Danish to English Social Sciences General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters

This comes from a postcard, written by a Danish immigrant in New York in 1908. She writes about her husband's hospitalization, noting that "han er slaaet paa Dokken, ved ikke naar han kommer Hjem..." I assumed this meant he was struck (by some unmentioned thing or person) on the dock, however another translator suggested he could have simply fallen. I checked an early 20th-century dictionary, and "slaa" is indeed translated there as "beat, strike, to fall suddenly and violently." Now I'm uncertain how to interpret this line...