A Sandhog Scare: The Story of Marshall Mabey

Walking through the city streets you hear them. The crunching rumble, the whoosh of air and debris rushing out of the way, the screech of metal and steam. The subway system of New York City is responsible for the transportation of millions of people taking them through the over 600 miles of track snaking through Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Elevated railroads were constructed in the city as early as 1867 but with the subway system, the construction and intense labor was magnified with the need to create a massive network of tunnels underground. The job of digging the tunnels was extremely dangerous and starting in 1872 the men who undertook the incredible task of building the veins of New York City were given the name “Sandhogs”. Everyday tasks for Sandhogs were laced with incredible dangers from the frequent handling of explosives, mudslides, falling rock, and the ever-present threat of a collapse. Of the nearly 30,000 men that helped build the first tracks (all for the daily wage of $1.00) one man in particular came face to face with the lethal dangers of his job when everything suddenly went dark. Shortly after he “saw the light” in an unimaginable way.

Marshall Mabey was a twenty-eight year old Sandhog who went to work on the morning of February 19th 1916 anticipating nothing more than the normal grueling labor that digging a subway line would entail. Mabey moved to New York from England in 1910 and soon got his first job working on the tunnel of the Astoria Heat, Light, & Power Company from Casino Beach to Manhattan. Once completed the tunnel being worked on this morning would bring people in and out of Montague Street in Brooklyn, but today Mabey and two other Sandhogs were working in a spot laying nearly twenty feet under the East River.

Sandhogs working on the early NYC subway system

Digging a tunnel that ran underneath a river made the job even more dangerous with the immense weight of earth and water pressing down above you leaving nowhere to go should disaster happen. Compressed air was pushed into the tunnel to prevent it from caving in but it was the same air that was keeping the hollowed-out earth intact that was about to turn a normal workday into a terrifying ordeal. While going through the tunnels Mabey found an 18 inch crack forming on a section of protective metal ceiling called a “shield” in the Clarke Street-Old Slip tunnel. An opening like this underground was a horrifying discovery and with very little time to react a pocket of compressed air began to pull Mabey toward the quickly growing hole. Tools flew past him and disappeared into the void, then he fellow workers were pulled past him and vanished. He scrambled, trying wildly to grab a pipe to save himself but had no luck, he was sucked into the crevice.

He clenched his eyes shut expecting the worst but suddenly Mabey felt a tremendous amount of pressure squeezing him as something whooshed past his body. It was mud. Within moments the mud was replaced by water and Mabey was shot out of the East River in a geyser that sent him twenty-five feet into the air before he crashed back into the freezing water. He was dazed, but Marshall Mabey had just survived being sucked up and pushed through almost twenty feet of riverbed, through the East River itself, being shot through the air and slamming back into the water. Not only was he alive, he was without injury. After finding a place to hold on, men on a nearby pier saw Mabey and threw him a rope. He was dragged out of the water and rushed to Brooklyn Hospital.

The medical staff tending to Mabey after his ordeal were stunned. The 5’5” man suffered nothing more than some bruises on his hips and legs. Fellow Sandhogs who visited him in the hospital were amazed he did not suffer from “the bends” considering their strict workplace rules requiring them to remain in decompression chambers for seventeen minutes before being permitted to go into the open air after working a full day under twenty-three pounds of air pressure. The news was not all good though, the other two men who were working with Mabey that day, Michael McCarthy and Frank Driver, did not survive and their bodies were found in the river.

Decompression chamber used by Sandhogs before their return above ground

The damage to the tunnel was extensive with water filling the tube putting construction on hold until repairs could be made. After returning to his home in Queens the next day Mabey spoke to multiple newspapers telling about his experience and describing the feeling going through the riverbed by saying “As I struck the mud it felt as if something was squeezing me tighter than I had ever been squeezed”. He continued “I am a good swimmer and I kept my mouth shut and came up to the surface. I had my big rubber boots on and they bothered me but I managed somehow to keep my head above the surface. Men threw me a rope and I held on until I was taken out of the water.” He told the New York Evening Journal that while he was airborne “The last thing I recall was seeing the Brooklyn Bridge while I was whirling around in the air.”

The East River and the Brooklyn Bridge circa 1915-1916

When asked about what her husband endured Mrs. Mabey simply stated “Of course I know that Marshall is in danger every time he goes to work but all work is dangerous and my husband is as careful as he can be. His job is a good one and I am glad he has it.”

Newspaper article written about Mabey’s trip through the riverbed

Marshall Mabey returned to work the following week, was able to witness the official opening of the subway tunnel in 1920, and continued working as a New York City Sandhog for an additional twenty-five years.

Today one of the air compressors from that fateful day in February 1916 resides at the New York Transit Museum located in Brooklyn, New York.