They had come to Sapelo Island, Ga., just off the curve of coast, for a celebration of resilience, of a people, of a culture that for generations had been so fragile but could not be broken.
The smell of smoked mullet drifted. Vendors sold red peas and rice. Performers onstage presented poetry and sang African spirituals.
By midafternoon on Saturday, dozens readied for the trip back to the mainland, a route beginning with a ferry known as the Annemarie waiting at the end of the floating dock in the marsh. But then, a strange cracking noise. The walkway to the dock suddenly shifted. Then it collapsed.
“Everyone’s falling into the water, and you’re hearing screams,” said Michael Wood, 43, who had been waiting in line to board.
On Sunday, members of the tight-knit Gullah Geechee community, descendants of formerly enslaved people in the Southeast, who had gathered for a festival celebrating their heritage, mourned four women and three men, all of them older than 70, who were killed. And officials began investigating how a short journey to the only way off the island could have led to such tragedy.
“The initial findings of our investigation at this point showed a catastrophic failure of the gangway, causing it to collapse,” said Walter Rabon, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, adding that investigators and engineers will be gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses. Three people were also injured and remain hospitalized in critical condition.
Mr. Wood, a quality assurance engineer, had been among the hundreds who attended the event, held annually in honor of the Gullah Geechee.
Its members, who live along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia and northern Florida, are descendants of enslaved West African people who were brought to the southeastern United States more than two centuries ago.
The Sapelo Island festival honors their language, cuisine and art. Officials said about 700 people were on the island on Saturday.
Mr. Wood’s mother was born on Sapelo Island, and on Saturday he brought along his wife and two children.
After the walkway collapsed, Mr. Wood managed to grab his mother, who had fallen into the water. He saw up ahead that his 8-year-old daughter, Hailey, was clinging to a piece of the dock.
His wife, Kimberly, had also tumbled in while desperately clinging to their 2-year-old daughter, Riley. Just five years ago, Ms. Wood, an accountant, had decided to take swim lessons. Before the pandemic shut things down, her final lesson was in treading water.
“The current was taking me, it was too strong. I’m treading water and holding Riley on my side,” Ms. Wood, 42, said. “I had a bookbag on my back and took it off. And it floated. I was like ‘Oh my god my bag floats,’ so I put one arm on the bookbag and had her on my other arm.”
People on the ferry started tossing life jackets and life preservers into the water. Ms. Wood paddled to one and held onto Riley, whose lips had turned blue and teeth were chattering. Finally, a man appeared and was able to pull them ashore.
The Wood family managed to reunite afterward, clasping one another in their arms.
It was a moment that the victims’ families would not have.
Charles Houston, 77, had traveled to the festival with his daughter to support friends. He did not make it back home to Darien, Ga.
Mr. Houston had served as a chaplain for several of the state’s law enforcement agencies over the decades, the type to bring in cookies to the dispatch office and call officers on tragic anniversaries.
Last month, Mr. Houston had comforted teachers and students after the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. “He had such a giving heart and was very selfless,” Chip Strickland, a friend, said.
The McIntosh County coroner, Melvin Amerson, identified the other victims as Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75; Cynthia Gibbs, 74; Carlotta McIntosh, 93; and Isaiah Thomas, 79, from Jacksonville, Fla.; while Queen Welch, 76, and William Johnson Jr., 73, were from Atlanta.
William Johnson had been a master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force for two decades and worked for Lockheed Martin. An avid biker, he was studying to become a minister at his church and served as a deacon for 15 years.
“He was a mentor of worship for anyone that was willing to come over,” said his son, William Johnson III.
He said his parents had recently begun vacationing more frequently. The two had come to Sapelo Island for a weekend trip from their home in Lithia Springs, Ga., 320 miles away. Both of them fell into the water, but Ms. Johnson survived.
“She was the queen of his life,” their son said. “They deeply loved each other.”
Assisting the Department of Natural Resources in the investigation are the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Coast Guard, the State Patrol and Georgia Emergency Management.
Tyler Jones, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources, said on Sunday that a portion of the dock was built, but not installed, by Crescent Equipment Company. The company, based in Townsend, Ga., about 25 miles inland from Sapelo, declined to comment on Sunday. It was not immediately clear who had installed the dock.
After the collapse, dive teams from neighboring counties deployed to help with search and rescue, but initially bystanders found themselves acting like emergency workers.
Maurice Bailey, 55, had been attending the event before he ended up administering first aid and helping lift bodies out of the water. “A lot of people jumped in and did what they had to do,” he said.
Mr. Bailey, who runs a community advocacy and conservation group, knows the island well. His mother, Cornelia Bailey, was known as the griot of Sapelo. Saturday’s tragedy was vividly personal.
“I don’t know if I know anyone that died because I didn’t want to look into the faces of the people,” he said. “I didn’t want that instilled in my mind.”
Reginald Hall, 59, described the scene as utter chaos. A Sapelo resident and activist in the Gullah Geechee community, Mr. Hall drove to the dock minutes after the collapse, he said, and began working to pull people from the water. In the process, he and his family walked across a shore of oyster shells and marsh mud, which he said “comes up to your knees like quicksand.”
Mr. Hall said rescue efforts were impeded by the low tide’s exposing razor-sharp oyster beds, adding that he came upon a body about 40 yards down current from the dock.
Without equipment, people were being carried in blankets or on others’ backs, he said. Bodies were collected at the dock structure.
“There’s no occupancy limit signs, there’s no weight limit signs,” Mr. Hall said about the walkway. “There should have been more in place for the protection of our guests.”
State Representative Al Williams, who identifies as Gullah Geechee and whose district included Sapelo until 2005, said that the island has about 30 residents, a much diminished population since he visited as a boy.
Mr. Williams, 77, recalled his mother taking him to the island by rowboat, long before a ferry served the community.
Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Mr. Williams said his dialect — a mix of English, French and West African languages — was disparaged as “uneducated.”
“We’ve come so far in accepting who we are,” he said. “These people are proud, and strong in the faith.”
Saturday’s events have shaken the sense of joy that usually comes with the festival, although not its sense of community.
Catherine Sneed, 22, of Savannah, Ga., was inspired to attend the festival after working on a college project about the Gullah Geechee community. After the collapse, she heard a woman scream, “I can’t swim, help me!”
Ms. Sneed reached out and held onto the woman for about 15 minutes until a life jacket appeared. On the ferry, Ms. Sneed offered up her navy blue Wellesley College sweatshirt. On Sunday, Ms. Sneed visited the woman in the hospital and found that she was recovering well. They held hands.
“I just hugged her,” Ms. Sneed said. “I told her I loved her and we prayed.”
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