Legendary Niagara River rescue remembered

Monday night, alongside the Niagara River on the Canadian side, over a hundred people to remember something that one of the most daring rescues the Niagara and Western New York region has ever seen.  

On August 6^th, 1918, a scow broke free from a tug boat after it was dredging upstream. There were two men aboard.  Less than 2,000 feet from the falls, they dropped the bottom of the boat, stopping it 200 yards from the Canadian shore. They were stranded. 

The U.S Coast Guard rushed up from Youngstown. They shot a rope from a cannon to the men.

Dangling from the rope was a sling on pulley. While it was being pulled out to the men. It became tangled.

The next day, a man named William "Red" Hill Sr. volunteered to fix the two men's only life line.

“I'm going to go out there and I'm going to untangle the lines, and he did. And then he did it twice.  It was actually quite remarkable,” said Janice Thomson, the chair of the Niagara Parks Commission.

Hours later, the two men were rescued.

One-hundred years later, the Niagara Parks Commission and the relatives of the rescue workers, unveiled new plaques commemorating the daring rescue.

They know one day, the relic in the Niagara, will disappear, but they hope this story never washes away.

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