The scene at the wreck was horrific, as one of the few survivors, Chief Freight Clerk Frank Lehn recounted:

The purser, stewardess, freight clerk, bartender, hall boys, cook, waiters, scullion, and mess boys attended to passengers and freight arrangements.

Babcock's first job was with the Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad, commencing as a freight clerk at the Evansville depot, and working himself up to the position of general freight agent of the road.

For health reasons, he was sent to St. Louis, Missouri, where he became a clerk in a hardware store, then a freight clerk on steamboats plying the Mississippi River between St. Louis and New Orleans, Louisiana.

When at a Stoke on Trent railway station, Frank Woolworth met a young freight clerk, William Lawrence Stephenson who impressed Woolworth with his "can-do attitude" and was invited several years later at the time of conception for the British "F. W. Woolworth & Co.