THE REVERE CATASTROPHE.
The terrible disaster which occurred in front of the little
station-building at Revere, six miles from Boston on the Eastern
railroad of Massachusetts, in August 1871, was, properly speaking,
not an accident at all; it was essentially a catastrophe--the
legitimate and almost inevitable final outcome of an antiquated and
insufficient system. As such it should long remain a subject for
prayerful meditation to all those who may at any time be entrusted
with the immediate operating of railroads. It was terribly dramatic,
but it was also frightfully instructive; and while the lesson was by
no means lost, it yet admits of further and advantageous study. For,
like most other men whose lives are devoted to a special calling,
the managers of railroads are apt to be very much wedded to their
own methods, and attention has already more than once been called to
the fact that, when any new emergency necessitates a new appliance,
they not infrequently, as Captain Tyler well put it in his report
to the Board of Trade for the year 1870, "display more ingenuity in
finding objections than in overcoming them."
[Illustration: map]
The Eastern railroad of Massachusetts connects Boston with Portland,
in the state of Maine, by a line which is located close along the
sea-shore. Between Boston and Lynn, a distance of eleven miles, the
main road is in large part built across the salt marshes, but there
is a branch which leaves it at Everett, a small station some miles
out of Boston, and thence, running deviously through a succession
of towns on the higher ground, connects with the main track again
at Lynn; thus making what is known in England as a loop-road. At
the time of the Revere accident this branch was equipped with
but a single track, and was operated wholly by schedule without
any reliance on the telegraph; and, indeed, there were not even
telegraphic offices at a number of the stations upon it. Revere,
the name of the station where the accident took place, was on the
main line about five miles from Boston and two miles from Everett,
where the Saugus branch, as the loop-road was called, began. The
accompanying diagram shows the relative position of the several
points and of the main and branch lines, a thorough appreciation of
which is essential to a correct understanding of the disaster.
The travel over the Eastern railroad is of a somewhat exceptional
nature, varying in a more than ordinary degree with the different
seasons of the year. During the winter months the corporation had,
in 1871, to provide for a regular passenger movement of about
seventy-five thousand a week, but in the summer what is known
as the excursion and pleasure travel not infrequently increased
the number to one hundred and ten thousand, and even more. As a
natural consequence, during certain weeks of each summer, and more
especially towards the close of August, it was no unusual thing for
the corporation to find itself taxed beyond its utmost resources. It
is emergencies of this description, periodically occurring on every
railroad, which always subject to the final test the organization
and discipline of companies and the capacity of superintendents. A
railroad in quiet times is like a ship in steady weather; almost
anybody can manage the one or sail the other. It is the sudden
stress which reveals the undeveloped strength or the hidden
weakness; and the truly instructive feature in the Revere accident
lay in the amount of hidden weakness everywhere which was brought to
light under that sudden stress. During the week ending with that
Saturday evening upon which the disaster occurred the rolling stock
of the road had been heavily taxed, not only to accommodate the
usual tide of summer travel, then at its full flood, but also those
attending a military muster and two large camp-meetings upon its
line. The number of passengers going over it had accordingly risen
from about one hundred and ten thousand, the full summer average,
to over one hundred and forty thousand; while instead of the one
hundred and fifty-two trains a day provided for in the running
schedule, there were no less than one hundred and ninety-two. It
had never been the custom with those managing the road to place any
reliance upon the telegraph in directing the train movement, and no
use whatever appears to have been made of it towards straightening
out the numerous hitches inevitable from so sudden an increase in
that movement. If an engine broke down, or a train got off the
track, there had accordingly throughout that week been nothing
done, except patient and general waiting, until things got in
motion again; each conductor or station-master had to look out for
himself, under the running regulations of the road, and need expect
no assistance from headquarters. This, too, in spite of the fact
that, including the Saugus branch, no less than ninety-three of the
entire one hundred and fifteen miles of road operated by the company
were supplied only with a single track. The whole train movement,
both of the main line and of the branches, intricate in the extreme
as it was, thus depended solely on a schedule arrangement and the
watchful intelligence of individual employés. Not unnaturally,
therefore, as the week drew to a close the confusion became so
great that the trains reached and left the Boston station with an
almost total disregard of the schedule; while towards the evening
of Saturday the employés of the road at that station directed their
efforts almost exclusively to dispatching trains as fast as cars
could be procured, thus trying to keep it as clear as possible of
the throng of impatient travellers which continually blocked it up.
Taken altogether the situation illustrated in a very striking manner
that singular reliance of the corporation on the individuality
and intelligence of its employés, which in another connection is
referred to as one of the most striking characteristics of American
railroad management, without a full appreciation of which it is
impossible to understand its using or failing to use certain
appliances.
According to the regular schedule four trains should have left the
Boston station in succession during the hour and a half between 6.30
and eight o'clock P.M.: a Saugus branch train for Lynn at 6.30; a
second Saugus branch train at seven; an accommodation train, which
ran eighteen miles over the main line, at 7.15; and finally the
express train through to Portland, also over the main line, at
eight o'clock. The collision at Revere was between these last two
trains, the express overtaking and running into the rear of the
accommodation train; but it was indirectly caused by the delays
and irregularity in movement of the two branch trains. It will be
noticed that, according to the schedule, both of the branch trains
should have preceded the accommodation train; in the prevailing
confusion, however, the first of the two branch trains did not leave
the station until about seven o'clock, thirty minutes behind its
time, and it was followed forty minutes later, not by the second
branch train, but by the accommodation train, which in its turn was
twenty-five minutes late. Thirteen minutes afterwards the second
Saugus branch train, which should have preceded, followed it, being
nearly an hour out of time. Then at last came the Portland express,
which got away practically on time, at a few minutes after eight
o'clock. All of these four trains went out over the same track as
far as the junction at Everett, but at that point the first and
third of the four were to go off on the branch, while the second and
fourth kept on over the main line. Between these last two trains
the running schedule of the road allowed an ample time-interval of
forty-five minutes, which, however, on this occasion was reduced,
through the delay in starting, to some fifteen or twenty minutes.
No causes of further delay, therefore, arising, the simple case
was presented of a slow accommodation train being sent out to run
eighteen miles in advance of a fast express train, with an interval
of twenty minutes between them.
Unfortunately, however, the accommodation train was speedily
subjected to another and very serious delay. It has been mentioned
that the Saugus branch was a single track road, and the rules of
the company were explicit that no outward train was to pass onto
the branch at Everett until any inward train then due there should
have arrived and passed off it. There was no siding at the junction,
upon which an outward branch train could be temporarily placed to
wait for the inward train, thus leaving the main track clear; and
accordingly, under a strict construction of the rules, any outward
branch train while awaiting the arrival at Everett of an inward
branch train was to be kept standing on the main track, completely
blocking it. The outward branch trains, it subsequently appeared,
were often delayed at the junction, but no practical difficulty had
arisen from this cause, as the employé in charge of the signals
and switches there, exercising his common sense, had been in the
custom of moving any delayed train temporarily out of the way onto
the branch or the other main track, under protection of a flag,
and thus relieving the block. The need of a siding to permit the
passage of trains at this point had not been felt, simply because
the employé in charge there had used the branch or other main track
as a siding. On the day of the accident this employé happened to be
sick, and absent from his post. His substitute either had no common
sense or did not feel called upon to use it, if its use involved
any increase of responsibility. Accordingly, when a block took
place, the simple letter of the rule was followed;--and it is almost
needless to add that a block did take place on the afternoon of
August 26th.
The first of the branch trains, it will be remembered, had left
Boston at about seven o'clock, instead of at 6.30, its schedule
time. On arriving at Everett this train should have met and passed
an inward branch train, which was timed to leave Lynn at six
o'clock, but which, owing to some accident to its locomotive, and
partaking of the general confusion of the day, on this particular
afternoon did not leave the Lynn station until 7.30 o'clock, or one
hour and a half after its schedule time, and one half-hour after
the other train had left Boston. Accordingly, when the Boston train
reached the junction its conductor found himself confronted by the
rule forbidding him to enter upon the branch until the Lynn train
then due should have passed off it, and so he quietly waited on the
outward track of the main line, blocking it completely to traffic.
He had not waited long before a special locomotive, on its way from
Boston to Salem, came up and stopped behind him. This was presently
followed by the accommodation train. Then the next branch train came
along, and finally the Portland express. At such a time, and at that
period of railroad development, there was something ludicrous about
the spectacle. Here was a road utterly unable to accommodate its
passengers with cars, while a succession of trains were standing
idle for hours, because a locomotive had broken down ten miles off.
The telegraph was there, but the company was not in the custom of
putting any reliance upon it. A simple message to the branch trains
to meet and pass at any point other than that fixed in the schedule
would have solved the whole difficulty; but, no!--there were the
rules, and all the rolling stock of the road might gather at Everett
in solemn procession, but, until the locomotive at Lynn could be
repaired, the law of the Medes and Persians was plain; and in this
case it read that the telegraph was a new-fangled and unreliable
auxiliary. And so the lengthening procession stood there long enough
for the train which caused it to have gone to its destination and
come back dragging the disabled locomotive from Lynn behind it to
again take its place in the block.
At last, at about ten minutes after eight o'clock, the long-expected
Lynn train made its appearance, and the first of the branch trains
from Boston immediately went off the main line. The road was now
clear for the accommodation train, which had been standing some
twelve or fifteen minutes in the block, but which from the moment
of again starting was running on the schedule time of the Portland
express. This its conductor did not know. Every minute was vital,
and yet he never thought to look at his watch. He had a vague
impression that he had been delayed some six or eight minutes, when
in reality he had been delayed fifteen; and, though he was running
wholly out of his schedule time, he took not a single precaution, so
persuaded was he that every one knew where he was.
The confusion among those in charge of the various engines and
trains was, indeed, general and complete. As the Portland express
was about to leave the Boston station, the superintendent of the
road, knowing by the non-arrival of the branch train from Lynn that
there must be a block at the Everett junction, had directed the
depot-master to caution the engineer to look out for the trains
ahead of him. The order, a merely verbal one, was delivered after
the train had started, the depot-master walking along by the side of
the slowly-moving locomotive, and was either incorrectly transmitted
or not fully understood; the engine-driver supposed it to apply to
the branch train which had started just before him, out of both its
schedule time and schedule place. Presently, at the junction, he was
stopped by the signal man of this train. The course of reasoning he
would then have had to pass through to divine the true situation
of affairs and to guide himself safely under the schedule in the
light of the running rules was complicated indeed, and somewhat as
follows: "The branch train," he should have argued to himself, "is
stopped, and it is stopped because the train which should have left
Lynn at six o'clock has not yet arrived; but, under the rules, that
train should pass off the branch before the 6.30 train could pass
onto it; if, therefore, the 'wild' train before me is delayed not
only the 6.30 but all intermediate trains must likewise be delayed,
and the accommodation train went out this afternoon after the 6.30
train, so it, too, must be in the block ahead of me; unless, indeed,
as is usually the case, the signal-master has got it out of the
block under the protection of a flag." This line of reasoning was,
perhaps, too intricate; at any rate, the engine-driver did not
follow it out, but, when he saw the tail-lights immediately before
him disappear on the branch, he concluded that the main line was
now clear, and dismissed the depot-master's caution from his mind.
Meanwhile, as the engine-driver of this train was fully persuaded
that the only other train in his front had gone off on the branch,
the conductor of the accommodation train was equally persuaded that
the head-light immediately behind him in the block at the junction
had been that of the Portland express which consequently should be
aware of his position. Both were wrong.
Thus when they left Everett the express was fairly chasing the
accommodation train, and overtaking it with terrible rapidity.
Even then no collision ought to have been possible. Unfortunately,
however, the road had no system, even the crudest, of interval
signals; and the utter irregularity prevailing in the train
movement seemed to have demoralized the employés along the line,
who, though they noticed the extreme proximity of the two trains
to each other as they passed various points, all sluggishly took
it for granted that those in charge of them were fully aware of
their relative positions and knew what they were about. Thus, as
the two trains approached the Revere station, they were so close
together as to be on the same piece of straight track at the same
time, and a passenger standing at the rear end of the accommodation
train distinctly saw the head-light of the express locomotive. The
night, however, was not a clear one, for an east wind had prevailed
all day, driving a mist in from the sea which lay in banks over
the marshes, lifting at times so that distant objects were quite
visible, and then obscuring them in its heavy folds. Consequently it
did not at all follow, because the powerful reflecting head-light
of the locomotive was visible from the accommodation train, that
the dim tail-lights of the latter were also visible to those on the
locomotive. Here was another mischance. The tail-lights in use by
the company were ordinary red lanterns without reflecting power.
The station house at Revere stood at the end of a tangent, the
track curving directly before it. In any ordinary weather the
tail-lights of a train standing at this station would have been
visible for a very considerable distance down the track in the
direction of Boston, and even on the night of the accident they
were probably visible for a sufficient distance in which to stop
any train approaching at a reasonable rate of speed. Unfortunately
the engineer of the Portland express did not at once see them,
his attention being wholly absorbed in looking for other signals.
Certain freight train tracks to points on the shore diverged from
the main line at Revere, and the engine-drivers of all trains
approaching that place were notified by signals at a masthead close
to the station whether the switches were set for the main line or
for these freight tracks. A red lantern at the masthead indicated
that the main line was closed; in the absence of any signal it
was open. In looking for this signal as he approached Revere the
engine-driver of the Portland express was simply attending closely
to his business, for, had the red light been at the masthead, his
train must at once have been stopped. Unfortunately, however, while
peering through the mist at the masthead he overlooked what was
directly before him, until, when at last he brought his eyes down to
the level, to use his own words at the subsequent inquest, "the tail
lights of the accommodation train seemed to spring right up in his
face."
When those in charge of the two trains at almost the same moment
became aware of the danger, there was yet an interval of some eight
hundred feet between them. The express train was, however, moving
at a speed of some twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, and was
equipped only with the old-fashioned hand-brake. In response to the
sharply given signal from the whistle these were rapidly set, but
the rails were damp and slippery, so that the wheels failed to catch
upon them, and, when everything was done which could be done, the
eight hundred feet of interval sufficed only to reduce the speed of
the colliding locomotive to about ten miles an hour.
In the rear car of the accommodation train there were at the moment
of the accident some sixty-five or seventy human beings, seated
and standing. They were of both sexes and of all ages; for it was
a Saturday evening in August, and many persons had, through the
confusion of the trains, been long delayed in their return from
the city to their homes at the sea-side. The first intimation the
passengers had of the danger impending over them was from the
sudden and lurid illumination of the car by the glare from the
head-light of the approaching locomotive. One of them who survived
the disaster, though grievously injured, described how he was
carelessly watching a young man standing in the aisle, laughing
and gayly chatting with four young girls, who were seated, when he
saw him turn and instantly his face, in the sudden blaze of the
head-light, assumed a look of frozen horror which was the single
thing in the accident indelibly impressed on the survivor's memory;
that look haunted him. The car was crowded to its full capacity, and
the colliding locomotive struck it with such force as to bury itself
two-thirds of its length in it. At the instant of the crash a panic
had seized upon the passengers, and a sort of rush had taken place
to the forward end of the car, into which furniture, fixtures and
human beings were crushed in a shapeless, indistinguishable mass.
Meanwhile the blow had swept away the smoke-stack of the locomotive,
and its forward truck had been forced back in some unaccountable way
until it rested between its driving wheels and the tender, leaving
the entire boiler inside of the passenger car and supported on its
rear truck. The valves had been so broken as to admit of the free
escape of the scalding steam, while the coals from the fire-box
were scattered among the _débris_, and coming in contact with the
fluid from the broken car lamps kindled the whole into a rapid
blaze. Neither was the fire confined to the last car of the train.
It has been mentioned that in the block at Everett a locomotive
returning to Salem had found itself stopped just in advance of the
accommodation train. At the suggestion of the engine-driver of that
train this locomotive had there coupled on to it, and consequently
made a part of it at Revere. When the collision took place,
therefore, the four cars of which the accommodation train was made
up were crushed between the weight of the entire colliding train on
one side and that of two locomotives on the other. That they were
not wholly demolished was due simply to the fact that the last car
yielded to the blow, and permitted the locomotive of the express
train fairly to imbed itself in it. As it was, the remaining cars
were jammed and shattered, and, though the passengers in them
escaped, the oil from the broken lamps ignited, and before the
flames could be extinguished the cars were entirely destroyed.
This accident resulted in the death of twenty-nine persons, and
in more or less severe injuries to fifty-seven others. No person,
not in the last car of the accommodation train was killed, and
one only was seriously injured. Of those in the last car more
than half lost their lives; many instantly by crushing, others by
inhaling the scalding steam which poured forth from the locomotive
boiler into the wreck, and which, where it did not kill, inflicted
frightful injuries. Indeed, for the severity of injuries and for the
protractedness of agony involved in it, this accident has rarely, if
ever, been exceeded. Crushing, scalding and burning did their work
together.
It may with perfect truth be said that the disaster at Revere marked
an epoch in the history of railroad development in New England. At
the moment it called forth the deepest expression of horror and
indignation, which, as usual in such cases, was more noticeable for
its force than for its wisdom. An utter absence of all spirit of
justice is, indeed, a usual characteristic of the more immediate
utterances, both from the press and on the platform, upon occasions
of this character. Writers and orators seem always to forget that,
next to the immediate sufferers and their families, the unfortunate
officials concerned are the greatest losers by railroad accidents.
For them, not only reputation but bread is involved. A railroad
employé implicated in the occurrence of an accident lives under a
stigma. And yet, from the tenor of public comment it might fairly be
supposed that these officials are in the custom of plotting to bring
disasters about, and take a fiendish delight in them. Nowhere was
this ever illustrated more perfectly than in Massachusetts during
the last days of August and the early days of September, 1871. Grave
men--men who ought to have known better--indulged in language which
would have been simply ludicrous save for the horror of the event
which occasioned but could not justify it. A public meeting, for
instance, was held at the town of Swampscott on the evening of the
Monday succeeding the catastrophe. The gentleman who presided over
it very discreetly, in his preliminary remarks, urged those who
proposed to join in the discussion to control their feelings. Hardly
had he ceased speaking, however, when Mr. Wendell Phillips was
noticed among the audience, and immediately called to the platform.
His remarks were a most singular commentary on the chairman's
injunction to calmness. He began by announcing that the first
requisite to the formation of a healthy public opinion in regard
to railroad accidents, as other things, was absolute frankness of
speech, and he then proceeded as follows:--"So I begin by saying
that to my mind this terrible disaster, which has made the last
thirty-six hours so sad to us all, is a deliberate murder. I think
we should try to get rid in the public mind of any real distinction
between the individual who, in a moment of passion or in a moment of
heedlessness, takes the life of one fellow-man, and the corporation
that in a moment of greed, of little trouble, of little expense, of
little care, of little diligence, takes lives by wholesale. I think
the first requisite of the public mind is to say that there is no
accident in the case, properly speaking. It is a murder; the guilt
of murder rests somewhere."
Mr. Phillip's definition of the crime of "deliberate murder"
would apparently somewhat unsettle the criminal law as at present
understood, but he was not at all alone in this bathos of
extravagance. Prominent gentlemen seemed to vie with each other
in their display of ignorance. Mr. B. F. Butler, for instance,
suggested his view of the disaster and the measure best calculated
to prevent a repetition of it; which last was certainly original,
inasmuch as he urged the immediate raising of the pay of all
engine-men until a sufficiently high order of ability and education
should be brought into the occupation to render impossible the
recurrence of an accident which was primarily caused by the
negligence, not of an engineer, but of a conductor. Another
gentleman described with much feeling his observations during a
recent tour in Europe, and declared that such a catastrophe as that
at Revere would have been impossible there. As a matter of fact
the official reports not only showed that the accident was one of
a class of most frequent occurrence, but also that sixty-one cases
of it had occurred in Great Britain alone during the very year the
gentleman in question was journeying in Europe, and had occasioned
over six hundred cases of death or personal injury. Perhaps, in
order to illustrate how very reckless in statement a responsible
gentleman talking under excitement may become, it is worth while to
quote in his own language Captain Tyler's brief description of one
of those sixty-one accidents which "could not possibly," but yet
did, occur. As miscellaneous reading it is amusing.
"As four London & North-Western excursion trains on September
2, 1870, were returning from a volunteer review at Penrith,
the fourth came into collision at Penruddock with the third of
those trains. An hundred and ten passengers and three servants
of the company were injured. These trains were partly in charge
of acting guards, some of whom were entirely inexperienced, as
well in the line as in their duties; and of engine-drivers and
firemen, of whom one, at all events, was very much the worse for
liquor. The side-lamps on the hind van of the third train were
obscured by a horse-box, which was wider than the van. There
were no special means of protection to meet the exceptional
contingency of three such trains all stopping on their way from
the eastward, to cross two others from the westward, at this
station. And the regulations for telegraphing the trains were
altogether neglected."