Category Archives: Sightseer

MFDJ 03/06/19: Bitter Defeat in a Frozen Wasteland

Today’s Bitterly Cold Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

For Lawrence Oates, the race to the South Pole had a portentous start. Just two days after the Terra Nova Expedition left New Zealand in November 1910, a violent storm killed two of the 19 ponies in Oates’s care and nearly sank the ship. His journey ended almost two years later, when he stepped out of a tent and into the teeth of an Antarctic blizzard after uttering ten words that would bring tears of pride to mourning Britons. During the long months in between, Oates’s concern for the ponies paralleled his growing disillusionment with the expedition’s leader, Robert Falcon Scott.


Lawrence Oates

Oates had paid one thousand pounds for the privilege of joining Scott on an expedition that was supposed to combine exploration with scientific research. It quickly became a race to the South Pole after the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, already at sea with a crew aboard the Fram, abruptly changed his announced plan to go to the North Pole. “BEG TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC—AMUNDSEN,” read the telegram he sent to Scott. It was clear that Amundsen would leave the collecting of rock specimens and penguin eggs to the Brits; he wanted simply to arrive first at the pole and return home to claim glory on the lecture circuit.


Treacherous Norskie, Roald Amundsen

Born in 1880 to a wealthy English family, Lawrence Oates attended Eton before serving as a junior officer in the Second Boer War.  A gunshot wound in a skirmish that earned Oates the nickname “Never Surrender” shattered his thigh, leaving his left leg an inch shorter than his right.

Still, Robert Scott wanted Oates along for the expedition, but once Oates made it to New Zealand, he was startled to see that a crew member (who knew dogs but not horses) had already purchased ponies in Manchuria for five pounds apiece. They were “the greatest lot of crocks I have ever seen,” Oates said. From past expeditions, Scott had deduced that white or gray ponies were stronger than darker horses, though there was no scientific evidence for that. When Oates told him that the Manchurian ponies were unfit for the expedition, Scott bristled and disagreed. Oates seethed and stormed away.


Oates with the Unfortunate Ponies on the Terra Nova

Inspecting the supplies, Oates quickly surmised that there was not enough fodder, so he bought two extra tons with his own money and smuggled the feed aboard the Terra Nova. When, to great fanfare, Scott and his crew set off from New Zealand for Antarctica on November 29, 1910, Oates was already questioning the expedition in letters home to his mother: “If he gets to the Pole first we shall come home with our tails between our legs and make no mistake. I must say we have made far too much noise about ourselves all that photographing, cheering, steaming through the fleet etc. etc. is rot and if we fail it will only make us look more foolish.” Oates went on to praise Amundsen for planning to use dogs and skis rather than walking beside horses. “If Scott does anything silly such as underfeeding his ponies he will be beaten as sure as death.”


Terra Nova in the Antarctic

After a harrowingly slow journey through pack ice, the Terra Nova arrived at Ross Island in Antarctica on January 4, 1911. The men unloaded and set up base at Camp Evans, as some crew members set off in February on an excursion in the Bay of Whales, off the Ross Ice Shelf—where they caught sight of Amundsen’s Fram at anchor. The next morning they saw Amundsen himself, crossing the ice at a blistering pace on his dog sled as he readied his animals for an assault on the South Pole, some 900 miles away. Scott’s men had had nothing but trouble with their own dogs, and their ponies could only plod along on the depot-laying journeys they were making to store supplies for the pole run.


No place for ponies!

Given their weight and thin legs, the ponies would plunge through the top layer of snow; homemade snowshoes worked only on some of them. On one journey, a pony fell and the dogs pounced, ripping at its flesh. Oates knew enough to keep the ponies away from the shore, having learned that several ponies on Ernest Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition (1907-1909) had fallen dead after eating salty sand there. But he also knew some of his animals simply would not hold up on any lengthy journey. He suggested to Scott that they kill the weaker ones and store the meat for the dogs at depots on the way to the pole. Scott would have none of it, even though he knew that Amundsen was planning to kill many of his 97 Greenland dogs for the same purpose.

“I have had more than enough of this cruelty to animals,” Scott replied, “and I’m not going to defy my feelings for the sake of a few days’ march.”

“I’m afraid you’ll regret it, Sir,” Oates answered.


Sled Dog Used in ‘His Master’s Voice’ Recreation

The Terra Nova crews continued with their depot-laying runs, with the dogs becoming “thin as rakes” from long days of heavy work and light rations. Two ponies died of exhaustion during a blizzard. Oates continued to question Scott’s planning. In March of 1911, with expedition members camped on the ice in McMurdo Sound, a crew woke in the middle of the night to a loud cracking noise; they left their tents to discover they were stranded on a moving ice floe. Floating beside them on another floe were the ponies.

The men hopped over to the animals and began moving them from floe to floe, trying to get them back to the Ross Ice Shelf to safety. It was slow work, as they often had to wait for another floe to drift close enough to make any progress at all.

Then a pod of killer whales began circling the floe, poking their heads out of the water to see over the floe’s edge, their eyes trained on the ponies. As Henry Bowers described in his diary, “the huge black and yellow heads with sickening pig eyes only a few yards from us at times, and always around us, are among the most disconcerting recollections I have of that day. The immense fins were bad enough, but when they started a perpendicular dodge they were positively beastly.”

Oates, Scott and others came to help, with Scott worried about losing his men, let alone his ponies. Soon, more than a dozen orcas were circling, spooking the ponies until they toppled into the water. Oates and Bowers tried to pull them to safety, but they proved too heavy. One pony survived by swimming to thicker ice. Bowers finished off the rest with a pick axe so the orcas at least wouldn’t eat them alive.

“These incidents were too terrible,” Scott wrote.

Worse was to come. In November 1911, Oates left Cape Evans with 14 other men, including Scott, for the South Pole. The depots had been stocked with food and supplies along the route. “Scott’s ignorance about marching with animals is colossal,” Oates would write. “Myself, I dislike Scott intensely and would chuck the whole thing if it were not that we are a British expedition.… He is not straight, it is himself first, the rest nowhere.”


Robert Falcon Scott

Unlike Scott, Amundsen paid attention to every detail, from the proper feeding of both dogs and men to the packing and unpacking of the loads they would carry, to the most efficient ski equipment for various mixtures of snow and ice. His team traveled twice as fast as Scott’s, which had resorted to manhauling their sledges.


Manhauling

By the time Scott and his final group of Oates, Bowers, Edward Wilson and Edgar Evans had reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, they saw a black flag whipping in the wind. “The worst has happened,” Scott wrote. Amundsen had beaten them by more than a month.

“The POLE,” Scott wrote. “Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected. We have had a horrible day—add to our disappointment a head wind 4 to 5, with a temperature -22 degrees, and companions laboring on with cold feet and hands.… Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority.”


The Defeated Men at the South Pole.
L-R: Wilson, Bowers, Scott (standing), Evans and Oates. 

The return to Camp Evans was sure to be “dreadfully long and monotonous,” Scott wrote. It wasn’t monotonous. Edgar Evans took a fall on February 4th and became “dull and incapable,” according to Scott; he died two weeks later after another fall near the Beardmore Glacier. The four survivors were suffering from frostbite and malnutrition, but seemingly constant blizzards, temperatures of 40 degrees below zero and snowblindness limited their progress back to camp.


Evans, Scott, Bowers, and Wilson getting into their sleeping bags

Oates, in particular, was suffering. His old war wound now practically crippled him, and his feet were “probably gangrene,” according to Ross D.E. MacPhee’s Race to the End: Amundsen, Scott and the Attainment of the South Pole. Oates asked Scott, Bowers and Wilson to go on without him, but the men refused. Trapped in their tent during a blizzard on March 16th or 17th (Scott’s journal no longer recorded dates), with food and supplies nearly gone, Oates stood up. “I am just going outside and may be some time,” he said—his last ten words.

The others knew he was going to sacrifice himself to increase their odds of returning safely, and they tried to dissuade him. But Oates didn’t even bother to put his boots on before disappearing into the storm. He was 31. “It was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman,” Scott wrote.


“A Very Gallant Gentleman” by John Charles Dollman, 1913

 

Two weeks later, Scott himself was the last to go. “Had we lived,” Scott wrote in one of his last diary entries, “I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.  These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”

Roald Amundsen was already telling his tale, one of triumph and a relatively easy journey to and from the South Pole. Having sailed the Fram into Tasmania earlier in March, he knew nothing of Scott’s ordeal—only that there had been no sign of the Brits at the pole when the Norwegians arrived. Not until October 1912 did the weather improve enough for a relief expedition from Terra Nova to head out in search of Scott and his men. The next month they came upon Scott’s last camp and cleared the snow from the tent. Inside, they discovered the three dead men in their sleeping bags. Oates’s body was never found.

Culled from: Smithsonian

 

Wretched Reviews: The Worst Journey in the World

Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated adventure is on my mind right now because, on the advice of MFDJ patron Kevin Zurawel, I just finished reading the book The Worst Journey in the World written by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men on the expedition who was fortunately not selected for the dash to the Pole. So, why not a review?

The Worst Journey in the World
by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

First of all, I have to admit that I thought this book would never end! It was recommended to me by a Morbid Fact Du Jour follower for its first-hand depiction of the ill-fated British expedition to the South Pole led by Robert Falcon Scott in 1912. And yes, the chapters that detailed the painful journeys across the frozen wasteland, both a ridiculous trip to collect Emperor penguin embryos in the darkness of the Antarctic winter and the actual push for the South Pole, are fascinating.

However, for every chapter like that there are four chapters of pure tedium. The book was written by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the members of the expedition, and he spares no detail in his retelling of the journey. I mean it. NO detail. “Cherry” could spend one chapter just describing what the arctic looked like on one particular day. And the next chapter he could describe the next day, or he could detail everything you could possibly (not) want to know about the Adelie penguin. Or he could tell you every detail of what every person did on a given day. One guy walked his mule, another took meteorological readings, another did the cooking, another read a book, etc. etc. I mean, I guess if his point was to try to make the reader feel the same endless tedium that he felt in his two year journey, it’s a stunning success! Suffice to say, I did a lot of skimming while reading this one.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the animal abuse. I know it was a “different time” but these assholes actually traveled across the ocean with the sled dogs, uncovered, on the deck. One dog actually slid off the deck to its death during the journey. They were depicted as shivering, soaking wet, huddled together with their backs to the constant spray. And the ponies didn’t fare much better. Who takes ponies to the Arctic anyway??? They hardly have the coats for that kind of cold, and hooves are not especially good at navigating snow. Needless to say, they suffered immensely and the ones that hadn’t died during storms or from being devoured by Orcas ended up being sacrificed for dog/human food by the end of the journey.

The chapters that detail the two main journeys of the expedition are stay-up-past-your-bedtime fascinating though. The first journey, to collect Emperor penguin eggs, was suicidally insane.  Since the penguins lay their eggs in the deep of winter, the three-man team (including the author) had to travel through complete 24-hour darkness and -75 f temperatures. Their clothing and sleeping bags froze into solid sheets, they were constantly in danger of falling into a crevasse in the dark, they ran low on fuel and food, and at one point the cold was so intense that Cherry-Garrard actually shattered his teeth from intense chattering.

Even more harrowing was the hurricane that hit their igloo after they had collected the eggs, just before they were going to head home. The intense gale blew the roof off their igloo and blew their tent away, and they were left to huddle together in a corner under the building snow, thinking that if they couldn’t find their tent they would surely freeze to death on the way home. Amazingly, they were able to find the tent only a short distance away after the gale finally lifted, and they were able to trudge back home, broken but having survived the most intense journey ever undertaken.

Of course, the big story revolves around Scott, who was trying to become the first person to the South Pole.  When Scott and four of his men arrived at the Pole they found that those dastardly Norwegians (who tricked the English by saying their expedition was for the North Pole and switching directions after leaving port) had gotten there first – 34 days earlier. The five disheartened Englishmen started their long trek home, dragging their gear behind them, and were beset by unseasonably cold weather (we’re talking -50 f. and that’s without wind chill), blizzards, and rough terrain that made their sled an incredible burden to pull. Food and fuel shortages weakened the men while frostbite, snow blindness and injuries hobbled them, and eventually two of the five died from their injuries. The remaining three were found in their tent eight months later, the cause of death being a combination of exhaustion, cold and hunger. They were 11 miles from the depot that might have saved them but they were stuck in a blizzard and literally ran out of gas.

One wonders if they might have survived if they had been successful in their goal of being first to the Pole? Would that burst of victory-fueled adrenaline cheer have quickened their step enough to avoid the deadly blizzard? We shall never know thanks to those damned (much better prepared) Norwegians!

I had originally planned on ending this review by saying I was glad the book was behind me, but now a peculiar thing has happened: I find myself wanting to re-read it.  After reading about the journey in articles online, I realize I missed some details in my skimming, and I find myself a bit obsessed with this expedition.  I guess that makes it a better book than I had originally deemed it.  It’s certainly the most detailed book about an arctic expedition you’re likely to read.

3/5

 

Morbid Sightseeing to Scott’s Hut!

And then I started thinking, wouldn’t it be awesome to go see Scott’s base camp hut, which has been preserved as it was abandoned in 1913?  So I searched and I actually found a company that will take you there!  For the low price of $27,500.  Alas, guess I’ll have to satisfy myself with the virtual tour online.

Morbid Fact Du Jour for February 8, 2018

Today’s Deficient Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

While in the period after Columbus’s voyage, advances in agriculture, plant-breeding, and crop exchange between the New and Old Worlds in some way improved food supply, for those newly dependent upon a single staple crop the consequence could be one of the classic deficiency diseases: scurvy, beriberi or kwashiorkor (from a Ghanaian word meaning disease suffered by a child displayed from the breast). Those heavily reliant on maize in Mesoamerica and later, after it was brought back by the conquistadores, in the Mediterranean, frequently fell victim to pellagra, caused by niacin deficiency and characterized by diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia and death. Another product of vitamin B (thiamine) deficiency is beriberi, associated with Asian rice cultures.

The Third World, however, has had no monopoly on dearth and deficiency diseases. The subjugation of Ireland by the English, complete around 1700, left an impoverished native peasantry ‘living in Filth and Nastiness upon Butter-milk and Potatoes, without a Shoe or stocking to their Feet,’ as Jonathan Swift observed. Peasants survived through cultivating the potato, a New World import and another instance of how the Old World banked upon gains from the New. A wonderful source of nutrition, rich in vitamins B1, B2, and C as well as a host of essential minerals, potatoes kept the poor alive and well-nourished, but when in 1727 the oat crop failed, the poor ate their winter potatoes early and then starved. The subsequent famine led Swift to make his ironic ‘modest proposal’ as to how to handle the island’s surplus population better in future:

a young healthy Child, well nursed is, at a Year old, a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome Food; whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or Boiled; and, I make no doubt, that it will equally serve in a Fricassee, or Ragout… I grant this Food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for Landlords

With Ireland’s population zooming, disaster was always a risk. From a base of two million potato-eating peasants in 1700, the nation multiplied to five million by 1800 and to close to nine million by 1845. The potato island had become one of the world’s most densely populated places. When the oat and potato crops failed, starving peasants became prey to various disorders, notably typhus, predictably called ‘Irish fever’ by the landlords. During the Great Famine of 1845-7, typhus worked its way through the island; scurvy and dysentery also returned. Starving children aged so that they looked like old men. Around a million people may have died in the famine and in the next decades millions more emigrated. Only a small percentage of deaths were due directly to starvation; the overwhelming majority occurred from hunger-related disease: typhus, relapsing fevers and dysentery.

Culled from: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind

 

Morbid Sightseeing: Spallanzani Museum

The Spallanzani Museum (Reggio Emilia, Italy)

Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799) was a Catholic priest, biologist and physiologist (I guess back then those three things went together?) who, according to Wikipedia, “made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, animal reproduction, and animal echolocation.”  During his lifetime he amassed a large collection of specimens which, upon his death, ended up in a gallery at the Palazzo dei Musei in the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, Italy.  It’s generally just an old-style zoology collection, but there are quite a few curiosities as well, like two-headed snakes in jars and stuffed cows with legs coming out of their shoulders and that sort of thing. But of particular morbid interest is THIS:

Can that really be real??? It’s like they’re staring right into my cold black heart!

The above photo and others of the exhibit can be viewed at Morbid Anatomy.

Morbid Fact Du Jour for February 7, 2018

Today’s Blazing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

In the spring of 1934, during second season of the “Century of Progress” World’s Fair, Chicago was suffering from an extreme drought. Nowhere was the danger of a major fire more apparent than in the Union Stockyards on Chicago’s south side. From a fire protection standpoint, the stockyards were a nightmare. Since it opened in 1865, the mile-square complex, with its wooden livestock pens, slaughterhouses, meatpacking plants, hay sheds, chemical laboratories, and railroad facilities had seen plenty of deadly fire. The worst was the December 22, 1910, Nelson-Morris fire that killed 21 firefighters and three workers. The conditions of early 1934 would help the stockyards and Packingtown make fire history again, and not since the Great Fire of 1871 would Chicago firefighters be faced with the formidable task of saving their city from a major conflagration.

By Saturday, May 15, 1934, rain had not fallen in weeks. The wooden livestock pens and hay sheds in the stockyards were bone dry, making an already dangerous fire hazard even worse. Just about everything in the stockyards was made of wood. Thousands of feet of lumber had been used to build the pens, sheds, and storage shanties as well as the miles of enclosed double-deck runways used to route the animals to the killing floors. Although several permanent buildings had been built of fire resistant materials, none was sprinklered, including the large Stockyards Exchange Building, where all business and futures trading occurred. To help minimize the hazards, two fire companies were stationed there, Engines 53 and 59, while several others were located in nearby neighborhoods. Nevertheless, access and mobility inside the vast complex was severely limited by the elaborate maze of narrow wooden runways, alleys, and gates, making the positioning of fire apparatus difficult. Fire hydrants were spread great distances apart, and the water mains servicing the area were too small to supply an adequate flow necessary to fight a large and sustained fire. These factors would play a significant role in the blaze that was about to erupt.

Because it was a weekend, the slaughterhouses sat idle and empty save for a few watchmen and livestock workers. At 4:21 in the afternoon, a security guard saw flames and smoke coming from the cattle and sheep pens near 43rd and Morgan. Fanned by a 15-mph wind, the fire spread quickly, mainly in a northeasterly direction. The guard ran to his shanty and pulled a private A.D.T. fire alarm that was immediately routed to the fire department, and a box alarm assignment of four engines, two hook-and-ladders, a squad, a high-pressure rig, three chiefs, and several other units was then dispatched.

Engines 53 and 59 arrived in minutes, but already 300 square feet of pens were on fire, as well as the 43rd Street viaduct and the adjacent elevated chutes and cattle runs. After hooking up to a private fire hydrant, the two companies went to work on Texas Avenue, a narrow lane inside the pens near the fire’s origin. Cowboys and cattle workers tried driving animals away from immediate danger, but the fire was jumping 50 to 100 feet at a time and sparking additional flames ahead. Water from the hoses turned to steam, and the fire surrounded the men, forcing them to drop their hoselines and flee for their lives. One cowboy was not so lucky. Along with several head of cattle, he became trapped and was cremated. The fire also destroyed all of the fire hose and both fire engines that had been abandoned.

Five minutes after the first call, Fourth Division Marshall John Costello sounded a 4-11 alarm from a city firebox in the stockyards, summoning 15 more engines, three hook-and-ladders, two water towers, two rescue companies, and two high-pressure rigs. Even with help on the way, the firefighters retreated two blocks further and attempted to set up a fire line near Engine 59’s firehouse at Dexter and Exchange Avenues, half of a mile from where the fire started. But driven by strong winds the fire “rushed at us with a scream and a roar as though especially bent on our total destruction, Chief Costello later recalled. “We dropped everything and ran, just barely getting away.” Everything in the fire’s path was destroyed, including hundreds of head of livestock, thousands of feet of frame runway pens, and a huge supply of dry hay. Where cowboys couldn’t drive animals to safety, police moved in and mercifully shot numerous cattle unable to escape.

Within minutes the firebox used to transmit the 4-11 alarm was destroyed. With ammonia tanks exploding in burning meatpacking houses, fire officers sent a 5-11 alarm at 4:35 p.m. before abanding Engine 59’s building, which lay directly in the fire’s path. It was quickly destroyed along with all of the equipment inside. Conditions grew steadily worse as the hot wind spurred strong gales that blew up to 60 mph. The blaze was now a firestorm leaping from building to building, principally in a northeasterly direction.


The Stockyards ablaze

Special calls went out summoning fire companies from all over Chicago. Suburban fire departments also sent equipment to cover empty city firehouses. As more equipment arrived, firefighters attempted another stand east of the fire, but this position also had to be abandoned. The huge wall of flame continued to raze frame and brick buildings, including sheds and small warehouses loaded with combustibles, several two story brick horse barns, and the three-story South Exchange Building. As the fire spread further east, it took over the nine-story main Exchange Building, where one of the most dramatic rescues in Chicago history occurred.

At 5:15 p.m., firefighters saw four men on the roof of the Exchange Building waving for help. Sensing that the workers were ready to jump, the firemen positioned Hook-and-Ladder 4 next to the building structure and raised the rig’s 85-foot aerial ladder. The ladder, however, fell short of the roof, reaching only within three feet of an eighth-floor window.

Time was running out, and with heat and smoke pouring from all windows of the doomed building, Lieutenant Thomas Morrissey and three firefighters, John Tebbens, Joseph Reszal, and Robert Quinn (later to become Chicago’s fire commissioner), raced up the wooden aerial carrying rope and a pompier ladder. Morrissey entered an eight-floor window and hooked the pompier ladder to the edge of the roof, enabling the other three firefighters to climb the remaining distance and grab the trapped workers. Firefighters below held a life net as engine men shot a protective stream of water toward the tenuous perch above. After bringing the workers down, the firefighters had to retreat further east to keep ahead of the main fire.


Aftermath of the fire

The U.S. Post Office sent 15 trucks to retrieve mail from the stockyards postal station before fire destroyed the building. Hundreds of families had to abandon their homes, while underground tanks of neighborhood gas stations were emptied of fuel and trucked away. Armored cars took away cash from the Drovers Exchange National Bank; however, money was left at the Livestock National Bank, because its vaults were considered fire resistant. Police cordoned off a three-square mile area, the largest fire line in Chicago since the Great Fire of 1871, from 31st Street south to 55th Street and from Wentworth Avenue west to Ashland Avenue. By 5:30 p.m., the fire had swept the entire eastern portion of the yards, from Racine Avenue east to Halsted Street and from 41st Street south to 47th Street. Inside the affected area, residents helped firemen couple hoses together and push cars out of the way. Heat from the fire peeled paint off many of the vehicles. At 6 p.m. many buildings that lay in the fire’s path were dynamited. The fourteenth special call was sounded at 6:32 p.m., and at the direction of Chief Fire Marshal Michael Corrigan, a third and final stand was mounted along Halsted Street between 40th and 43rd Streets in the form of a semi-circle, which proved effective. Water supplying the fire line now came from city mains outside the stockyards, a source far superior to the diminished flow of the private hydrants inside the yards. Deploying high caliber turret streams fixed to squad trucks, high-pressure wagons, and water towers, the firefighters finally blocked the fire’s advance, but not before a string of brick and frame commercial structures along Halsted Street had been incinerated, including two banks, a bowling alley, several restaurants, and a drug store, as well as most of the building in the Exchange-Halsted corridor.

As dusk arrived, the wind shifted south and the fire began losing momentum. After backtracking and burning several more building it had initially passed over, the fire ran out of fuel. The winds subsided, and by 11 p.m. the fire was deemed under control.

Damage was incredible, and even before the smoke had cleared, people began referring to the stockyards fire as the second great Chicago fire. Dozens of buildings and more than 50 acres of livestock pens had been lost. Eight square city blocks were destroyed with total property losses exceeding $6 million.  About 150 families were left homeless. The interior and contents of the Stock Yards Inn and the Breeding Building were demolished, the structures themselves severely damaged. Also lost was the 150,000-square foot Stock Pavilion. (The pavilion was quickly rebuilt and renamed the International Amphitheater. In 1999, the famed building, probably best known for hosting the ill-fated 1968 Democratic Convention, was razed.)

Miraculously only one person was killed, the cattle worker who had died in the early stages. About 800 to 1,000 head of livestock were lost. The 1933 grand champion bull, Highland Stamp, was rescued along with eight prize cows and two other bulls taken from the Stock Pavilion by the arena’s caretaker and a 12-year-old neighborhood boy who corralled the animals in a playground just beyond the fire area. Fifty-four firefighters had been injured, and another 26 became sick after drinking contaminated water from cattle troughs. The cause of the fire was never determined.


I couldn’t find any explanation for this compelling image, so I don’t know if that’s the cowboy or a cow?  I can’t imagine they’d put a jacket over a cow corpse though?  

Culled from: Great Chicago Fires: Historic Blazes That Shaped a City

 

Morbid Sightseeing: Florence Pathology Museum

I’ve added another location on the bucket list, this one in Florence, Italy.  Have a look at Atlas Obscura and Morbid Anatomy’s pages to see what I mean!

Atlas Obscura: University of Florence Museum of Pathological Anatomy
Morbid Anatomy: Museo di Anatomia Patologica dell’Universitá degli Studi di Firenze

 

Morbid Fact Du Jour for February 2, 2018

Today’s Decimated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On September 1, 1894 a huge firestorm, fed by drought conditions and dry debris left behind by lumber companies, destroyed the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, killing over 418 people.  Here is an account of the fate of the Best family:

Over at the side of the cemetery mourner John Best Jr., with the help of two neighbors, was digging one large grave to be the final resting place for his loved ones. Of fourteen members of the Best family, spanning three generations, there remained only John, his wife and child, and an older brother, Christian. Christ had found and positively identified three members of the family, but the rest were presumed to be among the unidentified dead. The entries in Coroner Cowan’s Death List for this one family were as follows:

41. Best, John — Age 63; residence, 2 miles south-east of Hinckley; found on road, 60 rods west of his house; identified by his son Christian; buried at Hinckley; identified by a jack knife which he carried.
42. Best, Eva — Age 60, married, wife of John Best; found with John Best in the road west of the house; identified by Christ Best.
43. Best, Bertha — Age 18, single, daughter of John and Eva Best; identified by Christ Best.
44. Best, William — Age 21, single, son of John and Eva Best; not identified.
45. Best, Fred — Age 23, single, son of John and Eva Best; not identified.
46. Best, George — Age 25, single son of John and Eva Best; not identified.
47. Best, Victor — Age 8; son of John and Eva Best.
269. Weigle, Anton — Age 33, married; residence, Hinckley, not found, but supposed to be among the unidentified bodies taken from the swamp, one-half mile north of Hinckley; reported by Christ Best.
270. Weigle, Eva — Age 22, wife of Anton Weigle; was buried with her parent, John Best, was not found.
271. Weigle, Winnie — Age 4, daughter of Anton Weigle, not identified.

Burying victims in a mass grave

In December it was reported in The Hinckley Enterprise that a local boy, while searching for a Christmas tree, had found the body of George Best near the old home a mile east of town. No inquest was held, as it was assumed he died on September 1 in the fire. The two surviving brothers buried another member of their family.

Culled from: From the Ashes: The Story of the Hinckley Fire of 1894

 

The Morbid Sightseer: Netherlands!

Museum Boerhaave (Leiden, Netherlands)

From Atlas Obscura:
“The museum, named for Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), a Dutch physician and botanist, displays over four hundred years of advances in knowledge in a building that dates back to the 1500s. Originally the St. Caecilia nunnery, then a “plague hospital and madhouse,” the historic building was converted to a university hospital in 1653. In 1720, Herman Boerhaave gave a famous series of lectures known as the “sickbed lessons,” marking the beginning of clinical teaching and of the academic hospital in its modern form. In 1991, the St. Caecilia nunnery took its current form as a museum, where displays of human pathology bring to mind a different sort of “life after death” – that of the medical specimen.

“The museum also contains a wonderful collection of antique scientific instruments, natural history displays, and an old operating theater.”

There’s a lovely collection of photos at the Morbid Curiosity Flick page.

More Morbid Sightseeing suggestions can be seen at The Morbid Sightseer.

Morbid Fact Du Jour for January 31, 2018

Today’s Corrupt Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The Bank Riot of 1835 was probably the most destructive event in the United States prior to the Civil War.

On March 29, 1834, the Bank of Maryland failed. This was almost entirely due to fraud, speculation, and corruption on the part of the bank directors. The Maryland public lost millions of dollars, not adjusted for inflation. Millions of 1854 dollars.

The people of Baltimore and Maryland proper waited 17 months for a financial settlement, which never came. Meanwhile the bank directors were still living large in their mansions, their own wealth very well protected. On August 6th, 1835, a small group of angry Baltimoreans threw bricks through the windows of Reverdy Johnson, who was intentionally obstructing the process of providing a financial settlement in order to protect his personal fortune. The Mayor ordered thirty armed horse troopers to guard Johnson’s house the next night. They successfully blocked a mob from reaching Johnson’s home.

So the mob went to the home of Bank-Director-and-Judge John Glenn, who was helping Johnson obstruct a settlement. Glenn feared for his own wealth, as well, and had an interest in preventing any settlement from going through. The mob partially demolished his home before the horsemen arrived to intervene. There was a tense standoff which lasted the rest of the night. On Sunday, the 9th, the mob returned again, and it had grown to a group of hundreds, if not thousands. They quickly overpowered the guards, and tore down Johnson’s home, piling his property in the street, and setting it alight.

With the tacit support of the majority of the population who refused to interfere, or aided the mob, they took complete control of the city of Baltimore, destroying the property of other bank directors, until Revolutionary war hero Sam Smith, then 83, was able to assemble a force of 3,000 militiamen and restore order. Federal troops arrived a few days later, but Smith had things under control.


Sam Smith – ruining all the fun!

The leaders of the mob were jailed, the bank directors were compensated to the tune of $100,000 because of the state’s failure to protect their property. Reverdy Johnson went on to become a pro-slavery Senator and US Attorney General under both Zachary Taylor and Millard Filmore. It seems a corrupt banker is exactly who you want becoming chief law enforcement officer in the US. The rigorous enforcement of the “Fugitive Slave Act” by the federal government, as well as the blind eye turned to free blacks being kidnapped into slavery, was in part the doing of Reverdy Johnson, one of the great unknown villains of American History.


Reverdy Johnson – American Ass.

Culled from: DailyKOS

 

Morbid Sightseeing: Venereal Disease Edition

Musée de la Médecine (Brussels, Belgium)

This museum was created in 1995 to house a variety of medical specimens, most notable of which are a collection of vintage wax models illustrating all sort of horrible venereal diseases and malformations of the genitals.  In other words, when in Brussels, you absolutely need to stop here!

Morbid Anatomy has an article about the museum and a lovely collection of images on Flickr.

(More Morbid Sightseeing Suggestions can be viewed at The Morbid Sightseer.)

Morbid Fact Du Jour For June 16, 2017

Today’s Systematic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Sick and disabled people were systematically registered by the Nazi regime starting in the autumn of 1939, and murdered beginning in January 1940. The organizational headquarters of this campaign was located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin. The address of the murder headquarters provided the code name of the operation: “T4”. The operation was classified as “Secret Reich Business”, and its management involved the Reich Ministry of Internal Affairs and later the Reich Ministry of Justice, as well as the regional government agencies that were responsible for overseeing the institutions.

The murders were carried out in several phases. In 1940 and 1941, over 70,000 people were killed by poison gas in specialized institutions under “Operation T4”. From 1942 on, still more people were killed in institutions by hunger, poison, and systematic neglect. At least 5,000 children and adolescents were murdered in “pediatric wards”. Meanwhile in Poland and the Soviet Union, the armed task forces called the “Einsatzgruppen” killed tens of thousands of patients.

Registration forms were collected and evaluated to decide who was to be gassed in the killing centers. Beginning in October 1939, the registration forms sent by the Reich Ministry of Internal Affairs were filled out in the institutions, usually by doctors or directors. All patients with certain diagnoses, all patients who had been institutionalized for five years or more, all those who were not of “German or related blood”, and all the “criminally insane” who had been committed to institutions by the courts were to be registered. Based on these registration forms, outside consultants recommended the deaths of more than 70,000 people. The consultants rarely saw their victims in person.

On August 24, 1941, the Nazi government stopped “Operation T4” because of spreading uneasiness among the population.

Here are two of the victims of Operation T4:

Xaver Rager (shown above in 1910) was born in 1898 in Jengen, Ostallgau district. He lived thirty years in the Catholic institution in Ursberg. In 1940 he was transferred to the Kaufbeuren mental hospital; in 1941 he was murdered in the Hartheim killing center.


Leopoldine Schlager (shown above in 1920) was born in 1898. She lived in Müzzuschlag, Styria, until 1928, when she was admitted to the Am Feldhof state mental hospital in Graz. She was murdered in the Hartheim killing center in 1941.

Culled from: registered, persecuted, annihilated. The Sick and the Disabled under National Socialism

 

Morbid Sightseeing: Tiergartenstrasse 4

Out of curiosity, I did a Google search on Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin and what came up on street view (from way back in 2008 – get it together, Google!) was an obvious memorial to the victims: a statue of one of the buses that transported the victims to the killing centers where they were gassed.

I looked it up and sure enough, a memorial has been built on the spot. Next time I’m in Germany, I will have to visit.

T4 – Memorial and Information Centre for the Victims of the Nazi Euthanasia Programme

Morbid Fact Du Jour For May 10, 2017

I know, I’ve hardly even been back, but I must sadly announce a hiatus until after May 21st as I am going to be on vacation with family. Stay morbid while I’m away!

Today’s Starving Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Between February, 1864 and April, 1865 it is estimated that 45,000 Union prisoners were confined in the Confederate stockade, Camp Sumter, near Anderson Station, Georgia, forever to be remembered as Andersonville. Of that number, approximately 25,000 men survived their prison experience and returned home to tell their tale of suffering. It is unknown how many survivors, with their health and lives shattered, died as a direct result of their captivity after returning to civilian life. Close to 13,000 Union soldiers did “give up the ghost” at Andersonville, and it was the ghost of Andersonville that haunted the survivors for the rest of their lives.

The following is an excerpt from the account of Private George Weiser, who arrived in Andersonville on May 25, 1864.

And now it is the last week of August, we have had our hardest thunder storms in this month; it flooded the prison and washed off the filth and dirt; the ground was cold and damp and the men dying off by hundreds, the days were hot but the nights were chilly and all the men beg the Rebs to give them shelter for the sick. The Rebs sent us in two or three wagon loads of boards and we put up two sheds open in the front and closed in the back and ends, these sheds were only for the sick that was helpless which were thousands. Many of the sick men had nothing of any kind to cook with not even so much as a tin cup or a tin plate; many of the sick and well, both, were without anything to cook with for the Rebs gave us nothing to cook in and if the men could not borrow a tin cup or plate from their friends they had to eat their food raw. It was now the first of September, the sheds were completed and the sick was being carried to them. All that could walk was called well and all that could not walk was called sick, the four in my tent was able to walk up to this time. Kay was sick from eating raw meal, Hilyard was failing fast, MacIntosh and I were in good health. In the mud hole or tent behind my tent where three men lived, all were dead. The tent on the right side of my tent where two men lived, one was dead and the other one in good health. The tent on the left side of my tent where three men lived, two were dead and one in good health. This is the way things were about the first day of September, when we heard a strong rumor that the prisoners were going to be exchanged. About this time Phil Hilyard said to us, “do you men ever expect to get out of this prison alive?” I told him that I hoped to get out all right. He said that he was sure that he would die before he got home; he failed fast after this and at midnight on the third of September he died. Kay got so weak that he gave up all hope and said that he believed that he too would soon die. On the seventh of September the Rebs said we would be exchanged and they began to take the prisoners out of the prison. On the eighth of September we carried Kay up and put him in the shed; he was alive when I left the prison. On the ninth of September my old friend MacIntosh got uneasy and slipped out with another detachment and left me alone. On the tenth of September my detachment or thousand was ordered out. We were taken to the railroad and put in boxcars and started North. Now I was very sad indeed; my three comrades gone, my clothes ragged and torn, I did not know what to do.  I soon found two men that had lived along side of me and were in the same car with me, one of these men was Frank Beegle of the Fifteenth regiment, New Jersey Vol., and the other was Orlando Gallagher of my regiment. Both of the men had a wool blanket but I had none; we had only one blanket at our tent and when Phil got sick we sold it to get him something to eat, so these men said that I should go with them and that they would let me sleep in the middle. This was very good news indeed to me, but still I was sad to think that we had left so many behind. It is said that thirty thousand died in Andersonville Prison Pen, but if each man had been truly counted the dead would number many more than fourteen, fifteen or even sixteen thousand.


Handsome George Weiser, Before…


and Ragged George Weiser, After.

Orland Gallagher’s Partner that he had at Andersonville died and left him with a silver watch valued at fifty dollars. I had a gold ring worth about two dollars which I had not parted with. On the fifteenth of September we landed at a place called Florence, South Carolina. Here we were taken from the cars and put in a large field and a strong guard put over us. About eight or ten thousand prisoners had now arrived here and it was two days since we had eaten our last food. I now traded off my ring for a peck of sweet potatoes, Orlando bought some meat and corn meal, Frank hunted up some pieces of wood and we soon had a good feed. The Rebs said that they did not know that we were coming and that nothing had been prepared to feed us, so that night and the next day made three days since we had food. The men began to starve and die and we commenced to carry the dead up and lay them on the ground near the guards, some of the guards would say “what’s the matter with that man.” We would say that the man has starved to death and every one of us will starve to death if we are kept without food another day. The Rebs thought that there were some truth to this and they started out through the country and gathered up three or four wagon loads of corn cake and sweet potatoes; this was divided with the men and the next day the Rebs began to give us our corn meal and meat regular. It was in this place that I saw three men lay on the ground and crying, “o’ for a spoonful of meal to save my life!” and the next morning I went to see if they were still there and the three men lay cold and stiff in death.


Photo of George Weiser.

George Weiser eventually made his escape near Wilmington, N.C. on February 22, 1865.  He died in 1928.

Culled from: Andersonville Giving Up the Ghost: Diaries & Recollections of the Prisoners

 

Morbid Sightseeing!

If you’re a long-time reader, you’ve probably seen my travelogue to Andersonville before, but if you’ve never taken a gander, perhaps you’ll find it subtly entertaining?

Anderson Vile!

Morbid Fact Du Jour For January 5, 2017

Today’s Onrushing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The Guadalcanal Campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and code-named Operation Watchtower, originally applying only to an operation to take the island of Tulagi, by Allied forces, was a military campaign fought between August 7, 1942 and February 9, 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater of World War II. It was the first major offensive by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan.  The Americans caught the Japanese off-guard and were able to capture an airfield (named Henderson Field by the Americans) that the Japanese were building on the island.  The airfield soon became the focus of months of fighting during the Guadalcanal Campaign, as it enabled U.S. airpower to hinder the Japanese attempts at resupplying their troops. The Japanese made several attempts to retake Henderson Field, resulting in continuous, almost daily air battles.

The following is a continuation of the tale of Japanese flying ace Saburo Sakai whose plane was struck by an American Dauntless plane during the first Japanese attempt to retake Henderson Field on August 7, 1942.

Saburo Sakai regained consciousness just as his plane was about to crash into the water and, although still blind from blood, he managed to right the Zero by sheer instinct. But his whole left side seemed to be paralyzed. Tears washed away enough blood for him to see his instruments dimly, but his situation seemed hopeless. It was more than five hundred miles to Rabaul. His cockpit cover was gone, the plane was surely seriously damaged and he was in need of immediate medical attention. Somehow he managed to work his silk flier’s scarf up and under his helmet to help staunch the flow of blood and to position a seat cushion as a windbreak.

Slouched as low as possible to avoid the onrushing wind, and unable to see where he was going, Sakai now found himself fighting the desire to sleep. time and again he dozed off, starting awake to find himself flying upside down or almost crashing into the waves. He tried hitting himself on his wounded cheek, hoping the pain would help him maintain consciousness, but this only caused his face to bloat out, as if a rubber ball were growing inside his mouth. “If I must die,” he began to say to himself, “at least I will go out as a Samurai.” More than once he turned back toward Guadalcanal to look for an enemy ship to crash into, then changed his mind and reversed course for Rabaul. But each backtrack wasted precious fuel, making his safe return more and more unlikely. At one point he came out of his stupor to realize that for some time he had been flying north into the empty Pacific. Finally, with the increasing pain from his head wound now keeping him awake, he regained his bearings and headed once and for all for Rabaul, flying at minimum speed to conserve fuel.


A Mitsubishi Zero in Flight

After what seemed like many hours, Sakai spotted the familiar volcanic peaks of New Britain, but the direct route over its mountainous interior seemed too perilous, so he decided to skirt the coast, following St. George’s Channel between Rabaul and New Ireland. As he entered the channel he glanced below him to see the white wakes of two cruisers heading rapidly southeast. He hoped they were headed for Guadalcanal.

A few minutes later, the airfield at Rabaul was at last in his sights, but he and his plane were both near their limits. He circled, debating whether to ditch in the water just off the beach. The thought of a bone-jolting crash into the water was too much to bear, so he determined to attempt a landing. His first try almost ended in disaster when he missed the runway and nearly crashed into the parked fighters. Pulling up, he circled four times and then went in for another try. His fuel gauge read empty, but he was taking no chances of an engine fire on crash landing. When he cleared the palms at the edge of the runway he switched off the ignition with a kick of his right boot (his left leg was still useless). A few seconds later the plane hit the ground with a jolting thud and rolled to a halt in front of the command post. As his mind let go and he fell into blackness he heard shouts of “Sakai! Sakai!’

“I cursed to myself,” he later recalled. “Why didn’t they keep quiet? I wanted to sleep.”


The Wounded Sakai

Culled from: The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal

More details from Wikipedia:  Sakai was struck in the head by a 7.62 mm (0.3 in) bullet, blinding him in the right eye and paralyzing the left side of his body.After landing, he insisted on making his mission report to his superior officer before collapsing. His squadron mate Hiroyoshi Nishizawa drove him to a surgeon. Sakai was evacuated to Japan on 12 August, where he endured a long surgery without anesthesia. The surgery repaired some of the damage to his head, but was unable to restore full vision to his right eye. Nishizawa visited Sakai while he recuperated in the Yokosuka hospital in Japan.

He eventually returned to combat but after the war he became a devout Buddhist and vowed to never again kill a living thing, not even a mosquito.  He later visited the U.S. and met and embraced several of his former adversaries, including Harold “Lew” Jones, the tail-gunner who had wounded him.


Saburo Sakai and Lew Jones in 1982

One of Sakai’s Zero planes is on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.  (More info on the plane here.)

And the helmet he was wearing when wounded is on display at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas:

Morbid Fact Du Jour For January 3, 2017

Today’s Pushy Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Germany in November 1923 was in chaos. The inflation that had been growing steadily since the Great War was completely out of control. In Berlin, a single loaf of bead cost 201,000 million marks. The streets of Germany’s cities were thronged with unemployed workers, and hitherto prosperous middle class people were suddenly made paupers as money lost nearly all value. Throughout the country extremists of right and left were calling for the overthrow of the central German government in Berlin and for a new revolutionary government in its place.

On the evening of November 8, an unusually large and influential crowd filled Munich’s largest beer hall, the Bürgerbräukeller (‘Citizen’s Beer Hall’). It included the commander of the army in Bavaria, General Otto von Lossow, and the state’s police chief, Colonel Hans von Seisser. They had gathered to hear a speech by the right-wing head of Bavaria’s state government, Gustav von Kahr, on the moral justification for dictatorship. Lossow, Seisser and Kahr were the state’s most powerful men. Also present was Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist or Nazi party, one of the many far-right political groups that had sprung up in post-war Bavaria.


Entrance to the Bürgerbräukeller 

Suddenly, at 8:30 pm, shortly after Kahr had begun his speech, one of Hitler’s lieutenants, Herman Göring, burst into the hall. He was followed by 25 armed, brown-shirted supporters – members of the Nazis’ stormtrooper force, the Sturmabteilungen or SA. Hitler jumped onto a chair and fired a shot at the ceiling. ‘The national revolution has begun,’ he shouted. ‘This hall is occupied by 600 heavily armed men. No one may leave the hall.’ He then forced Kahr, Lossow and Seisser into another room.


Bigmouth Strikes Again

For several months Hitler had been calling on Kahr and his colleagues to support him in overthrowing Germany’s republican government. He now informed the three men that he and his ally, the Great War veteran General Erich Ludendorff, had already formed a new German government, with Hitler as dictator. Influenced by Mussolini’s march on Rome the year before, he demanded support for a similar march on Berlin and in installing the new regime.

The Munich, or ‘Beer Hall,’ Putsch was soon over. Hitler’s three captives agreed to back him, but once released alerted Berlin. The next day Hitler, Ludendorff and a column of supporters marched through Munich. At the Feldherrnhalle war memorial in the center, they encountered a police cordon. A shot was fired (nobody knows by whom) starting a shoot-out which left three police officers and 16 Nazis dead.

Heinrich Himmler (1900 – 1945), holding a flag, with a group of Nazi storm troopers during the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)

Heinrich Himmler, holding a flag, with a group of Nazi storm troopers during the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.

One police shot very nearly changed the course of history. A demonstrator marching arm in arm with Hitler was mortally wounded, dislocating Hitler’s shoulder as he fell. Ludendorff, like the general he was, marched proudly on. But he was alone. Hitler picked himself up and fled, only to be arrested three days later.  He was given the minimum sentence of five years’ imprisonment, yet was released after nine months. Hitler used the time profitably, dictating the first chapters of his political testament Mein Kampf to the ever- faithful Rudolph Hess.

Culled from: The World At Arms: The Reader’s Digest Illustrated History of World War II

The Morbid Sightseers among us will be saddened to learn that the Bürgerbräukeller survived a bombing (attempted assassination of Hitler) and the war only to be demolished in 1979.

 

Traces of Evil

Traces of Evil is an invaluable resource for Morbid Sightseers.  It is a collection of sites of Nazi infamy put together by a history instructor. Fascinating stuff.

Traces of Evil: Remaining Nazi Sites in Europe

Morbid Fact Du Jour For January 1, 2017

Today’s Surprising Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The biggest loss for the U.S. Navy was the battleship Arizona which was a total loss with 1,177 dead. Miraculously, several hundred men did survive on Arizona. Carl Carson was out on deck on that beautiful Sunday morning, when all hell broke loose.  “I was out on deck doing the morning chores… and I was working on Admiral Kidd’s hatch, shining brightwork and so forth. And all of a sudden this plane came along, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, because planes were landing at Ford Island all the time. But this was different. The chips started flying all around me, and I realized that this same plane was strafing me.


The newly-built U.S.S. Arizona in New York City, circa 1916.

“When they flew between the ship and Ford Island, I could look up and see the meatball on the wings [ie. the Japanese rising sun] and I could see the pilot sitting up there. Now somebody hollered to get under cover. So I ran forward and tried to get under cover. The officer on deck, one of my division officers, ordered me back out to close the hatches. So I was out there closing the hatches when another plane came around about the same direction and strafed us. But I don’t think anybody that was out there working at the time got hit.

“Then I went forward and inside the ship and started back to my battle station. At that point a bomb went off. I learned later it was back about turret No. 4, about where I’d been working only ten, fifteen minutes before. Evidently it knocked me out, ruptured both my lungs, and I suffered smoke inhalation. All the lights went out, and I don’t know how long I laid there.  But when I woke up I picked up a flashlight, which I guess had fallen out of somebody’s hand. And so again, I started down into my battle station. But at this point they wouldn’t let me in the door, the watertight door you’re not supposed to open in battle conditions. But I managed to wait for what seemed like it was about 30 minutes. And I finally outlasted the guy on the other side.

“When I got into the turret it was totally dark except for my flashlight. And one of my division officers, Ensign J. B. Fields said, ‘You’re a good boy, Carson.’ And he said that’s exactly what we needed. Strangely, there was no panic down there or anything, despite the smoke and water knee deep. And a bosun’s mate by the name of Tucker took the flashlight and ordered me up on the ladder to open the hatch into the upper handling room.

“But now I started to feel pretty sick, so they had a guy come up to hold me, to keep me from falling off the ladder until I got the hatch open. And then we all made it out of the lower handling room into the upper. We’d only been up there about ten minutes when Ensign Miller, the senior division officer, stuck his head through the escape hatch in the rear of the turret and told us to all come out on deck and help fight fires. But there was nothing we could do. The ship was a total loss. So Commander Fuqua and Ensign Miller both said we might as well abandon ship.

The Arizona Burns

“Before I did, I ran into a friend of mine who was crying and asking me for help. I looked at him in horror. The skin on his face and his arms and everywhere else was just hanging like a mask. And I took hold of his arm. His skin all came off in my hand. And there was just nothing in this world I could do for that boy. That has bothered me all my life. Of course he died. He died later.

“Now they gave the word to abandon ship, and because the ship was sinking so low we practically stepped off the quarterdeck into the water. I was planning to swim over to Ford Island, but I’d forgotten how badly I’d been injured, in my lungs. So I swam out there about ten feet and I guess I must have passed out. I went down in the water, and everything was just as peaceful and nice that it would have been so easy to just let go. But I saw this bright light you hear about, and something made me come to. So I got back up to the surface of the water only to find oil all around, oil in my eyes and my teeth, just as fire was burning across the water toward me. I got back to the quay. Miraculously a man saw me down there just as the fire was approaching me. It wasn’t more than two feet away from me, and this man reached down and pulled me up out of the water. This man saved my life. I think he was a man from the Fourth Division. About now a motor launch came along, and I either jumped or fell into the motor launch, because they said they couldn’t stop on account of the fire. And they took me over to Ford Island.

“At Ford Island, I walked down to the barracks with the rest of the crew. About the time I got down there I must have passed out again, because my friends and shipmates took me over to the sick bay at Ford Island. They laid me alongside the bulkhead. While I was unconscious there a dud Japanese shell hit right in the center of the sick bay. The impact brought me to and I looked over. Another of my shipmates was laying across from me, and I realized he was holding his intestines in with his hands. And he looked up at me and said, “War sure is hell isn’t it, shipmate?’ And I said, ‘Yeah it is.’ Then I discovered I wasn’t bleeding anywhere, so I got up and walked out of there.”

As the awful morning wore on, Arizona turned out to be the most disastrous loss. Her fires, explosions, and sinking killed 1,103 officers and men out of her total crew of 1,400 and the total death toll eventually reached 1,177. The casualties on Arizona accounted for more than half of the 2,403 deaths suffered by the U.S. at Pearl Harbor that day.


Burned out wreck of the Arizona

Culled from: Graveyards of the Pacific

 

Morbid Sightseeing in the Pacific!

Of course, the only reason I really want to go to Hawaii is to visit the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial where you can view the rusting remains of the ship as it lies in the harbor.  You too?

The U.S.S. Arizona Memorial

An aerial view of the USS Arizona Memorial with a US Navy (USN) Tour Boat, USS Arizona Memorial Detachment, moored at the pier as visitor disembark to visit and pay their respects to the Sailors and Marines who lost their lives during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.