Freak Storm Reportedly Drowned Dozens of People Off Pelham Shores in 1922

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On a beautiful, lazy late afternoon in the spring of 1922, nearly twenty thousand people descended on City Island to swim and fish in Long Island Sound.  It was June 11, 1922.  Hundreds and hundreds of canoes, skiffs, rowboats, sailboats, and other watercraft plied the waters around City Island from Execution Light to Hunter's Island and beyond.

Bathers crowded local beaches on City Island, on Hunter's Island, and on the mainland.  Indeed, hundreds of bathers crowded onto the property of the City Island Bathing House to enjoy a lovely Sunday afternoon.

Shortly before 5:45 p.m. that day, the proprietors of the City Island Bathing House noticed something strange on the horizon.  It looked like a monumental, dark-colored wall approaching.  Though it took a little time, it became clear that a massive storm was approaching quickly.  The proprietors began shooing bathers out of the water as the storm quickly overtook the region.

All hell broke loose.  One eyewitness described the storm as a "Kansas twister."  Winds were clocked as high as 88 miles per hour.  The skies unleashed a "white blanket" of hail.  Within moments, hundreds of pleasure craft in Long Island Sound were capsized.  Many drowned immediately.  Others fought for their lives and clung to capsized craft in the heavy waves and high winds.  Volunteers at life saving stations on City Island and Hunter's Island launched small craft and began dragging exhausted excursionists out of the heavy waters.  One rescuer tried to save a drowning man, but was dragged under by the man.  Both drowned.

Everywhere there were heartrending scenes.  In one rowboat, eight people including a young mother and her infant daughter were tossed into the waters.  One of the passengers tried to save the baby.  She sank beneath the waves, as did the infant.  The distraught mother clung to the side of the rowboat as others tried to keep her from going under the heavy waters.  A tree fell into a chimney at a hotel on Boston Post Road.  The tree and chimney collapsed the roof and crushed a couple to death inside.  Lightning killed two people.  Others were electrocuted by downed power lines.  A new Ferris wheel in an amusement park on nearby Clason's Point was blown over into the waters of long Island Sound, killing seven and injuring 35.  

Fifteen minutes later, the storm passed.  Pandemonium began.  Bodies were floating in Long Island Sound.  Rescuers crowded onto launches and began plying the waters of the Sound searching for survivors.  Husbands, wives, sons, and daughters crowded City Island beaches searching for any sign of missing loved ones.  Indeed, according to one account:

"Following the tragedy, City island became a scene of pandemonium.  Many of the men who had gone out to fish had left their wives and children there to picnic.  As soon as knowledge of the drowning became general and heads of the families, sons, and in some instances daughters, failed to return the survivors became hysterical."

All communication with the outside world was cut off.  The storm had severed not only electrical lines, but also phone lines.  Indeed, it was three hours before word of the catastrophe reached the rest of the region including New York City authorities.

Soon bodies began washing ashore from Larchmont to City Island.  The casualty list began to grow.  Confusion reigned.  Newspapers the following day reported up to 75 deaths in the freak storm.  The newspapers published the identities of the confirmed dead, but quoted police as saying it would be days before all the missing persons reports could be resolved and a true tally of the dead would be known. 

One boat rental facility reported that 46 of its rowboats were missing after the storm.  All were in use at the time the storm hit.  People began lining up outside a City Island police station seeking any information they could obtain about their loved ones.  There were so many people waiting for news of missing loved ones that the very long line became a human conveyor belt.  As the person at the head of the line asked police about missing loved ones, if nothing was known, that person would return to the end of the line and wait in line again until reaching the front and asking again.

A local bathing house was used as a makeshift morgue.  There the scenes were heart-breaking.  According to one account:

"There were many heartrending scenes as friends and relatives of the drowned identified them.  So many men, women and children became hysterical that it was necessary for the police to remove them to other parts of the island and keep them under observation.  Relatives of the missing were equally affected."

The freak storm did millions of dollars of damage in the region.  It only took fifteen minutes, but those fifteen minutes unleashed death, devastation, and pandemonium on Pelham and the surrounding region on that late spring day nearly one hundred years ago.

Wreck of Clason Point Ferris Wheel After June 11, 1922 Storm.
Source:  POLICE PUT STORM DEATH LIST AT 75, The Evening
World [NY, NY], Jun. 12, 1922, Vol. LXII, No. 22,073, p. 1, cols. 1-8
& p. 2, cols. 1-3.  NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlarge.

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There were hundreds and hundreds of newspaper articles written about the freak storm on June 11, 1922.  Below is the text of two such articles.  Each is followed by a citation and link to its source.

"POLICE PUT STORM DEATH LIST AT 75
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POLICE PLACE DEATH LIST IN STORM AT 75, WITH BODIES OF 47 RECOVERED
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Biggest Mortality Was at City Island, Where 16 Drowned and 46 Rowboats Are Unaccounted For.
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Seven Killed When Ferris Wheel at Clason Point Collapses -- Property Damage Incalculable.
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The official police estimate of the number of victims of the storm that swept this city and vicinity yesterday evening is seventy-five.  It is known that forty-seven were drowned or otherwise killed.  The estimate of seventy-five is based upon the number of inquiries that have been made about missing persons at Bronx and Westchester Police Stations.

Thousands visited the Fordham Morgue to-day and looked at the bodies there.  It would appear that most of the visitors were looking for missing relatives.  From the number of rowboats, canoes and motor boats that have been washed ashore along the Sound beaches between the Harlem River and Greenwich, Conn., the estimate of seventy-five victims in this vicinity seems to be low.

The greatest loss of life by drowning was at City Island, where the storm came with terrific fury and hundreds were caught far from shore in canoes and rowboats.  One boathouse at City Island reported to-day that forty-six rowboats rented yesterday before the storm are missing.

At New Rochelle James Stroker lost his life while trying to rescue five Italians from a capsized rowboat.  Stroker and Charles McGrath of Larchmont were on shore and saw the rowboat capsize.  They went out in a launch and saved three of the five men.  Two of the Italians were drowned and one of them dragged Stroker down with him.

The body of a young man wearing a blue sweater, white trousers and white shoes came ashore at Larchmont Yacht Club shortly before noon.  There were no identifying marks on the clothing.

Harry Klein of No. 1619 Washington Avenue, the Bronx, reported to the City Island police to-day that Sadie Dexler, 19 years old, a stenographer, of No. 496 East 174th Street, was drowned in the storm.  According to Klein, he and Miss Dexler were in canoes a short distance off shore when the storm broke.  The canoes were capsized.  He made an effort to save the young woman, but she was swept from his reach.

Among those reported missing were Miss Rita Anderson of No. 103 Centre Street, City Island, an eighteen-year-old stenographer, and B. A. McLaughlin, a young man who had taken her out for a row on the Sound from Lane's Beach.  They returned home late last night, explaining that their boat had been swamped by the waves kicked up by the storm.  When they righted it, the oars were gone.  It took them three hours, paddling with their hands to reach Nevin's Dock on the Bronx shore.

Moe Buskin, twenty-three, No. 230 Miller Avenue, Brooklyn, a salesman, is believed to have drowned.  His friend, Don Selvin, No. 1220 42d Street, Brooklyn, reported to the police of the City Island Station this morning.

'There were four of us in a canoe,' he said, 'and the storm came upon us between Hart's Island and Half Moon Beach.  Three of us, including Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Moss, managed to cling to the upset canoe and were rescued by a lighter.  But Buskin drifted out with the tide.'

The 50-foot sloop yacht Viking capsized in Larchmont Harbor.  Three women were caught in the cabin of the yacht.  To rescue them it was necessary for the crew to swim to shore, get axes and steam out to the yacht in a launch and cut a hole in the hull.  The women were uninjured.

The Sound shore of Westchester was in darkness last night.  Officials of electric light companies say it will take a week to repair the damage done in a few minutes.

Carl Vollmer, twenty-two, of Pennyfield Road, Bronx, was reported missing to the police by his mother, Bella, to-day.  He went canoeing off City island yesterday and has not returned.  It is believed he was drowned.

Death came not only by drowning.  Some were killed by falling trees; others were struck by lightning and others were electrocuted by fallen high power feed wires.  The catastrophe was made worse by the cutting off of communication when telephone wires were broken.  Most of those who were killed and injured were far from their homes.

RAILROADS WASHED OUT AND TRAINS STALLED.

Up-State there are reports of railroads washed out; highways blocked by fallen trees and gutted by torrents.  The City of Oneida was five feet under water for an hour.  Syracuse reports a loss of $1,000,000.  

Scores of the 3,000 trees recently planted in Central Park were uprooted.  

Seven persons were killed and thirty-five injured when a Ferris wheel at Clason Point Park in the Bronx was torn apart and blown into Long Island Sound.  A man was killed by a live wire in Newark.  A tree was blown on the brick chimney of Red Lion Inn on the Boston Post Road, killing a mother and daughter at a table.

Motor cars were abandoned in many parts of the metropolitan district by their owners in seeking safety.  One woman left her car near Hackensack only to be killed by a falling tree, and a similar fate overtook a man near Piping Rock. L. I.  A condemned tree in Mount Vernon fell on a woman and child, killing both.  These are but a few of the accidents, hundreds of them of a minor nature.

The storm swept up from Pennsylvania, through New Jersey and New York, the wind at times having a velocity of 88 miles an hour.  Before passing out to sea it split into three distinct but short disturbances.  It was the second storm of the day which did the most damage, the first being mild.

Many who saw the approach of the afternoon storm, which lasted only about fifteen minutes, said it resembled a Kansas 'twister.'

Valentine Fendrich, chief of the Fire Alarm Telegraph Bureau, sent out every man in his department to repair storm damage.  Fifteen lines were broken in Brooklyn, ten in the Bronx and five in Queens.  Comparatively little damage was done in Manhattan, where the wires are all underground.

Mr. Fendrich said that the overhead wire system in other boroughs were at the mercy of a storm such as that of yesterday and he meant to use the experience to emphasize his recommendation that the wires in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Richmond be put under ground as rapidly as possible.

Credit for reducing the total of casualties was given by the police to-day to the management of the City Island Bathing House.  Attaches seeing the black clouds approaching called in the hundreds of bathers from the water and when the first fierce gust of wind broke all the pleasure seekers were safely under shelter.

Among the 20,000 holiday makers about the island were the regular summer colony, week-end campers and many visitors.  The storm descended suddenly at 5.45.  Bathers and others on the beach escaped easily, but few of the boats could reach shore.  Just how many persons were picked up from the water by life-savers and members of nearby boat clubs never will be known.

MOST OF THE VICTIMS IN SKIFFS AND CANOES.

The known casualties were mostly off Execution Light, six miles east of City Island; Rat Island, three miles east, and an island a mile north, in waters known as fishing grounds.  Most of the overturned boats were skiffs and canoes, many containing women and children.  Those who aided in keeping down fatalities after the first blast were crews of the two stations of the United States Volunteer Life Saving Corps on City Island and Hunter's Island, and the members of the City Island, Metropolitan, Stuyvesant, Morrisania and Oak Point yacht and boat clubs.  In many cases girls and young men were dragged from the water by the experienced water men just as they were about to succumb.

The police boat John F. Hylan and other boats of the Marine Division played powerful searchlights on the water all night, but early to-day no further bodies had been recovered.  The police were waiting for the tide to turn when it was expected other bodies would be washed ashore, but they continued grappling.  

City Island at 4 A. M. was still in darkness and the telephone wires were still down, not even the Fire Department there having a connection.

THE DEAD.

PETGOLD, MARY, fifty-two, No. 3416 Levere Street.
KAPLAN, BEATRICE, thirteen, No. 346 Pacific Street, Brooklyn.
KOHLER, AGNES, three, No. 236 West 11th Street.
RIGOFF, MARION, No. 1472 Seabury Place, the Bronx.
[Illegible], JULIA, twenty-six, a stenographer, No. 848 Whitlock Avenue.
FARLEY, PATRICK, thirty-eight, No. 41 Commerce Street.
BUSKIN, MOE, twenty-three, No. 200 Miller Avenue, Brooklyn.
LONDON, MORRIS, twenty-one, No. 734 East 165th Street, the Bronx.
REITTER, ISIDOR, nineteen, No. 21 Charles Street.
KEINING, JOHN, thirty, No. 2416 Levere Street, Bronx.
KEINING, GEORGE, two and a half years.
PFOFFENDORF, ALFRED, six months.
DEXLER, SADIE, nineteen, No. 496 East 174th st., Bronx.
STROKER, JAMES, No. 32 Union Avenue, New Rochelle.
GRATTINO, JOHN, No. 234 East 105th Street.
GUIDE, SALVATOR, No. 1957 First Avenue.
Unidentified man in yachting apparel washed ashore at Larchmont Yacht Club.

There were many heartrending scenes as friends and relatives of the drowned identified them.  So many men, women and children became hysterical that it was necessary for the police to remove them to other parts of the island and keep them under observation.  Relatives of the missing were equally affected.

The wind, which struck Pelham Bay at 5.45 and blew until 6 o'clock with the fury of a hurricane, left in its wake a scene of desolation.  Trees were uprooted, buildings were unroofed, windows were shattered and telephone and electric light wires were blown down.

This resulted in the severing of all communication with the island.  As a consequence, news of the tragedy did not become generally known outside until three hours after its occurrence.  The island police were handicapped, as they could not summon ambulances or aid except by crossing the bridge leading to the mainland by motor.


Lieut. Reilly went over about 9 o'clock and flashed word to Police Headquarters.  In the meantime yacht clubs in the vicinity and crews of two life saving stations started the work of rescue in motor boats.  They were joined when darkness fell by the police boat John F. Hylan, which cruised about, throwing its searchlights over the waters.

Scores of amateur fishermen, men, women and children, were rescued, clinging to the keels of their overturned boats.  Others had been carried close enough in to wade ashore.  Many of the boats were without occupants.  

'There is no way of knowing just how many were drowned until several days have elapsed,' said Lieut. Reilly.  'Many of the people who come here on Sundays to swim or sail are from Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey towns.  We shall have to wait until we check up with families who report missing persons who left home with the intention of coming here to spend the day.'

ALL NIGHT HUNT FOR BODIES OF VICTIMS.

One of a party on a yacht owned by Tom Conrad, a song writer, told last night of the rescue of three men from a swamped motor boat on the Sound.  The hail was to thick it formed a blinding white blanket, he said, and the yacht passed the boat before the men were seen.  They went back and pulled them out of the water.

The waters of the Sound were dotted with overturned boats, hats and articles of clothing, he said, for a distance of several miles.  At the Stuyvesant Yacht Club on City Island members saw that a catastrophe had happened.  They jumped into boats and joined the rescue work.

All night hundreds of persons knowing that members of their families had gone to City Island for the day, went there by automobile or in any other way possible.  They lined the street in front of the police station asking for information of relatives and friends, and when there was no information passed down to the foot of the line to ask again later.

The search by the police caused additional excitement among the crowds.  Patrolmen laden with hats, pocketbooks, parts of women's and men's clothing, shoes and stockings came to the police station.  The pile grew larger every minute and the work of tabulating the articles was handicapped by the fact that the desk Lieutenants and Sergeants pressed into service had to work by the light of candles, oil lamps and lanterns.

Mrs. Petgold and Agnes Kohler, three years old, two of the identified dead, were in the rowboat with six other persons who were rescued.  The storm caught this party in Pelham Bay.  The boat overturned almost immediately and all were thrown into the water.

Mrs. Petgold, who tried to save the child, sank at once, and the others of the party, including Mrs. Katherine Kohler, the child's mother, managed to keep afloat.  Mrs. Kohler was saved by members of the Stuyvesant Yacht Club.  Albert and Edward Ottes and F. E. Acker of the Hunter's Island life-saving station rescued Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Thessendorf of No. 333 East 118th Street, Miss Anna Bursall and another person whose name was not obtained.

FOUR MEN MISSING FROM LAUNCH IN THE SOUND.

A 33-foot glass cabined launch drifted into the float of the Clason Point Yacht Club, Clason Point, the Bronx.  Its Custom license is 171.  A man who reported the finding of the launch said he had seen the boat earlier in the day with four men on it, but no trace of the men was found when the launch drifted in.

the police of Greenwich, Conn., early to-day notified Detective Sergt. Wiessmer, of the Missing Bureau at Police Headquarters, that Gladys Redinger, twenty-four years old, of No. 803 East 116th Street, had been taken to a hospital in Greenwich last night after being rescued from Long Island Sound.  John Anderson, of No. 4138 Disney Avenue, the Bronx, who, the police say, was the rescued girl's fiance, was drowned.

William Taylor, nineteen years old, of No. 2063 Crotona Avenue, the Bronx, who aided in rescuing ten or fifteen persons thrown into the Sound from rowboats off City Island, was taken from his home early this morning to Fordham Hospital suffering from submersion.  Taylor assisted in the work of rescue until he became exhausted and had to be rescued himself.  After being attended he was taken to his home in an automobile, and after telling his family of the horrors he had witnessed and saying nothing of the heroic part he himself had played in the rescue work, the young man collapsed.  

According to reports received at Police Headquarters Anderson and the young woman were canoeing on the Sound and were caught in the storm.  The canoe was overturned and its occupants thrown into the water, Anderson swam with the girl to the canoe and helped her cling to it.

The yacht 'Countess,' owned by J. B. Dunbough, of No. 177 Summit Avenue, Mount Vernon, passed nearby and went to the rescue.  Miss Redinger was reached in time and lifted into the yacht.  Anderson, his strength exhausted in holding his fiancee against the side of the canoe, lost his hold on the boat and sank beneath the water before rescuers could reach him."

Source:  POLICE PUT STORM DEATH LIST AT 75, The Evening World [NY, NY], Jun. 12, 1922, Vol. LXII, No. 22,073, p. 1, cols. 1-8 & p. 2, cols. 1-3.  

"50 DIE IN STORM IN GREATER N.Y.
UPSTATE PROPERTY LOSS TO RUN INTO MILLIONS
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SCORES OF PLEASURE BOATS OVERTURNED AS WILD GALE SWEEPS LONG ISLAND SOUND
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Eight Bodies Recovered -- Police Believe 30 More Missing -- Pandemonium Reigns at Sunday Resort as Hysterical Women Fail to Find Husbands and Sons -- Six Perish as Ferris Wheel Is Wrecked.
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TWO KILLED WHEN TREE CRASHES THROUGH ROOF ON DINNER PARTY
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NEW YORK, June 11 -- Fifty persons are reported to have been drowned off City Island in Long Island Sound when the mad storm that hit the city late today capsized scores of small pleasure craft.  Eight bodies have been recovered and thirty more persons are reported missing.

Twenty thousand holiday-makers went to City Island today and half went out on the waters of Pelham Bay.  It was jammed with boats of every description when the storm hit it.  Few had opportunity to get ashore.  The known casualties occurred off Execution Light, which is about six miles east of City Island; Rat Island, about three miles east, and another island nearby.

Ten Thousand Were Fishing.

It is estimated by Lieut. Joseph Reilly of the City Island detectives that no fewer than 10,000 persons were fishing off those places when the storm broke.  After it had passed and the sky cleared, the waters of Pelham bay and Long Island sound were dotted with overturned rowboats, launches, canoes and yachts.

The police immediately started the work of rescue.  At 9 o'clock tonight eight bodies had been recovered, and Lieut. Reilly said he was making a conservative estimate when he put the bodies to be recovered at thirty.

Scene of Pandemonium.

Following the tragedy, City island became a scene of pandemonium.  Many of the men who had gone out to fish had left their wives and children there to picnic.  As soon as knowledge of the drowning became general and heads of the families, sons, and in some instances daughters, failed to return the survivors became hysterical.

All communication by telephone with the island was cut off by the razing of wires and telephone poles, and this hampered the police.  They improvised a morgue in one of the bathing pavilions and as rapidly as the bodies were recovered they were taken there for identification.

Six Killed on Ferris Wheel.

Six persons were killed and more than forty hurt when the wind caught a huge Ferris wheel at a Clason Point amusement park and crushed it to the ground.

A women and her seven-year-old daughter were crushed to death and several other persons injured when an oak tree blown by the wind crashed through the roof to the crowded dining room of the Red Lion inn in Boston Post road, carrying with it an old-fashioned stone chimney.

The dead were taken from the cars that were thrown into the sound.  The wheel, 100 feet in diameter, was constructed only recently, park officials said, and was considered one of the best in the country.

The dead:

Louis Dorotio, 524 Edith street, Old Forge.
Emily Lawyer, New York.
Mrs. Pasquale Kreda, New York.
Idella Vanderpool.
Pellegrino Fasuk.
Unidentified boy.

Among the seriously injured were:  Pasquale Kreda, Kenneth Lawyer, Anita Schalk and Anna Fleet.

Paul Simon, owner and operator of the wheel, was arrested on order of Assistant District Attorney Quigley on a charge of homicide.

The bodies of seven canoeists caught in Long Island sound off City island at the height of the storm were washed ashore after nightfall.

Girl Blown Overboard, Drowned.

Miss Edda Smith, seventeen, walking with a companion along the Reservoir road at Ossining, was blown into the water and drowned.  

Charles Emerson, New Rochelle clothing manufacturer, was rowing in Echo bay with his wife and three children when the storm broke.  He managed to row to shore, then died from a heart attack.

A tree fell across a party of motorists seeking shelter on the Brookville road near Locust Valley, Long Island, killing Harry Halleran of Oyster Bay, and seriously injuring his three men companions.

Unable to reach shore in the stiff wind, Jack Lowenthal, twenty, was drowned while swimming in East river.

Two Killed by Lightning.

Concetti Basiataso and his ten-year-old son Anthony of Mount Vernon were killed when a tree, under which they had found shelter in the Bronx, was struck by lightning.

Two men were killed in Newark, N. J., when they came in contact with electric wires torn down by the wind.

A massive decayed tree on the New York - Westchester county line at Mount Vernon fell, crushing to death Mrs. Cassie Cacavalle and her infant son.

Moe Ruskin, one of a party of canoeists in Echo bay, was drowned.  Three other members of the party swam to shore after the canoe capsized.

Ten excursionists on the ferryboat Hildegrad, returning from Interstate park, N.J. to West 158th street, were injured when the wind tore a lifeboat from its davits.  In falling the boat struck the railing of the lower deck at a spot where about a dozen passengers had gathered for shelter, then it slid into the river and disappeared.  Sidney Jacob, fourteen, was badly hurt and was taken to a hospital.  Others injured were able to go to their homes."

Source:  50 DIE IN STORM IN GREATER N.Y. -- UPSTATE PROPERTY LOSS TO RUN INTO MILLIONS, Buffalo Courier [Buffalo, NY], Jun. 12, 1922, Vol. LXXXVII, No. 163, p. 1, cols. 1-8.  

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