Tug boat travel turned deadly by strong storm

That April afternoon in 1889, thunderclouds came in from the west, and in the evening the sky was a menacing black. On the Burlington levee, the river packages secured their mooring lines, and the shopkeepers hurried to cover their newly arrived merchandise as the storm approached.

Captain Vincent Peel of the Everett wooden raft tug walked over the dam and watched the clouds. His bosses at Burlington Lumber Co. had a northern pine raft serviced in Boston Bay near Keithsburg, and it was Peel’s job to see that the raft got there to feed the hungry mill.

Peel had recently released from the hospital and was struggling with a fever, but Everett had to run. Shortly after 5 p.m. the captain felt the wind ease and ordered his steamer to move away from the protection of the dam.

The Everett was crowded as she maneuvered from shore and worked her way upstream. Pilot Harry Bell and his wife, the boat operator, had brought their three-year-old daughter and their teenage nurse Rhoda Van Etlan with them.

Cook George had his wife with him to feed the rafters’ crew – Andrew Hess, Sam Frantz, Sam and Dan Goble, Phillip Higgins, Charles Tubbs, Frank Ventriss, and engineer Jim Harris.

As the steamer made its way down the Iowa coast, the wind continued to ease. Captain Peel was feeling confident enough now to go to his cabin and rest, but the crew was restless when they saw the lightning flash across the horizon.

At the tip of Otter Island, Pilot Bell began angling towards the Illinois coast, but in the middle of the channel the river and wind were enough to take the Everett down. The first warning was a sudden oppressive silence and then came the low moan of a wind that swept through the trees of the island.

Before Bell could react, a wind fist struck the boat and in an instant pushed it almost to the end of the beam. Startled screams rang out on board the now darkened boat, and on deck the raftsmen fought not to be washed overboard.

In the wheelhouse, the stove ripped out of its holder and sped across the floor to collide with Bell, who was struggling desperately against the wildly swaying wheel. Pandemics reigned in the cabins as occupants were hurled against the walls and furniture cascaded through the rooms.

At that moment, Captain Peel could have died because he was later found with a shattered skull. Apparently he had made no move to regain the deck.

Bell, now bleeding from a deep wound in the head, tried to bring Everett back into the wind. But a second bang shook the steamer, and slowly it turned on its side. Water streamed through its open doors and it sank to the bottom of the river.

Some of the men on deck held on to the railing as the Everett lay on its side and stayed two meters of deck above the windswept waves. Others were washed up in the water, clinging desperately to the lines thrown at them until they could be hauled aboard the dubious shelter of the sunken Everett.

Those locked in the cubicles didn’t even have that slim chance of survival. In the pitch-black cabins that suddenly stood on end, they fought against the cold river water that streamed through the hatches, and here they died.

Only Mrs. Howard found a little breathing space in the ceiling of her flooded cabin and was able to survive until the people on deck heard her cry and tore off the planks to give her room to escape.

Pilot Bell was able to open the window in the flooded wheelhouse and swim on deck, but had to withhold a futile attempt to save his dead family. Finally he managed to punch a hole in the side of the ship and recover his wife’s body.

The situation on board the sunken boat became more and more desperate. The storm drove waves over the exposed hull and lightning flashed dangerously near the battered crew, who were fighting for their lives.

The screams of the survivors were blown in the wind to the island hut of Andy and Sam Jacobs, who were startled to believe that someone would be on the river on such a night. They ran along the bank until a sudden flash of light revealed Everett, grounded, and those still clinging to the hull.

Without thinking about their own safety, the two fishermen put a boat in the water, and after battling the waves and wind, they were able to come alongside the Everett and pick up Mrs. Howard and the injured Bell.

In increasingly desperate circumstances, repeated journeys were made until all survivors were sheltered on land and in the Jacobs’ hut. The two men then rowed into town to spread the disaster.

William Lyon, Superintendent of Burlington Lumber, immediately called together a rescue team and boarded the tug “Lotus” to speed to the place of the sinking. They hacked into the flooded hull and found the bodies of Mrs. Bell, her daughter, and the nurse. Captain Peel’s body was recovered from his flooded cabin. But the waves had swept away Koch Howard’s body.

Church bells rang across town as the survivors and bodies were brought back the next day. Two days later, the funeral procession made its way to Aspen Grove Cemetery.

An addendum to the sinking of Everett was written a month later when a grateful city presented the two fishermen with a purse of $ 100 in gold and a speech by General Dodge. After the award ceremony, a group of young girls dressed in white laid flowers on the graves of those claimed on Everett.