of the decks, waving to those aboard the Princess Louise. This caused the Victoria to lurch close to nearly capsizing. The sinking As the Victoria passed Griffith's Dam, passengers noted that water was ankle-deep on the lower deck. Captain Rankin quickly realized that he was not going to be able to successfully sail the Victoria to London. He stopped the Victoria at her scheduled stop at the wharf at Woodland Cemetery, where he rejected to take on any new passengers and decided to continue up the river. He had also rejected passengers at Ward's Hotel. The passengers were rowdy as usual, causing a steady rocking of the vessel. Rankin noticed a sandbar up ahead in the river close to what is today Greenway Park, and attempted to drive the vessel onto it to stop the voyage. He had barely made a move towards this decision when two members of the London Rowing Club decided to race each other down the river. Excited, passengers on both decks of the Victoria rushed to the railing of the starboard side which caused an unbalance of weight on the small riverboat. Upon doing so, the vessel lurched onto her starboard side, and the passengers then ran to the port side, attempting to right the vessel. The steam boiler tore loose from its mountings on the lower deck, tumbling over and killing passengers with scalding-hot water on its way down. It knocked out support beams and the railings on the port side, and sending the entire upper deck of the Victoria collapsing onto the lower deck, crushing and killing more passengers. Many others fell into the muddy riverbed, and were killed as the ship keeled over onto her port side. The vessel, now free of its weight of passengers and with her upper deck completely broken off, righted itself and sank, leaving the upper promenade deck floating and covering those underneath it, promptly drowning them. Two young men who were swimming nude in the river before the Victoria sank attempted to help rescue drowning passengers but drowned themselves in the wreckage. Other passengers swam ashore, alerting locals nearby or trying to pull people from the wreckage. By now what was once the Victoria existed as the sunken hull and a mass of broken wood and planks. The style of many female passengers' Victorian-era dresses caused their clothing to become waterlogged, further making their frantic attempts