Graham's performances, possibly, were also of some practical value. It was proven to the observant that a particular shape of cask might, under certain conditions, be used to draw feeble or sickly passengers from a wrecked ship in bad weather, for a woman or a child could have lived in Graham's machine as well as the cooper himself; however, the circumstances are few under which it would be useful, and Graham, by his own account, had no idea of applying his contrivance in any such way.
It is a question whether the barrel-cranks made any money by their foolhardy feats. That nothing interests callous men like the risk of a human life is undoubtedly true and has been proved by the whole history of amusement. The interest must depend on sight. Nobody would pay merely to know that at a specified hour Blondin was risking his life a hundred miles off. The man in the cask would not be seen, and to see a closed cask go bobbing about down five miles of rapids would not be an exciting amusement, more especially as, after two or three successful trials, the notion of any imminency or inevitableness of actual danger would disappear from the spectator's mind. Captain Webb, of course, expected his speculation to pay him; but then, it was in a somewhat different way. He did not expect any money from those who gazed from the shore, but believed,—as did also the speculators who paid him—that if he swam Niagara, he would revive the waning interest in his really splendid feats of customary swimming.
Copying somewhat the idea that Graham had developed so successfully, George Hazlett and William Potts, also coopers of Buffalo, made a trip through the Rapids in a barrel of their own construction on August 8, 1886. The barrel they used more closely resembled the familiar type of barrel, having no unusual features of form. In this same barrel used by the two coopers, Miss Sadie Allen and George Hazlett made a trip through the Niagara Gorge on November 28, 1886. There was then, I believe, a cessation of the barrel-fiends, who, nevertheless, re-appeared in the twentieth century.
At the end of the summer of 1901, Martha E. Wagenfuhrer, the wife of a professional wrestler, announced that she would go through the river in a barrel, the date of September 6th being selected, possibly because the woman believed that she might have a President of the United States in her audience, for on that day President McKinley visited Niagara. Quite a crowd collected, for she was the first woman to try the feat alone. She was rescued after being in the water over an hour.
It was nearly six o'clock in the afternoon [to quote the New York Times of September 7, 1901,] when the barrel containing Martha E. Wagenfuhrer was set adrift on the lower Niagara River, to be carried by the currents into the rapids and vortex of the Whirlpool. The trip through the rapids was quickly made, but the rescue from the Whirlpool was delayed. Night fell before the barrel was recovered, and the woman's friends had availed themselves of the help of a powerful searchlight to illuminate the rushing tossing waters of the pool. She started at 5.56 o'clock, and it was 7 o'clock when the barrel was landed. The head of the cask had to be broken in in order to get the woman out. She was in a semi-conscious condition. Before entering the barrel she had indulged freely in liquor, but when she got out her first call was for water.
Female barrel-fiends now followed in rapid succession. Maud Willard of Canton, Ohio, lost her life on the 7th of September, 1901, in navigating the Whirlpool Rapids in Graham's barrel. Graham, as we have seen, had made five successful trips, and Miss Willard desired to attain fame by doing the same. She and Graham were good friends, and to please her he was to swim from the Whirlpool to Lewiston following her trip through the Rapids. The barrel was taken to the river in the morning. It was an enormous affair, made of oak, and at 4 o'clock Miss Willard got into it, accompanied by her pet dog. The cover was put over the manhole, and she was taken out into the stream in tow of a small boat, and left to the mercy of the currents.
Miss Willard passed safely through the Rapids, but the mighty maelstrom then held her far out from shore, where her friends and would-be rescuers could not reach her. From 4.40 o'clock until after 10 o'clock at night she was whirled about in the peculiar formation of the Niagara here. Messengers were sent to Niagara Falls to have the searchlight car of the electric line sent down the Gorge; huge bonfires were built to warm the spectators, and likewise to illuminate the river. Soon a beam of white light shot across the waters from the American to the Canadian side; now and then the tossing barrel could be seen tumbling and bobbing, and rolling in the currents. The latter were then suddenly changing—first a piece of wood came in drifting toward shore—within a short time the barrel hove in sight within the light of the beacons, and men swam out to catch it.
When the manhole cover was removed, Miss Willard was limp and lifeless. Death probably came gradually, and possibly without much suffering. The little dog came out alive, and none the worse for the perilous trip.
While she was tossing in the Whirlpool, Graham made his trip to Lewiston, the only person who ever swam from the pool to Lewiston. When he returned up the Gorge he found the barrel and Miss Willard still in the terrible pool.