![]() The ship was designed as a towboat, with accommodations for a small crew. ![]() It was also the first time the Norman had ever carried passengers. In fact, this would be the Norman’s first voyage using the new system, which replaced the coal bunkers in the hold with huge tanks carrying tons of fuel. Less than a year old, the ship was modern in every way, and the inefficient coal-burning system originally installed on her had been converted to oil just a few weeks before. The Norman was a sternwheeler, 114 feet long, with twin smokestacks and two decks. The two boats would be used to carry more than 150 engineers and their families to view the big revetment project under way at Pinckney Landing, some 20 miles south of the city.Ī little before noon, both vessels pulled into the channel and slowly chugged downstream. The Mid-South Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers was holding its first annual meeting in Memphis, and the Engineers Club of Memphis had arranged a special outing for the convention delegates. Army Corps of Engineers vessels converted to a special use that day. Two other boats, both much larger and grander than Lee’s craft, also pulled out of Memphis that morning. It would be an easy task, though any work on the water had a special danger for Lee - he had never learned to swim. Lee served as a jack-of-all-trades for the firm, and his job today was to ferry his boss downriver to Helena, Arkansas, and then return to Memphis. Hunter, a Memphis company doing levee repair work along the river. The 39-year-old roustabout was employed by C.W. On the sunny spring morning of May 8, 1925, Tom Lee cranked up the outboard motor on the battered wooden boat he called the Zev and headed downstream. This is the story of Tom Lee, a true Memphis hero. Today, his brave deeds are largely forgotten, brought to mind only when visitors pause to admire the two monuments - one old, one new - erected in the riverfront park named after him. Lee became a national celebrity in 1925, when he pulled more than 30 people from the swirling waters of the Mississippi River after the steamer M.E. Spitting and gasping, she looked up into the face of her savior, a black river worker named Tom Lee. In a flash, a muscled arm thrust into the water, gripped the woman by her hair, and awkwardly yanked her into a tiny boat. Struggling feebly, she slowly sank, until only her long blonde hair trailed on the surface of the brown stream … When she tried to scream out, the muddy water gushed into her throat, choking her. She had no life preserver, and her heavy, waterlogged dress twisted around her legs. ![]() Frantically, she kicked and splashed in a desperate effort to stay afloat. The riverbank seemed impossibly far away, and there was nothing in the water to grab hold of. The current was swift, the water surprisingly cold. In less than a minute the boat rolled over, pitching the young woman and her fellow passengers into the river.
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