The Geyser Riders

The ‘sandhogs” who dug the subway line between Brooklyn and Manhattan used pressurized air to support their work. Occasionally, a hole would develop, and the response was to stick a sandbag in it. Sometimes this was not enough, as Dick Creedon found out on March 28th, 1905. He was sucked into the soil above the tunnel, pushed through the river, and blasted thirty feet into the air -and lived to tell about it! He later told the New York Times,

“Pooh! Pooh! It didn’t amount to such a lot. There were the four of us, and we were looking for a little trouble with the riverbed. Jack Hughes yells for bags, and as the boys pass them up I grabs them and puts them at the hole when I was drawed into the flow and shot out at the other end. Then all the sudden I strikes water and opens my eyes. I was flying through the air, and before I comes down I had a fine view of the city.”

Creedon had another experience with pressurized air sending him through the mud, when he broke the barrier between the two working ends of the dig. Read the stories of Dick Creedon and other “geyser riders” at Curious Expeditions. Link