New-York tribune., 1909-10-18
TWO SOLDIERS ESCAPE
THROUGH BATH BEACH
SEWER TO FREEDOM.
Military Prisoners Working at Fort
Hamilton Flee When Sentry
Turns His Head.

: Two privates belonging to the I'd and the 1oth
REGIMENTS Of cavalry stationed at Governors
Island, made their escape on Saturday night
from the military prison at Fort Hamilton. IL
&c believed that both men escaped through the
Bath Beach sewer. which runs from Bath Beaeh
TO New York Bay, a distance of mile. Both
soldiers are known to be men of reckless daring,
who would stop at no chance. however slight
shouli their liberty hang in the balance.
} The men who adopted the sensational means
oF escane are John Drummer twenty-one years
old of the ID Cavalry, and Charles A. Cornell.
tvventv-four years DID, of the 18th. They had
been prisoners on the reservation at Fort Ham
ilton for several months on charges of inSubor-
dination, and were watched more closely than
is the ordinary prisoner owing to their previous
records 1t was just as dusk was coming on
on Saturday evening that the two cavalrymen
saw their opportunity to escape and they made
short shift of it, They were engaged in raking
I'D leaves near the parade g. Ids at the time
under guard of a sentry from the 9Sth Com
pany Coast Artillery. AS the sent-v turned his
back for an instant, the two prisoners dropped
their rakes and ran swiftly in a northeasterly
direction.
The sound of the mems feet the hard road
aroused the sentry's attention. and he wheeled
in his tracks to discover the two men fully a
u
the fleeing soldiers but they lodged the bullets
by running in zigzag fashion from side to side
of the road. Desire for freedom lent wings to
their feet and despite the efforts of the sentry
and of half a hundred soldiers who had been
brought out from the barracks by the shots
they scaled a fence the Dyker Heights
Meadows and disappeared. Within two minutes
afterward the whole garrison had been turned
out and the search for the deserters was begun.
Major Herman Schum, in command of the
fort, ordered Lieutenant Boatwright. with twenty
men, to make an exhaustive search on the res
ervation Each man armed with his rifle
and lantern. and not spot on the grounds
was left uneXamined without result All through
the inly blackness of the Dylzer Meadows. stem
ping every little while into pools of water in the
swampland, the searChers made their way vet
without trace of the fugitives Both prisoners
were dressed in the dark brown prison uniforms
and this made it impossible to follow their
movements in the fast gathering gloom
The hunt for the men was finally abandoned
at 10 O'Clock but an hour afterward word was
brought to the commanding officer that the two
men had been to board a trolley car az
Fifth avenue and seth street. The report had
it that the soldiers had discarded their uniforms
for checked suits and wore derby hats.
All day yesterday the hunt for the deserters
tained, and their whereabouts remained a mys-
terry II not until last night that soldiers
beating in the brush in the Dyker Meadows
came across uncovered manhole Investiea-
ton showed that this opened into the Bath
Beach sewer. and that the entrance was ample
enough to admit of the passing of a man Lad
ders were procured and the searchers descended
into the sewer, and with lanterns tried to find
some trace of Drummer and Cornell but with
out success. 1t was found that the sewer was
fully twenty feet in diameter, with only about
two feet of water running through. II was this
sewer through which the city authorities OF
Brooklyn drove in an automobile on the occasion
of it's official opening. What the soldiers did
when they reached the emptying of the giant
sewer is problematical. as it opens directly into
the waters of the bay. II is the opinion of the
officers of Fort Hamilton that previous escapes
of prisoners have been effected in the same
manner.
Drummer is the man who escaped from Fort
Hamilton last August and made his way to
Danbury. Conn., where he was arrested for
stealing pair of trousers from line. He said
at the time that he his way to Walling-
ford, Conn. to see his dying father.