Although it had been seven years since the British liner Titanic had struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, losing fifteen hundred passengers at sea, people still remembered the disaster vividly. But all that seemed far away on this beautiful Sunday morning. Children in Tuscaloosa and the surrounding towns had been looking forward all week to Sunday afternoon, when Mr. S. F. Alston, a prominent Tuscaloosa banker and businessman, promised them a free holiday excursion on the Black Warrior River aboard his forty-foot yacht, the Mary Frances.
Sunday morning, June 15, 1919, dawned hot and clear in west Alabama. The Great War in Europe had been over for almost a year. President Woodrow Wilson was planning a countrywide speaking tour on behalf of the League of Nations. News in Alabama focused on Prohibition, which had been instituted earlier in the year. The Tuscaloosa News reported that in south Georgia "moonshine booze" was rumored to be made in ice cream freezers because, unlike whiskey stills, there was "no smoke to it as a give-away." In Tuscaloosa, Theda Bara was starring in Salome showing at the Belvedere cinema. A newspaper notice promised that the film would show "Ancient Judea in all its unrelieved barbaric splendor, all its pagan unrestraint" and assured would-be viewers that "the intensity of its climax [would] set a new record for sensation."
Although it had been seven years since the British liner Titanic had struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, losing fifteen hundred passengers at sea, people still remembered the disaster vividly. But all that seemed far away on this beautiful Sunday morning. Children in Tuscaloosa and the surrounding towns had been looking forward all week to Sunday afternoon, when Mr. S. F. Alston, a prominent Tuscaloosa banker and businessman, promised them a free holiday excursion on the Black Warrior River aboard his forty-foot yacht, the Mary Frances. |
From the VaultRead complete classic articles and departments featured in Alabama Heritage magazine in the past 35 years of publishing. You'll find in-depth features along with quirky and fun departments that cover the people, places, and events that make our state great! Archives
October 2023
Categories
All
|