Retro Baltimore: Echoes of the Key Bridge collapse in the 1883 Tivoli disaster on the Patapsco River

The other Baltimore maritime tragedy linked to the Patapsco River seldom gets mentioned today.

On the night of July 23,1883, 63 people — 34 women, 23 children and six men — died when a timber pier at the old Tivoli park collapsed in more than 9 feet of water.

They drowned in Eastern Baltimore County while on a summer church-sponsored outing in the North Point-Sparrows Point area.

It was called the Tivoli disaster and became a national news event. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat headed its account of the sad events a “Carnival of Death.”

The tragedy had innocent origins. Sellers sold passage and admission tickets for some weeks before this outing. The ticket got you a ride down the Patapsco River on a barge pulled by a tug to a waterside picnic grounds.

The event was sponsored by the Mount Royal Benevolent Society, which was founded by members of the then-new Roman Catholic parish, Corpus Christi Church.

The day-trippers lived on Cathedral or Dolphin streets or on Fort Avenue in Locust Point. A number lived on Stirling Street in Oldtown. One woman was from Cockeysville.

The event started that morning along the downtown wharves. A tug boat named Cockade City pulled a barge outfitted for passengers out of the commercial harbor, past Fort Carroll to the Tivoli picnic grove.

The tug and barge made multiple trips down the Patapsco and back throughout the day.

The day-trippers had a good time and remained into the later evening.

“At nine o’clock the [Cockade City] arrived at the wharf for her last complement. Pretty well tired out, and anxious to secure good seats, the people made a rush to get on board as soon as the barge made fast the pier,” The New York Times reported.

“Suddenly a crash was heard and in an instant the end of the pier was seen to give way and a wild cry of agony was heard from the unfortunate persons who went down into the water with the debris of the wharf,” The Times said.

“When the barge approached, all those on the shore made a rush for the end of the wharf,” The Sun reported as part of its coverage.

William Doyle, a Battery Avenue resident who worked in a wood sawing business, shed his outer clothes and jumped in to rescue those he could, The Sun reported.

Corpus Christi’s pastor, Father William Starr, was on the shore and witnessed the pier collapse. He also officiated at some of the funerals of his congregation.

“Darkness added to the confusion and terror, and little could be done at once to rescue the drowning, most of whom were women and children.”

Word of the events reached Baltimore City after midnight. The barge pulled into Fells Point’s Henderson Wharf with the bodies of the drowned.

The Sun brought out a special edition of the paper the next afternoon, July 24, 1883. Then the funerals began.

“Four coffins, carrying the bodies of John McAnenay, Annie, his wife, and Alice and Mamie, their little children, passed up the aisle in mourning procession, followed by a sorrowing multitude. … Just in the rear of the last little coffin was Johnny, aged ten years, the only survivor of the family, crying bitterly,” said The Sun’s account of a funeral at Corpus Christi.

Not all who died were Catholics. A Sun news report said that nearly 5,000 mourners gathered outside the home of the T.D. Crouch family on Montgomery Street before a funeral at the Warren Street Methodist Church.

Mother and daughter Bertha and Rebecca Ehrman were buried from the Eden Street Synagogue.

Tivoli’s owners were charged immediately with manslaughter. The pier owners were found not guilty when a trial was held a year later at the Towson Courthouse.

Years later, when the Corpus Christi congregation added a tall stone steeple, large clock and set of bells to the church, each evening, at a little after 7 p.m., those chimes played a tune set to the words of the Psalm: “Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord.”