Penned In To Perish

A man, a woman and an eight-year old boy were drowned from two barges just outside Bridgeport harbor one recent night, and their death in the storm was as pathetic and dramatic an ocean tragedy as has been told in recent years.

The man, Captain Joseph Symons of the barge William E. Baxter, had locked his wife in the cabin when she, erazed by terror of the story, was trying to throw herself overboard. The barge was adrift, and great waves were washing over it. A tremendous sea washed Captain Symons overboard, and the barge began to fill and sink. 

The woman in the cabin broke the glass in a little window, and the men on the tug Volunteer and the people on the barge Henry Hughes, themselves fighting desperately for life, could only put their hands over their ears to shut out her shrieks and watch her face at the window until she drowned like a rat in a trap before their eyes. 

The boy, a son of Captain Mitchell of the Henry Hughes, was torn from his father's arms by the waves as they clung together on the bottom of the Hughes after it had capsized. His mother had already been saved by the tug and lay fainting on deck, her baby girl beside her. The father was also saved. The brave lad's last words were of comfort to his father.

Both barges, with their cargo of 1,400 tons of coal went to the bottom, and the Hughes carried down with her every penny and even the clothes of the Mitchells. Captain Mitchell is a naval veteran and wears a medal of honor for bravery on shore in the Spanish-American war.

The tug Volunteer started from New York, with two barges trailing tandem behind. They were bound for Portland, Conn. The Baxter was on the Volunteer's towline, and the Hughes was held to the other barge by a nine inch hawser. They might as well have been held by pack thread for all the good the great cables did when they got into the frightful storm.

They had rough weather from the start, but got on without anything worse than discomfort until about midnight, when they were off Penfield roof light, Long Island sound. Then the storm had become a gale worse, according to the survivors, than anything any of them had encountered. 

The tug tried to tow them into Bridgeport for shelter, but could not make it in such a tempest, so they tried to ride it out. The tug tumbled dangerously in a frightful sea, and the helpless barges let out every foot of hawser they could to avoid being dashed one on the other. The mountainous waves were breaking over the hulks, tearing away at houses and finally rending the oak planks of the hatches from their fastenings. When the hatches were gone, nothing could save the barges, and the barge captains, knowing this worked like madmen to repair the damage. 

The Baxter went first. As she went into the trough of the sea the hawser that bound her to the tug was cut; otherwise the towboat would have been dragged under with her. As the tug came about to throw life lines to those on the Baxter they saw Captain Symons holding his wife to keep her from throwing herself into the sea. He finally locked her in the cabin.

Before a life line could be got aboard the Baxter her captain had been washed away by a giant wave. He was not seen again. The woman locked in the cabin felt the barge listing as the water poured into her and made a frantic effort to escape. She broke the glass in the window and tried to draw herself through the narrow opening, and her prayer and scrams went across the tumbling water and were heard gy those on the other barge and on the tug.

The storm seemed to moderate for a moment, and the horrified company, powerless to help, saw the barge slowly list farther and farther until it turned on its side and went down with the woman still fighting in the window.