Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1890 — FOURTEEN LIVES LOST. [ARTICLE]

FOURTEEN LIVES LOST.

Workmen ta a Caisson at Louisville Suddenly Es(« fed by Rushing Water. An appalling accident occurred between Louisville and Jeffersonville st 6 o’clock, Thursday evening. A caisson in which eighteen men were employed was suddenly engulfed by a rush of water, and four-i teen of the number were drowned. As the? workmen of the pumping station were looking for the men in the caisson to put off in their boats, leaving work for the night, they suddenly saw the low, dark structure disappear in dashing white waves, and heard, before they could realize what had happened, the roar of the furious maelstrom. A runner was dispatched to the lif£ saving station, and three skiffs were manned and pulled to the scene of the wreck. Word was sent to the police station, and a squad was at once ordered to the ground to aid in the work of recovery. John Knox, the gang boss, took charge of the work Monday. The negroes who escaped say he had them dig too deep before letting the caisson settle, and the digging was too close to the shoe of the caisson. Just before the accident Knox gave some order to Robert Baldwin, the keeper in charge of the upper door to the exit. Baldwin then opened this door, and the compressed air which kept out the river rushed out letting in the stream. The men say they were working in ugly quicksand at the time. The caisson was about forty feet by twenty, and built of timber twelve inches square. It was protected by a coffer dam, but the river is very high, and the pressure of the water very great.

One of the survivors tells the following storj of the accident, and the horrible fight for life of the panic-stricken workmen, imprisoned in the air chamber beneath the bed of the river: “The men were at work in the soft bottom of the river. They made such rapid progress, in the muddy surface that the excavation went down faster than the caisson, whose great weight was expected to carry it grad ually down, keeping pace with the work of excavating to a rock foundation. Thursday afternoon an unusual quantity of water began to trickle from under the caisson’s edges, but the pumps were at work taking it out and no apprehension was felt. Gradually the incoming tide increased until suddenly from under the edge of the caisson on every side a flood gushed in. The men too late realized their deadly peril and all rushed for the exitinto the escape pipe. Immediately around the little trap door which admitted to liberty and life the frantic unfortunates fought like demons, all knowing that but a few of 1 them could pass through the inner trap before the air chamber was completely, filled by the inrusMng tide. Only one! could go through at atime, and as one man gaiped a pre-eminence he was snatched by his frenzied companions and drawn back into the struggling crowd. Meanwhile the flood rose swiftly and relentlessly. The caisson roof was scarcely higher than the mens’ heads, and to be left behind waa thought to be certain death.” , Abe Taylor says he was the last of the survivors to escape into the outer lock. As he escaped from the clutches of a dozen hands and leaped through the trap into the outer lock, he heard Knox the foreman* shout: '‘For God’s sake hurry, boys; ft's getting over my head. Let the shortest men go first” The trap fell back behind Taylor and shut his doomed comrades from view. It is supposed that before any of the others could escape that they were all drowsed.