From the Buffalo News:
In an age long before cell phones, word spread quickly, and soon, hundreds of people were focused on a spot about 850 yards from the Niagara River shore, about a half-mile from the brink of the Horseshoe Falls.
Looking back were two men from Buffalo, perched atop a scow they prayed would stay lodged on rocks in the roiling rapids.
Ninety years ago Thursday, Niagara Falls, an area where showmen and stuntmen staged many a spectacle, witnessed one of its most memorable dramas.
The Aug. 7, 1918, rescue of James
H. Harris and Gustave F. Lofberg from a barge that, to this day, remains a curiosity for tourists also cemented the legend of William “Red†Hill Sr. as probably the greatest of the Niagara’s rivermen.