After the first momentary paralysis which these announcements occasioned, the whole population was seized with a wild panic. An irresistible desire for immediate flight seemed to possess them in a moment, and a scene began which beggared description, and whose like has probably never been seen before or since.
"Anything to get uptown or out of town," seemed to be the cry.
Husbands who had gone to business as usual, early in the morning, telephoned to their wives and children to meet them at High Bridge, at the Grand Central Station, or at some of the landing places of the steamboats going up the Hudson River. The Sound boats were tabooed, by reason of a rumor that the attacking fleet had been divided into two sections, and that one division was coming through Long Island Sound to attack the city from the Hell Gate side.
By ten o'clock on the morning of the 16th of May, the flight had fairly commenced. Frantic crowds of men, women and children, thronged every possible avenue of departure from the doomed cities, and pushed and pulled and struggled and wrestled with each other, in their wild and headlong rush to reach their several points of escape. The streets leading to the Grand Central Station in Forty-second Street, were blocked for nearly half a mile in every direction, by carriages, cabs, and express wagons, as well as by hurrying and anxious pedestrians, all rushing pell mell to get beyond the reach of the terrible bombshells.
Many amusing tales were told as tending to illustrate the absolute and unreasoning terror of the fugitives.
"Where to?" inquired the railway ticket seller of an excited and pale faced man, whose hands trembled violently as he handed a roll of bills in through the ticket window.
"Oh! Anywhere! Albany; Buffalo; Chicago; Denver! Anywhere to get beyond the reach of those d—d shells," was the trembling response. The train service was doubled and quadrupled.
Passengers took no thought as to whether or not they could secure seats; but packed themselves in like sardines, filling the aisles and closets and platforms of the cars to suffocation. The entire passenger equipment of the road was called into requisition, and utterly failed to supply the demand; and milk, freight, and ordinary platform and gravel cars were pressed into the service; and the crazy fugitives absolutely fought each other for precedence in securing positions on them.
Similar scenes were enacted at all the railway stations and steamboat docks. The "Mary Powell," a passenger steamboat, which then ran every afternoon up the Hudson River to Rondout, was obliged to leave her slip more than an hour before her regular starting time, simply because the people could not be prevented from forcing themselves on board of her, even after she was dangerously overcrowded.
Numerous excursion steamboats were pressed into the service, and the most exorbitant prices were paid for tugs and launches, or craft of any kind, on which persons could reach places of comparative safety up the river. Similarly all sorts of wheeled vehicles were pressed into the traffic; and the east and west drives of Central Park were crowded with hurrying fugitives of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, in public and private carriages, cabs, hansoms, omnibuses, butcher carts, dumping carts, and grocery and express wagons. Even hearses were utilized as a means of escape; and the mad prank of a lot of Columbia College students, shocked a great many people, and amused a great many more.