[The following took place when the passenger steamer City of Columbus ran aground on Devil’s Bridge off the Gay Head Cliffs in Aquinnah, Massachusetts, in the early hours of January 18, 1884.]
Within thirty minutes of the crash, most of the passengers were dead. Eugene McGarry was one of the lucky ones who were able to climb into the ship’s rigging.
The waves came tumbling over the deck, sweeping away one person after another, and when one of [the lifeboats] was almost ready to launch it was turned over and a number of women sank from sight. For a while I stayed on the forward deck, near the pilot house, which seemed to be the safest place; but after some time had passed all who had gathered there found they must climb aloft. The sea broke over the vessel and we saw the cabin and pilot house swept away.
For the fifty or so souls who now clung to ropes and stays in the rigging, a grueling test began. The clear-cut rules were unforgiving. Hold tight with your grip or die! Eugene McGarry again remembered what he had seen: “One poor fellow clung to the rail, and resisted one wave after another. It seemed to me he was there half an hour making a desperate fight for his life. He could not move to a better place, and was finally lost.”
Passenger Tibbetts saw a young man take a deck of cards out of his pocket and throw them into the sea, not wanting to appear before God with a pack of cards in his pocket. Tibbetts’s roommate in a first-class cabin was an engineer from Roxbury, whom he saw “drop out of the rigging, frozen to death,” while the crew carried on indifferently, passing the time, waiting to be rescued.
The Boston Evening Transcript described the death of a crewman and one passenger as follows:
John Roach, a coal-heaver, dangled from the mainstay for two hours with his hands and legs about the mainstay. At length his struggles grew feebler until he dropped into the sea. A passenger was astride the stay and clung there from 5 until 10 A.M. when he relinquished the fight for life and fell into the ocean.
Source:
Pletcher, Larry. “The City of Columbus Tragedy.” Massachusetts Disasters: True Stories of Tragedy and Survival. Insiders Guide, 2006. 60-1. Print.
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