Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1916 — BLOWN FAR BY BIG BLAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BLOWN FAR BY BIG BLAST

Peter Ilaceta, captain of a Moran lighter, sitting up in bed in the Jersey City hospital. Raceta was asleep in his cabin, the boat being one of the many vessels towed away from the burning piers of Black Tom island. Jersey City. When about fifty feet from the Statue of Libert} In New York bay there came the -big ammunition explosion. The captain says he was thrown into the vjater straight from his bunk. .He started swimming and found himself under one of the burning docks with flaming vessels, cars and building* around him. He swam across the water to the Liberty Statue and when he had gained sufficient strength hd swam back to one of the piers nean the scene of the explosion and wan pulled out of the water and rushel to the Jersey City hospital.