On This Date in Minnesota History:May 17

May 17, 1914 – Five people were drown in the capsizing of an overcrowded 16-foot launch in the Mississippi River at Thirty-third Avenue NE, Minneapolis,  at 3 p.m. today.

Four more of the party were rescued from three or four bobbing logs snagged in mid-stream onto which they had crawled after half an hour in the water whose current carried them four blocks.

The body of Harold Buchholz was found floating at Fifteenth Avenue, 18 blocks from the scene of the accident, an hour later.

Too short a turn in a big eddy overturned the heavily loaded launch as if it were a canoe.

John C. Buchholz, who drove the launch, kept his wife and his sister’s daughter afloat. His own two children were drowned.

Fred Weber, aged 20, of Merrill, Wis., struggles to save Mrs. Justman and failed. She and two of her children were drowned.

Buchholz struggled to a cluster of logs, gripping his wife by the hair and with his sister’s little girl clinging around his neck. Merrill followed him. The woman and child were pushed onto the logs, Mrs. Buchholz unconscious. They clung there until three employees of the General Electric Company’s nearby plant took them in a boat.

Otto Justman was fishing today and late this evening learned of the accident that took three of his family of four. Mr. and Mrs. Buchholz have no children left.

The accident happened at Thirty-fourth Avenue North. The rescue was made at Twenty-ninth Avenue North.

The Mississippi River runs through Minneapolis; 1908 - 1910¹

When the launch capsized, it spun over and over on its side and afforded no refuge. One of the Buchholz children was shoved onto it for an instant, then it whirled again and the child disappeared. The same whirl that drowned his child threw Mrs. Buchholz within the reach of Mr. Buchholz. In another spin the boat struck Mrs. Justman from the arms of Weber and she sank.

Boat and floundering people were carried fast down the river. Buchholz gave encouragement to the nine-year-old Helen Justman, who cried to him that she could not hold onto his neck much longer. His wife lost consciousness before the three had floated a block and the cessation of her struggles, Buchholz says, saved the lives of all three. Weber, swimming free, caught him just as he reached a little clump of logs that had anchored against a piling in the river. The two men pushed the apparently dead Mrs. Buchholz and the girl onto the logs. Buchholz, fast becoming exhausted, clung to the logs, half-supported by Weber.

Workman at the General Electric plant saw the struggle and launched a boat. Thirty minutes after the accident they reached the four people and took them off. They were all revived at the Buchholz residence after two hours.

Fifty men began a search for bodies immediately under the direction of police of the north and east stations. The only body that had been recovered at a late hour this evening was that of Harold Buccholz, the clothing of a two-year-old keeping him afloat. The fact that his body was found 18 blocks from the spot where the launch overturned discouraged hope of early recovery of the other bodies.

It was a family dinner party that went out for a short ride. They were on the river just half an hour and were making the homeward turn when the accident occurred. Buchholz owns the launch.

Buchholz is a cabinet maker for the Northland Pine Company. Justman, whose wife and two children were drowned, is a chauffeur.


The Minneapolis Morning Tribune; “Five Drowned in Mississippi Launch Upset. Whirling Eddy Capsizes at Thirty-third Avenue Northeast. Four Rescued After Half-Hour Struggle in Swift Current of River. Man Holds Wife by Hair; Sister’s Child on Back; Saves Both. Bobbing Cluster of snagged Logs Is Refuge in Mid-Stream. Taken Off Exhausted By Three Workmen in Boat—One Body Recovered.”; May 18, 1914; p. 1.

¹http://postcardy.blogspot.com/2015/01/birdseye-views-of-minneapolis-and.html

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