‘We heard a click’: Chaos on Sapelo Island as dock gangway collapsed

Authorities have confirmed seven deaths and said Sunday morning that another three people were critically injured and still hospitalized. Those killed and injured were preparing to board a ferry back to the mainland on Georgia’s coast.

Authorities responded to the gangway collapse at the Marsh Landing Dock at approximately 4:30 p.m. Saturday, when about 20 people fell into the water. There were about 40 people on the gangway when it had a “catastrophic failure” and buckled in the center, according to officials.

Multiple agencies including the Department of Natural Resources, McIntosh County Fire Department, the McIntosh Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Coast Guard used boats with side-scan sonar and helicopters to search for survivors.

Some of the people who were hospitalized Saturday had been released by Sunday morning. Authorities do not believe there are any people unaccounted for, said Walter Rabon, commissioner for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Gullah Geechee residents are descendants of enslaved West Africans who worked the island’s plantations before emancipation and the Civil War. Today, fewer than 40 live full time on Sapelo Island, in a neighborhood known as Hog Hammock.

None of those killed or injured were residents of Sapelo Island, authorities said Sunday.

The ages of the deceased range from 73 to 93, McIntosh County Coroner Melvin Amerson said. The cause of death for all victims is under investigation pending autopsies that will be done later this week, he added.

Names of all the victims were not immediately made public. Among the deceased was Charles Houston, a chaplain for the Georgia Department of Public Safety, the agency announced.

Armstrong, 60, is part of the Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters, which had performed twice during the cultural festival on the island Saturday after taking a ferry from the mainland.

As visitors prepared to return to Meridian on Georgia’s mainland by ferry on Saturday afternoon, the gangway connecting Sapelo Island’s dock to the ferry collapsed, throwing dozens of people into the water.

“Everybody was fighting the water. I sprained every muscle in my body trying to fight that water to stay afloat and God sent an angel,” Armstrong, who works in nearby Darien, recounted Sunday.

Armstrong, who can’t swim, screamed for her fiance, Joe Young.

“I heard her say, ‘Joe!’” said Young, had also fallen in but is a good swimmer and rushed to Armstrong.

Young got to her but Armstrong panicked and was pulling him under.

“I threw her about three feet to land and I heard this white lady say, ‘I got you,’” said Young, who travels with Armstrong and the Ring Shouters.

Young continued fighting the current and turned to float on his back. People were throwing life jackets, but some were floating away, he recounted.

He damaged his knee. Both are still shaken by the harrowing experience.

“It was like we were in a movie,” said Armstrong. “I never thought this would happen to us.”

Back on the shore, she said, “there were so many bodies.”

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources operates the ferry that transports people to and from the island. The ferry is the only connection to the mainland.

“The gangway has been secured on Sapelo Island and the incident is currently under investigation,” the Department of Natural Resources said in a news release.

Two ferries were operating Saturday to accommodate the approximately 700 visitors who attended the heritage celebration. On a typical day, less than 100 people use the ferry and the gangway.

The dock and gangway were replaced in November 2021.

“Anything that’s man-made has some kind of limit. I’m not sure what it is in this case, but I’m told it should have handled the capacity that was on it at the time,” Rabon said Sunday.

Maurice Bailey, an island resident and Gullah, rushed from his house to the dock to help. Because it was low tide with the tide going out, it was pushing the people in the water up on to the shell beach to the south of the dock. That’s where the rescuers were pulling people out of the water, according to Bailey.

“We’ve never experienced something like this on Sapelo,” he said. “The aftermath was controlled chaos. Everybody who was able to help, helped. Our training kicked in.”

One of Georgia’s 14 barrier islands, Sapelo is located near the halfway point of the state’s coastline, about an hour’s drive south of Savannah.

President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday that the White House was in contact with state and local officials and ready to provide assistance if needed.

“What should have been a joyous celebration of Gullah-Geechee culture and history instead turned into tragedy and devastation,” he said.

Credit: Adam Van Brimmer

Credit: Adam Van Brimmer

Among those on the island Saturday, as the tragedy unfolded, was Griffin Lotson, mayor pro tem of Darien and vice chairman emeritus of the federal government’s National Gullah Geechee Culture Heritage Corridor Commission.

Lotson said he and friends were talking when phones started going off, unusual because service on the island can be pretty spotty. He was minutes from getting on a shuttle that would take him to the ferry dock.

He found out later that five members of his group, the Ring Shouters, had fallen into the water. All survived but most, if not all, were taken to a hospital.

“Many of them are older so they had a lot of stuff going on anyway. Some were traumatized, others had injuries,” he said. He was particularly worried about a man known as Captain Jack, who at 85 is the oldest ring shouter in the group.

“I saw them lined up to leave, then I started talking with guests from Florida and New York, that’s how I was saved,” said a shaken Lotson.

Teake Zuidema, a professional photographer from Savannah, said he had taken three steps on the gangway. “Then, from one moment to the next, it was like you were in a different world ... It was like being on a water slide.”

He went into the water up to his waist and only avoided being totally submerged because he was able to grab and hold on to a railing.

Zuidema, 71, heard piercing screams as people on the ferry threw life jackets and others jumped into the water in hopes of rescuing others.

He was behind an elderly woman in a wheelchair and doesn’t know if she survived. People “were floating away from the dock. It was just a horrific scene.”

Rachel Taylor had just stepped off the ferry from Sapelo Island and was heading back to her car with a shuttle bus around 3:30 p.m. Saturday when emergency vehicles rushed past.

”I remember the bus pulled off to the side to make room and we had no idea why,” she said.

Taylor, of Buford, had just spent the previous couple hours on the island with her family, including her four children, who were near Sapelo for a wedding. They indulged in seafood, watched dance performances and listened to speakers from the Gullah Geechee community.

She recalled crossing the gangway before boarding the ferry back to the mainland at 3 p.m.

”Nothing seemed out of the ordinary,” she said. “It looked fairly new … and nothing felt wobbly or anything like that. It collapsing never ever would have crossed my mind.”

She added that the water current underneath the gangway was strong, something that her husband also commented on at the time.

On the mainland Saturday morning, Taylor and her family waited in nearly hourlong lines as bus shuttles brought people to and from the offsite parking area, about a mile away from the dock and ferry that took them to the island.

“There was such a long line we didn’t make the (Sapelo-bound 11 a.m.) ferry that was there when we arrived, so we had to get on the next one and then waited for an hour before we could even depart,” she said.

State Rep. Al Williams (D-Midway) said his grandmother would take him to church there on occasion when he was a young boy.

“The G-G community all over this country is mourning. I do know this about Sapelo and this part of Georgia. These are people of great faith and faith will pull us through,” he said Sunday.

Williams later added, “We will continue to have the heritage festival on Sapelo and it will be bigger and better than ever.”