Peter Espeut | After the Kendal crash

On September 1, 1957 – 66 years ago today – hundreds of parishioners of St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church in Kingston boarded a train at the Kingston Railway Station for an all-day excursion to Montego Bay. Their pastor – Fr Charles Eberle SJ – had chartered a train for the day consisting of two diesel engines and 12 wooden coaches. On the way back the train – overloaded with free riders, some of them vandals – derailed near Kendal in Manchester, resulting in the second worst railway disaster in the world at the time, and Jamaica’s worst to date.

Eight of the 12 wooden coaches were wrecked, with the dead and injured inside, underneath and on top, and bodies and body parts were strewn over a wide area. Some persons died on impact, many died from being spiked by splinters from the wooden coaches, and various other injuries.

I have taken a special interest in this incident as presently I am pastorally responsible for St Anne’s Church, on the corner of Oxford Street and Percy Street on the borderline between Hannah Town and Denham Town. In my research I have found an eyewitness account (never before published) describing the efforts of Catholic priests based in Mandeville to minister to the victims of the disaster. I reproduce it here.

“The telephone operator phoned us at 12:40 a.m. Frs Ernest, Dunstan and William took the Holy Oils and headed for Kendal. At the station we climbed the embankment and made our way on foot along the tracks to the scene of the accident. Dead, dying and injured lay along the tracks and in the fields nearby. Survivors grouped around tiny fires. Darkness hampered the work of rescue. The only light we had was electric torches and a lantern we borrowed from a trainman.

Injured were being loaded into a boxcar, so while Fr Ernest went along the tracks, Fathers Dunstan and William climbed into the boxcar and started administering the sacraments. In a short time the car was so filled with the wounded that we could hardly avoid stepping on the victims in order to pass from one to another.

When finished in the boxcar we took off among the rest of the injured near the tracks, in the fields and under the cars. Fr Brannon SJ arrived from May Pen, Frs Eberle and Mallette SJ were already on the scene since they had been on the train, and near morning, Frs Tobin and Alexander SJ arrived from Kingston.

RESCUE

After tending to the spiritual administration, the Fathers joined in the work of rescue. Fr Ernest took the first car of injured (our own GMC) to the Spaldings Hospital, then went to Christiana to awaken Fr Anthony who came to the wreck and started bringing victims to the Spaldings Hospital. About 5 a.m. Frs Dunstan and William returned to Mandeville, said Mass, and then went to the hospital in Mandeville where the victims were now arriving in trucks supplied mostly by the bauxite companies. Alumina Jamaica had bulldozed a road of sorts from the auto road into the scene of the wreck so the injured could be removed.

The sisters in Mandeville had been alerted about 4:30 a.m. and began to turn the school into a receiving station. Sixty patients were sent to Mt St Joseph’s Academy, so we had our own temporary hospital with the sisters, two doctors, two nurses and some dozen nurses’ aides and lay help to care for the sick. The dead were brought to the Mandeville Hospital where they were laid on the lawn for identification.

The rains came and the task of providing coffins and placing the dead in them became a difficult task. Alumina Jamaica had its carpenters at the plant going full time making the coffins. Hundreds of people came from Kingston to look for their relatives and friends and had the sad task of going from hospital to hospital to morgue looking for their dear ones.

On the third day a mass funeral was held at the place of the accident and some 88 or more unidentified dead were laid to rest in graves prepared along the tracks. Frs Anthony and William attended this service, performing the Catholic ritual of burial.

UNDER CONTROL

All day the rain kept coming making the work slippery and muddy. Gradually the situation came under control and after a week or so life in Mandeville came back to normal.

The injured were gradually removed to Kingston except the very serious. The death toll mounted day by day.

The Apostolic Nuncio came from Haiti to visit the victims and had lunch with us at Mandeville. A fund was started for the benefit of the sufferers and some 70,000 pounds collected. The final toll was probably never accurately counted, but the dead were listed around 186 and the injured between four and five hundred.”

The official toll was 171 dead and 700 injured. The Commission of Enquiry later attributed the cause of the accident to the closure of an angled wheel (brake) cock, probably due to vandalism. As a consequence of the crash, all the wooden coaches were replaced with metal coaches, and the Jamaica Government Railways (JGR) was reconstituted and renamed the Jamaica Railway Corporation (JRC).

The Friday of that week (September 8, 1957) was observed as a National Day of Mourning as world leaders sent messages of condolence and sympathy to the Jamaican people.

On September 1, 2007 – the 50th Anniversary of the Kendal Crash – a small group of Catholics set a table on the overgrown train tracks by the crash site, and celebrated Holy Mass in memory of the victims. Chief celebrant was the Rt Rev Msgr Kenneth Mock Yen (who as a young man was on the train that fateful day), assisted by the Rev Deacon Peter Espeut; the cantor was Mrs Velia Espeut.

Peter Espeut is a Roman Catholic Deacon and is pastoral administrator of St Anne’s Church. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com