This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
The "Jennie Gilchrist" was a rather insignificant packet boat engaged in carrying cargo and passengers between Rock Island and Port Byron, until she made a spectacular wreck when she hit the Government Bridge between Rock Island and Davenport the night of October 27th, 1881. The Gilchrist provided salvage workers with clothing, books, personal items and pieces of the boat.
Of the dozens of salvagers, however, none came out better than the Rock Island Argus. In the weeks following the accident, the Argus dredged up at least a hundred columns from the wreck, enough to fill almost an entire slow news month.
The Gilchrist was headed for Cordova with two barges, eleven passengers, and fifteen crew. Shortly after ten thirty in the evening she was caught in a current and swept against a bridge pier. As she drifted downstream, clouds of steam from the boilers enveloped the sinking boat, reducing visibility to less than an arm's length. Efforts to rescue four women in the cabin were abandoned when they grew too terrified to be moved. The ship sank just off Rock Island, but the cabin floated loose and drifted as far as Buffalo, Iowa, before sinking. Nine passengers eventually drowned.
The wreck was all the Argus could hope for. "Graphic Description of Midnight Disaster," screamed the headlines the next morning. And the next, and the next. It turned out the officers and crew abandoned ship without helping the passengers. Then there were accounts of the crew being drunk—verified eyewitnesses said so. And dramatic accounts of rescues by passengers and their rescuers. Then the Coroner's Jury reports. Then the story of a group of ladies who were supposed to be on the boat that night but had a presentiment of disaster and remained home. Day after day. Finally, the Argus got the idea of replaying the whole wreck as it appeared to the guards standing on the bridge itself.
The Argus might well be still salvaging rumors from the Gilchrist to this day, had not a much finer boat, the great and famous "War Eagle," fastest boat on the Upper Mississippi, not gotten destroyed against the bridge downriver at Keokuk that November, sending the "Jennie Gilchrist" to finally rest in peace.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by the Scott County Regional Authority, with additional funding from the Illinois Arts Council and Augustana College, Rock Island.
