| Notes |
- Baltimore Sun, February 17, 1936
3 Boys Brave Gwynn?s Falls In Raft Till Ice Ends Argosy
Police On Pins and Needles Watching Flimsy Craft
Bob Toward Patapsco, But All?s Well When Lads Get Stuck
Three intrepid boatmen ? two of the 12 years old, the other 16 ? navigated the turbulent channel of Gwynn?s Falls late yesterday afternoon on a ten-foot raft normally used as a repair stage by the Gas and Electric Company.
They were Larkin Bass, 16, of 1232 Ostend street; Vernon Strobel, 13, of 1215 James street, and Oswald Mand, Jr., 12, of 1320 Sargeant street.
At the end of two hours, the explorers were informed by the police and waiting Gas and Electric Company employes that they had negotiated the briny deep between Three-Cent Bridge, Westport, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad dump.
Whatever the destination, the venture managed to attract the attention of the police boat George G. Henry. The craft could not get near the raft however, because of ice.
It was the same ice that finally brought the raft expedition to its end. The raft got stuck. Otherwise, the police said, it might easily have been swept past the Spring Garden section and out into the main Patapsco channel.
The adventurers, who made land about 5.30 P.M., where not without their comforts. On the raft a steady fire burned in a large can.
Bass, apparently the leader of the expedition, said he could have controlled the raft indefinitely with the aid of his pair of crude poles. The spectators, who noted the raft spinning rapidly about as it washed down the stream, were not so sure.
As the trio landed near the dump they raced across it in an effort to elude their well-wishers ashore. But they raced in the wrong direction ? straight into the arms of the police, who took their names, but let them go.
|