- Dates
- 1909-06-25 – 1909-06-26
- Kind
- Rescue
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- maritimeheritage
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
Kenneth Gallagher and Bertrand McDonough, both described as nine-year-old boys from Saint James, Beaver Island, were rescued after drifting on a raft made of three cedar ties. The July 1909 report says they went too far from shore, were caught by an off-shore wind that became a gale, and spent Friday and Friday night on the water before the tug Violet rescued them Saturday.
Evidence and limits
The report is retrospective and says the episode occurred “last week.” The June 25–26 dates are therefore calendrical reconstruction from the July 3 issue’s Friday/Saturday sequence, not dates printed as numerals in the article. The article does not give the boys’ parents, later lives, the exact launch or rescue coordinates, or the names of the other tugs that went out.
The boys are represented with event qualifiers so their identities are not silently merged with other Gallagher or McDonough records on the basis of surname alone.
Open questions
- Can parish, census, school, or later island records identify either boy beyond this report?
- Where exactly did the raft leave shore and where did the Violet find it?
- Which other tugs joined the search?
See also
Sources
- Charlevoix County Herald, July 3, 1909, “Adrift on a Raft.”The report names Kenneth Gallagher and Bertrand McDonough as nine-year-old Saint James boys, describes their cedar-tie raft drifting through Friday night in a gale, and says the Violet rescued them Saturday. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- The held raw OCR preserves the same named-person and rescue account independently of the normalized Markdown rendering.
Added 1 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Rescue of Kenneth Gallagher and Bertrand McDonough from a Raft”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/raft-rescue-of-kenneth-gallagher-and-bertrand-mcdonough-1909/, accessed [date], citing Charlevoix County Herald, July 3, 1909, “Adrift on a Raft.” (and 1 further source listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-01. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
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