Careers of Danger and Daring

IV

FAMOUS RESCUES BY NEW YORK FIRE-BOATS FROM RED-HOT OCEAN LINERS

AFTER all has been said that may be about our admirable fire-engines, and endless stories have been told of gallant fights made by the engine lads for life and property, there remains this fact: that New York possesses a far more formidable weapon against fires than the plucky little "steamers" that go clanging and tooting about our streets. The fire-boat is as much superior to the familiar fire-engine as a rapid-fire cannon is superior to a rifle. A single fire-boat like the New-Yorker will throw as much water in a given time as twenty ordinary fire-engines: it will throw twelve thousand gallons in a minute – that is, fifty tons; or, if we imagine this great quantity of water changed into a rope of ice, say an inch thick, it would reach twenty miles.

Suppose we go aboard her now, this admirable New-Yorker, and look about a little. People come a long way to see her, for she's the largest and finest fire-boat in the world. Pretty, isn't she? All brass and hard wood and electric lights, everything shining like a pleasure-yacht. Looks like a gunboat with rows of cannon all around her – queer, stumpy little cannon, that have wheels above their mouths. Those are hose connections, like hydrants in a city, where they screw fast the rubber lines. She has twenty-one on a side; that makes forty-two "gates," as the engineer calls them, without counting four monitors aloft – those things on the pilot-house that look like telescopes with long red tails. It was the monitors, especially "Big Daddy," that did such great work against those North German Lloyders, in their drift down the river, in 1900, with decks ablaze and red-hot iron hulls. We shall hear all about that day if we sit us down quietly in the fire quarters ashore and get the crew started.

Stepping over-side again, here we are in the home of the fire-boat crew. It's more like a club than an engine-house. No horses stamping about, no stable; but pictures on the walls, and men playing cribbage or reading, and nobody in a hurry. Plenty of time for tales of adventure, unless that gong takes to tapping.

And here comes Gallagher, sliding down yonder brass column from the sleeping-rooms. He's the lad who did fine things in that great fire at the Mallory pier – saved a man's life and made the roll of honor by it. We'll never get the story from him, but the other boys will tell us.

If ever fire-boats proved their value, it was that night in May, 1900, when Pier 19, East River, caught fire, with all its length of inflammable freight. Close to three o'clock in the morning it was, and a hurricane from the northeast was driving the flames toward land. Before the engines could start, a fire-wave had leaped across South Street and was raging down the block. And another fire-wave had leaped across the dock between Pier 19 and Pier 20, setting fire to a dozen barges and lighters moored there, and to the steamship Neuces of the Mallory line. And presently all these were blazing, some with cargoes of cotton and oil, blazing until the lower end of the island looked out of the night in ghastly illumination, a terrible picture in red and black. They say it was bright enough that night half a mile away for a man to pick up a pin.

There is no harder problem for the engines than these fierce-driven water-front fires that sweep in suddenly shoreward, for they must be taken head on, with all the smoke in the firemen's faces, and water often lacking, strange to say, although the river is so near. For the fire-boats, however, the advantage is the other way; they attack from the rear, where they see what they are doing, and can pump from a whole ocean. Besides that, they attack with so formidable a battery that no hook-and-ladder corps is needed to "break open" for them. The three-inch stream from Big Daddy alone will tear off roofs and rip out beams like the play of artillery; and if that is not sufficient, the boys have only to hitch on the four-and-a-half-inch nozzle and set the two pumps feeding it five thousand gallons a minute, or twenty tons of water. Under that shock there is no wall built of brick and mortar that will not crumble.

When the New-Yorker came up on this memorable night the fifth alarm had sounded and things were looking serious. Piers 19 and 20 were in full flame, and every floating thing between them. Into this street of fire steamed the big fire-boat, straight in, with four streams playing to port and four to starboard, all doing their prettiest. She went ahead slowly, fighting back the flames foot by foot, on pier and steamship and kindling small craft that drifted by in fiery procession. And the air in the men's faces was like the breath of a furnace!

Here it was that Gallagher won his place on the roll of honor in this wise. For some time they had heard shouts that were lost in the din of conflagration; but presently they made them out as a warning from somebody somewhere that a man was on a burning barge just passing them. It seemed incredible that a man could be there, alive and silent; but, with the spirit of his trade, Gallagher determined to see if it were true: he would board the barge anyhow; and as the New-Yorker swung close alongside, he sprang down to her deck, where things were a good deal warmer than is necessary for a man's health. And as he leaped, John Kerrigan, at the steering-wheel of Big Daddy, turned its mighty stream against the barge, keeping it just over Gallagher's head, so that the spray drenched down upon him while the stream itself smote a path ahead through the fire.

Down this path went Gallagher, searching for a man, avoiding pitfalls of smoke and treacherous timbers, confident that Kerrigan would hold the flames back, yet see to it that the terrible battering-ram of water did not strike him – for to be struck with the full force of Big Daddy's stream is like being pounded by a trip-hammer.

Gallagher reached the cabin door, found it locked, put his back against it and smashed it in. Then he went on, groping, choking, feeling his way, searching for his man. And at last on one of the bunks he found him, stretched out in a stupor of sleep or drowsed by the stifle of gases. The man was a Swede named Thomas Bund, and he came out of that cabin on Gallagher's back, came off that burning barge on Gallagher's back, and if he does not bless the name of Gallagher all his days, then there is no gratitude in Sweden.

Here we see the kind of service the fire-boats render. On this night they saved the situation and a million dollars besides; they worked against a blazing steamship, against blazing piers, against blazing runaways; worked for eleven hours, until the last smolder of fire had been drowned under thirty thousand tons of water. And not a year passes but they do something of like sort. Now it is a steamship, say the ill-starred Leona, that comes up the bay with a cargo of cotton burning between decks. The New-Yorker makes short work of her. Again it is a blazing lumber district along the river, like the great McClave yards, where the fire-boats fought for eight days and nights before they gained the victory. But they did gain it. Or it may be a fire back from the river, like the Tarrant horror, where the land engines, sore pressed, welcome far-carried streams from the fire-boats as help that may turn the balance.

"Why, this fire-boat's only ten years old, sir," said Captain Braisted, "and she's saved more than she cost every year we've had her." Then he added, as his eyes dwelt proudly on the trim craft purring at her dock-side: "And she cost a tidy sum, too."

Let us come now to that placid summer afternoon, to that terrible Saturday, June 30, 1900, when tug-boats in the North River looked upon a fire the like of which the river had never known and may not know again. They looked from a distance, we may be sure, these tug-boats; for when a great liner swings down-stream, a roaring, red-hot furnace, it is time for wooden-deck craft to scurry out of the way. And here were three liners in such case, the Bremen, the Saale, and the Main, all burning furiously and beyond human help, one would say, for their iron hulls were vast fire-traps, with port-holes too small for rescue, and the decks swept with flame. It was hard to know that back of those steep sides were men in anguish, held like prisoners in a fortress of glowing steel that sizzled as it drifted – three fortresses of glowing steel.

Then up steamed the New-Yorker and the Van Wyck, with men behind fire-shields against the blistering scorch and glare, with monitors and rail-pipes spurting out all that the pumps could send. The New-Yorker took the Bremen, the Van Wyck took the Saale; and there they lay for hours, close on the edge of the fire, like a pair of salamanders, engines throbbing, pumps pounding, pilots at the wheel watching every movement of the liners, following foot by foot, drawing in closer when they gained on the fire, holding away a shade when the fire gained on them, fighting every minute.

"It's queer," said Captain Braisted, "but when you play a broadside of heavy streams on a vessel's side, say at fifty feet, there's a strong recoil that keeps driving the fire-boat back. It's as if you were pushing off all the time with poles instead of water. And you have to keep closing in with the engines."

"How near did you get to the Bremen?" I asked.

"Oh, we finally got right up against her, say after forty-five minutes. You can cool off a lot of red-hot iron in forty-five minutes when you've got forty-five tons of water a minute to do it with."

It was just as they came alongside that one of the crew made out a human shape in the coal-chute some ten feet up the Bremen's side. And presently they saw others there, blackened faces, fierce and fearful eyes. And above the fire crackle and the crash of water they heard men's cries.

Straightway a ladder was brought, and three of the crew, Breen, Kerrigan, and Hartmann, lifted it on their shoulders until the top rung came up level with the coal-chute. But this, instead of bringing relief to the fire-bound company, brought madness; for now they fought and struggled so, each one wishing to go first, that none were able to go at all. "They were like wild beasts," said one of the crew.

In this crisis Gallagher sprang up the ladder to the top, where he could look in through the hole, the one hole in all the vessel's sides that was large enough for a man's body to pass. And reaching in here, he grabbed what was nearest, arm, leg, or shock of hair, and hauled it out and lowered it down the ladder to Captain Braisted, who stood below him and passed the bundle on. Then Gallagher grabbed again and again, pulling forth by sheer strength one man at a time, taking them as they came, Germans or Italians, officers or coal-handlers, anything that was alive. Down came the tumbling mass, yelling, praying, fighting, a miserable human stream; and when it was all over and the count was taken, they had saved thirty-two lives.

Now one of the rescued men spoke up in broken English, and said that there were others still on the Bremen, down in the engine-room. And Gallagher volunteered to go aboard for the rescue if one of the men who knew the vessel would come along to guide him. But no man offered this service. It was too hazardous a thing, they said; where the fire was not raging there was smoke and darkness, and the engine-room was far down in the vessel. They had groped about themselves for half an hour in despair, searching for the way out, and now that they had found it, they were not fools enough to go in again.

"But you say there are others in there alive!" insisted Gallagher.

The rescued ones shook their heads blankly at this; in their minds the law of self-preservation rode over all other things at this moment. Poor men, they were half dazed by their sufferings and the shock!

"All right," cried Gallagher; "I'll go in and find 'em without any guide. Hold the ladder, boys."

And up he went!

"I'm with you, Ned," called Captain Braisted; and without more words these two climbed in through the coal-chute and started down the black, hot, stifling ways for the engine-room. And somehow they got there safely, and found eight men still alive, all Germans, engineers and their assistants. But when the firemen called to them to hurry out for their lives, they refused to move. Their duty was with their engines, said they; they had to run the engines; they were much obliged to the American gentlemen, but they could not leave their post.

Gallagher and Braisted could scarcely believe their ears.

"But you will die!" they urged.

The Germans thought it very likely; still they could not leave.

"But it won't do any good; the vessel is past hope; you will be burned to death."

The Germans understood perfectly: they would be burned to death at their engines; and as they were all of this mind and not to be shaken, the firemen could only say "good-by" and set forth sadly on the return journey. And this time they nearly lost themselves, but at last their good star prevailed, and they came without harm to their comrades, who listened in wonder to the news they brought. It seemed such utter folly, the decision of that unhappy engine-room crew, yet there was something almost splendid in their stubborn devotion to duty. Quietly they had looked death in the face, a horrible, lingering death, and had not flinched; and days later, when the steamer had burned herself out and lay grounded in the mud, cold and black, the wreckers found these faithful though mistaken men still at their posts, still by their engines, where they had waited in spite of everything – where they had perished.

All this time the Van Wyck had been working on the Saale, but in a harder fight, for the flames raged here as fiercely as on the Bremen, while the smaller fire-boat could throw against them only twenty-five tons of water a minute, which was not enough.

So, now, when all had been done that could be for the Bremen, orders came that the New-Yorker, too, turn her streams against the Saale, and a little later the two fire-boats were in massed attack upon the unhappy liner, which swung down the bay like a blazing island, and presently grounded by the bow on the Communipaw mud-flats, and rested there for the last agony.

The story of those tragic hours is not for telling now. There were more heroic rescues. There were brave attempts at rescue that availed nothing. The fire lads stood on the hurricane deck, with flames roaring about them and water up to their knees surging past like a mill-race; it was the return torrent from their own nozzles. Foot by foot the stern settled and the water crept nearer, nearer to the open port-holes. In a large stateroom aft fourteen men and one woman gave a noble picture of resignation in the face of an awful death. Hemmed in there between fire and water, they prayed quietly, and thanked the fire lads for cups of water passed in through the port-hole, and waved "good-by" as the stern gave a final lurch and went down.

Nor does this end the record of that day, for there was still the Main to fight for, and at eleven o'clock that night the New-Yorker steamed up the river and caught the third liner as the flood-tide bore her stern first toward the flats of Weehawken. She had been blazing for eight hours, and was red-hot now from the water-line up. It seemed incredible that there could be a living thing aboard her, yet they went to work in the old way, and within an hour had dragged out through the coal-hole a blackened and frightened company, more than a score of boiler-cleaners and coal-handlers who had somehow lived through those fearful hours by burrowing down in the deepest bunkers far below the water-level.

After this the fire-boats did other things.

THE AËRIAL ACROBAT