The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

The Detroit | Marine Historian Journal of Marine Historical Society of Detroit Volume 20, No. 9 May, 1967 Photo Courtesy of Paul A. Michaels, Flint, Mich. Freak Accident of the COLUMBUS... IN ALL her long, active life of 39 years the unique whaleback passenger steamer CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS was popular, a money—maker and, with one tragic exception, holder of a proud record for saf— ety. Not a single passenger life was lost until the afternoon of Saturday, June 30, 1917. The CHRISTOPHER CCLUMBUS was at the Mil- waukee end of her Chicago-Milwaukee run and had just loaded 413 passengers. Capt. Charles Moody began the routine maneuver of having the boat backed with the aid of tugs down the Milwaukee River to its junction with the Menominee River, the only place the 362-foot CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS could turn around. Heavy rains had swollen the Milwaukee, however, and the vessel began to swing around. Her long "pig nose" extended over the dock of the Yahr- Lange Drug Co. and snapped off two legs of a tall water tank. The heavy, water-filled tank crashed down across the whaleback, just at the forward end of her pilothouse. Capt. Moody and the wheels- [*) man escaped serious injury but 16 persons were killed and another 20 injured. But the freak mishap failed to end her career. A detailed account of this accident may be found in "Red Stacks Over the Horizon" by James L. Elliott, available at $6.95 from the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle, Detroit, Mich. 48207