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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