very recent happenings, for only an hour before there had passed over it a
heavy passenger train, laden with human freight.
Neither is there an explanation ready. All
is conjecture. The section of road was supposed to be the very best on the
entire division. There was a great heavy retaining wall all along the bank, and
while the tide was high it was not unprecedented.
What seems to have happened was that
underneath the tracks and the ties the heavy wall had given away, and when the
great weight of the engine struck the unsupported tracks it went crashing
through the rest of the wall and toppled over in the river.
Then there happened what on the railroad at
any other time would have caused disaster, but now proved a very blessing. As
the train plunged over the embankment the coupling that held the last three of
the six sleepers broke and they miraculously remained on the broken track. In that
way some 60 lives were saved.
Of eyewitnesses there were none, except the
crew of a tugboat passing with a tow. They saw the train with its lights as it came
flashing about the curves and then saw the greater part go into the river. Some
of the cars with closed windows floated and the tug whistling for help, cast
off its hawser and started to the rescue.
A porter jumped from one of the cars that
remained on the track and ran into the yard of Augustus Carr's house, near
which the accident occurred, and stood screaming for help and moaning.
"The train is in the river; all our passengers are drowned."
In a few minutes Carr had dressed himself
and getting a boat rowed with the porter to the scene. As they turned a point
in the bank they came upon the express car and the combination car floating
about 30 feet from shore, but sinking every minute. One man was taken from the
top of the car and efforts were made to rescue those inside who might be alive.
A few were gotten out, the passengers left
upon the track making a human bridge to the shore to take the wounded over on.
A few were thus rescued.
The day coach and smoker had gone down in
the deeper water and rescue was impossible. In the latter coach the conditions
must have been terrible. The car turned completely over and the passenger end
of it was in the deep water, while the baggage end stood up towards the
surface.
The men in that lower end must have fought
like fiends for a brief period, for the bodies when taken out were a mass of
wounds.
The closing scene of the first day of this
tragedy is drawn around a common car that stands near the scene of the
accident, where nearly a score of badly mutilated bodies, none of them yet
claimed by friends, are lying in a long row, gruesome evidence of a disaster,
the greatest that has ever occurred on this road.
BUFFALO
SPECIAL
Was a
Fast Train, Making the New York Run in 12 Hours.
The wrecked train was known as the Buffalo
Special. It left Buffalo at 7:30 o'clock Saturday night and was due in New York
at 7 o'clock Sunday morning. The train was hauled by engine 872 and consisted
of one American express car, one composite baggage and smoking car, one day
coach and six sleepers. This was the makeup of the train when it left
Poughkeepsie, the last stopping place before the disaster.
At this time there were in the smoker, in
addition to the baggageman, Herman Acker of Peekskill, who was in his
compartment, eight Chinamen en route from the Canadian border to New York, and
a middle-aged man, supposed to be Thomas Reidy of 260 Wisconsin avenue, St.
Louis. All of these, excepting the baggagemaster, perished.
The day coach contained 20 passengers, many
of whom were women and children. How many of these escaped is not known, but at
least 12 were drowned or killed in this car.
Behind the couch were six sleepers, the
Glenalpine, with 15 passengers; the Hermes, with 12 passengers; the Niobe, with
11; the Diana, with 15; the Anita, nearly full, and the Racket River with no
passengers. The total cargo of human freight consisted of something over a
hundred people.
At Fishkill the train lessened its speed, as
it is its custom to run front that point to Tarrytown at the rate of about 25
miles an hour. Most of the passengers were asleep, those in the sleepers being
in their berths, the occupants of the coach and smoker were for the most part
doubled up in their seats.
Just how the train met its awful fate will
never be fully known, for the men who first felt the danger, Engineer John Foyle
and Fireman John Tompkins, lie dead in the cab of their locomotive at the bottom
of the Hudson river.
Conductor Parish, who was in charge of the
train, and who was making up his report in one of the cars when the crash came,
was rendered unconscious by a blow on the head. When he recovered he was three
seats ahead of the one in which he had been sitting.
TOUCEY
ON THE SPOT.
First
Official to Arrive—Engine Sent For Medical Aid.
One of the trainmen who survived the disaster
made it his first duty to run to the nearest signal tower to telegraph for help.
The place where the wreck occurred is rather
isolated. It is just at the entrance to what is known as King's Cut, three miles
south of Garrison and five miles north of Peekskill.
Two other express trains were following close
behind the ill-fated Special Express, and the engine of one of them was sent to
Garrison for General Manager J. M. Toucey who lives there, while the other engine
hurried to Peekskill for medical aid.
Mr. Toucey was the first official of the railroad
at the scene reaching there at 7:30.
The engine which brought him there steamed
to Cold Spring and returned with Drs. Windslow, Fillebrown and Murdock. In the
meantime Drs. Charles and Perley Mason, J. M. Tilden, P. C. Snowden and E. D.
Lynn had arrived and all the doctors were soon at work among the injured.
TO THE
RESCUE.
Mr. Can Awakened
by the Sleeping Car Porter Calling for a Boat.
Augustus Can, a German, living near the
scene of the wreck, gives this description:
It was about five minutes before 6 when I
was awakened by someone in my yard calling for help. Looking out of my window I
saw a sleeping car porter, who shouted:
"For God's sake, man, if you own a boat
come quickly. Our train is in the river and people are drowning."
I dressed myself, and accompanied by the
porter, got into my rowboat and rowed around the curve to where the train was
in the river.
When we reached the cars, which were
submerged nearly to their roofs, the engine being entirely out of sight, the
crews of the tugboats were making efforts to save the passengers.
The first man I saw them take out was, I
think, the agent of the express car. The first persons we succeeded in rescuing
were two Chinamen who were sitting on the roof of the smoker. One had his arm
broken. We put them ashore and then took three more persons off the top of
another car.
At the same time people in their
underclothes were being taken out of the sleeping cars by the crews of the several
tugs.
One man on shore with an arm cut off was
dying, and we made his last moments as comfortable as possible. I want to say
that the porters, although frightened, showed great bravery and saved many
lives.
DEGAN'S
EXPERIENCE.
Sound of
the Ax Working For His Liberty Was Sweet Music.
One of the few occupants of the coach who
escaped with his life was Frank J. Degan, a wood finisher of 239 West
Twenty-fourth street, New York. His left eye was cut by broken glass and his
body was slightly bruised. Mr. Degan made this statement:
With my friend W. H. G. Myers of Passaic, N.
J., who was killed in the car from which I escaped, I had been to Poughkeepsie.
We boarded the train at that place and took a seat in the coach. Three other
people got on at Poughkeepsie, one was a woman and the two others were men, one
of whom looked like a railroad employe [sic]. As near as I can judge, there
were 18 people in the coach, most of them being women and children, and nearly
all were asleep. Myers and I sat in the middle of the car.
When the crash came the car gave a great
lurch and rolled over on its side.
The water
rushed in and almost immediately the lights went out. I knew we were in the
river and the car seemed to plough through the water for some time after it was
submerged. The car was tilted over on one side, and
I managed
to reach the fanlight overhead and cling to it until help came.
I heard people in the back part of the car
groaning as if they were pinned fast. It was so dark that I could see no one, and
I think the passengers must have been drowned like rats. After a while, it
seemed an age, I heard people on top of the car and an ax crashing through the
roof.
The noise of that ax in the splintered
timbers made the sweetest music I ever heard in my life. Soon they had a hole cut
in the roof and pulled me out through it. A man and a boy (father and son) were
also rescued in the same way, but I know of no other occupant of the coach
escaping.
The car at this time was floating, but fast
filling of water and we were put ashore in a row boat. I am sure that my friend
Myers was drowned.
BAGGAGEMAN'S
STORY.
Suddenly
Finds the Car Filled With Water—Swam to a Ventilator.
Of the dramatic horror of the situation in
the combination car when it left the track and struck the water, perhaps the
best account is had from the story of Hermann Acker of Peekskill, the
baggageman and mail sorter. Acker was suffering badly from shock when seen, but
the scenes he graphically described. He said:
John Shaw, agent for the Westcott Express
company, and myself were in the compartment when suddenly there was a terrible
bump and then a rush of water that forced us towards the ceiling.
The car seemed to turn completely over, and
had filled with water to within about a foot of the top. When we struck, the
car turned completely around, the end which the Chinese occupied being under
water while our end was tilted up. We swam around and got a ventilator open
and, noting the situation, got an ax from a tool box which was afloat and
smashed a panel in the end of the car. We crawled through the hole to the roof
of the car and a rowboat came out and took us ashore.
Acker has been a railroader many years and
has escaped from three serious accidents, his arm is badly cut and his body
bruised.
Shaw escaped injury.
WHAT CAUSED
IT?
General
Manager Toucey Stumped For a Cause—Always Believed Solid.
General Manager Toucey gave the following
statement as the cause of the disaster:
The accident was caused by the bed of the
railroad being washed out in some inexplicable manner. In this undermined
condition the track sank as soon as the weight of the train was put on it, and
the embankment giving way, the train was, of course, precipitated into the
river.
Such a condition as this we have never looked
for. Trains hare been running over this spot for years and years without
accident or difficulty of any kind, and this piece of track was considered as
good as any section of the road. Not only was the roadbed the hardest kind of
an embankment, but it was strengthened by a retaining wall of solid masonry
three feet thick.
Other
railroad officials were of the opinion that a quicksand foundation of some kind
below the water line was responsible for the sinking of the roadbed.
RAISING
THE COACHES.
As the
Combination Car Was Raised a Body Came Through the Window.
When a diver arrived from New York the first
thing he did was to go through the three submerged sleeping cars. He reported
that he found no bodies, but said that one or more might be under the berths,
which were in great confusion.
It was 3 o'clock before the derrick and hoisting
engine could raise the combination car, consisting of the smoker and baggage
compartments, to such a position that the top of it was out of the water. Slowly
the big load began to rise and in a few minutes it had been turned over so that
the windows were clear of the water.
The body of a man came out of a window as
the car was being brought to the shore. A boat was nearby and the oarsman secured
the body. It was the first lifeless form of any of the passengers to be
rescued.
A passenger coach, minus its seats, was close
at hand and the body was carried thither and deposited on the floor. The man
was about 55 years old. His head was partly bald and a bushy beard, tinged with
gray, covered his face. He was dressed in cheap clothing and his shoes were
cheap ones. A G. A. R. badge was fastened to the breast of his vest.
The busy rescuers did not have time then to
make any inquiry as to who he was, but simply tore off a slip of paper, wrote
body No. 1 and pinned it on his coat and left him to look for others.
By the time they had returned the derrick had
drawn the car to the bank and the work of getting the passengers who had come
to such an untimely end was under way.
The searchers were only able to find eight
Chinamen, and they were also carried to the morgue car. They were laid in a
row, numbered and were ready for identification.
The derrick next pulled the day coach to the
shore and the searching parties were able to reach it. Although it is known that
there were many more in the coach, but six bodies were recovered, and two of these
were women. They were all placed side by side. The last body was recovered at 5:45.
Coroner Woods of Cold Spring was on the
scene, and he with several assistants was soon at work at the task of identifying
the bodies.
CROWDS
FROM FAR AND NEAR.
Gathered
In Force to Witness the Scenes of Horror and Death.
Before 10 o'clock a large number of curious
spectators had gathered at the scene, coming from nearby towns by trains,
wagons, boats and bicycles.
The number of curious spectators steadily
increased as the day wore on, and excursion boats even came from places far up
and down the river, all loaded down to the water's edge, until at mid-afternoon
there were fully 10,000 spectators about the wreck. It required the utmost
exertion of the railroad police and detectives to hold these people far enough
in check to allow the railroad men to proceed with their work.
Chief Humphrey did good work in recovering valuables
and if there were a any thieves about they got no opportunity to ply their
trade.
The American Express company had a number of
its agents on the scene, but they are powerless to do anything, as no attempt
was made to raise their car. It was said that this car contained thousands of
dollars worth of valuables, but the officials said that all would be recovered,
as the valuables were in a stationary safe attached to the car.
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