A Graveyard 4000 Miles Long

by Raymond S. Spears

A Graveyard
4000 MILES LONG
Made by Steamboats

 

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS

 

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Early-Day Catastrophes on the Mis
sissippi That Made the Great River
a Vast Sepulcher.

 

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THE story of steamboat traffic on the Mississippi River is one of the most interesting features in the history of the development of the great empire known as the Middle West.

Its infancy lasted less than twenty years—from 1811 to 1830. Its full strength and vigor, though checked somewhat by the troublesome days of the Civil War, lasted about forty years. Then, in the seventies, according to most theories, the railroads wiped it out almost in a day.

As a matter of fact, the steamboat men were themselves very much to blame for their loss of position, influence, and wealth. Utter recklessness contributed a great deal to the dissolution of the proud fleet that stemmed the floods of the basin.

By countless catastrophes from fire and steam, the millions of people in the great valley were driven to shun the rivers and to eagerly grasp the first opportunity of avoiding river travel—the most comfortable traveling in the United States to this day.

James B. Eads, the great river expert, was not the only man who arrived in St. Louis penniless, without property and downcast because his all was destroyed when a river steamer went up in smoke or steam. How the immigrants to the West learned to dread, even to hate, the river steamboats—a dread and a hate which present railroad methods are doing much to dispel—is indicated by the record of Mississippi River steamboat explosions.

The steamer Moselle left the wharf at Cincinnati, on the Ohio River, April 25, 1838. She was a proud craft, almost new, with the speed-record to St. Louis to her credit. The white, red, and gold of her paint, the black of her tall stacks, the crowd of gay people upon her decks, and the growing bone in her jaws, made a spectacle the like of which every river man loves to see.

A mile above Cincinnati wharf a crowd of German immigrants were taken on board. The cabin passengers gathered, on the upper decks, crowding to the rails, to see the spectacle.

At last, as the steam from the safety-valve spread above the packet, the engineer got his signal and threw on the power. Lines were cast off, the mate whooped final orders, and the band began to play.

The boat fell away from the bank, and her nose began to turn toward the Kentucky shore as she came around. Suddenly, while the spectators ashore were still waving their arms and cheering, the boilers burst. The whole forward part of the Moselle was flung up and out by bulging masses of white steam. Timbers and human bodies darted out of the white, sunlit clouds and rose far into the air.

Pleasure Seekers Blown to Pieces.

Then on all sides the rain of débris splashed upon the water and pattered on the land. Here and there shreds of cloth, some gay shawls and some somber jackets, fluttered away in the wind. The occupants of a house two hundred yards distant heard a crash on their own roof, and when they investigated found that the body of a man had been driven half-way through the boards.

There was a minute of silence. The steam was driven up and away from the shattered hulk by the wind. Then the dazed and frightened spectators on the bank heard a moan as if the wreck itself were in pain. The moan grew louder till it became a shriek of agony as the wounded and scalded cried in their misery.

A hundred skiffs put out to the rescue from the bank and followed the wreck down the current. One man told of seeing a score of bodies in the water around the hulk.

Estimates as to the loss of life differ. The most reliable placed the number of dead at eighty-one, the badly wounded at thirteen, and the missing at fifty-five.

In the same year a flue on the Oronoco, of Pittsburgh, collapsed. The boiler-deck was crowded with passengers, all home-seekers bound for the West. The sweep aft of the steam threw fifty of the immigrants overboard, where they nearly all drowned. Those who remained on the deck were scalded so badly that of more than a hundred, fewer than a score escaped with their lives. The cabin passengers suffered less. severely, but many were badly scalded because they rushed into the open when the boat was surrounded by steam.

The destruction of the Moselle and the scalding of the Oronoco's passengers were typical instances of disasters which made traveling on the Mississippi basin waters the most dangerous traveling in the world. An indication of the jeopardy of a voyage on a river steamer is indicated by the fact that the insurance rate on the river boats was seldom or never less than twelve per cent, and sometimes was as high as forty per cent, and that the estimated “life” of a steamer was only three years. Snags, fire, and boiler explosions were the causes of excessive insurance rates.

Never did “public-service” companies elsewhere display such reckless disregard of the safety of the persons and property of their patrons. But the steamboat owners paid the penalty in the one way that was sure, sooner or later, to bring them to their senses—they lost their traffic.

Because the channel is so shallow, the Mississippi River steamers have always been built with the least possible depth of hold. The steamer Missouri, built in 1840, was two hundred and thirty-three feet, long, thirty-five feet wide (fifty-nine feet over the guards), and only eight and one-half feet deep in the hold. All the other river steamers had similar proportions, the type being long, narrow, and shoal draft. In spite of truss-frames and hog-chains, the river steamers to this day undulate from end to end as they ride the crossing rollers—one can see the wave coming down the length of the cabin.

To place boilers and machinery enough in such a craft to drive it at any speed required a distribution of weight. The river shipbuilders quickly discovered the best plan after steam-power came into use in the West. They put the boilers near one end—the bow—and the machinery at the stern, stiffening the long framework with trusses and long iron rods called “hog-chains.”

Putting the boilers near the bow paved the way for death and destruction for thousands of passengers whose cabins were located on the deck above the boilers, and whose lives were never in greater jeopardy than when they stood on the upper decks watching the roustabouts toting cargo at a landing. Most of the explosions occurred at or near landings, being caused by the increase of pressure when the engines were stopped.

First Disaster in 1816.

The first explosion on a Mississippi River steamer was in 1816. The steam-pipe on the Washington, the fifth steamboat built in the West, burst and nine men were scalded to death. In the following year the Constitution blew up, and thirty lives were lost.

From this time onward a frightful toll was exacted by steam for its misuse. The time came when, in 1870, old river men could remember ninety explosions, which destroyed three thousand eight hundred and eleven lives, as nearly as could be calculated—there were some hundreds of other explosions, however, of which they could recall none of the details.

In 1849 a list of 233 explosions on river steamers was compiled for the purpose of interesting Congress in the question of regulating river steamboat boilers. The list showed that, as nearly as could be ascertained, 2,563 lives were lost and 2,007 persons injured in the explosions, a total of 4,660. The property loss was placed at $3,090,360.

In order that the causes of these explosions might be plainly understood, details were given and analyzed. The causes of the explosions were stated in ninety-eight instances. Of the ninety-eight, seventy could have been prevented by care in construction and management.

One was caused by “racing,” according to the record. As a matter of fact, a large proportion of the disasters were the direct result of haste. The competition on the rivers was the severest known in the history of steam navigation. The fastest boat “skimmed the cream of the traffic.” The Moselle herself was the “queen of the rivers,” when, after only three weeks of service, she vanished in her own cloud. She had made only three round trips from Cincinnati to St. Louis, but old boats and new ones were eagerly pressing her best time—seven hundred and fifty miles in two days, sixteen hours; hence the bitter anxiety of her captain, pilots, and engineers to keep on top at least for the season.

The story of the engineer who “hung a nigger on the safety-valve” had its origin in those days. Many a steamer churned the yellow Mississippi with her safety-valve tied down between landings.

The river steamer traffic had only just begun in 1831, yet the death-record from steamer explosions was then 256 lives lost and 104 persons injured. In 1835, a list of 684 steamboats was prepared. It is one of the most interesting records of early steam-boat history. Every one of these steamers had been built, used, and put out of commission since 1811, while the first Western steamer was built by a Roosevelt at Pittsburgh.

Congress At Last Aroused.

Of the number, 344 were “worn out,” 238 had been “snagged,” 68 burned, 17 lost in collision, 17 destroyed by explosion. Only 50¹⁄₂ per cent “died natural deaths.”

The list was compiled for the purpose of getting Congress to take some action toward “pulling the river-teeth”—removing the snags which made such stretches of water between St. Louis and Cairo veritable “steamboat slaughter-houses and graveyards.”

After years of agitation, Congress rose above the bulwark of opposition raised by Western steamboat men, and in 1852 passed a law “for the regulation and guidance of engineers” of steamers. Government inspection seems to have been a farce. At any rate, eighteen years after the enactment of the law, in 1870, it was claimed that there were more explosions on the Mississippi River in proportion to the number of steamers engaged after the passage of the law than before.

The Sultana's 1,647 Victims.

But whatever the effect of the law, explosions on the river continued to be a menace to commerce. The most frightful explosion of boilers in history was at St. Louis, in 1864. The Sultana, a Union troopship, loaded down with soldiers, was lying at the bank ready to go down the Mississippi, where the soldiers were to take part in the campaign in the Delta country below Cairo. Suddenly there was an explosion. The craft was filled with steam. Some men were killed by the explosion; hundreds were scalded to death.

The roll-call disclosed the fact that one thousand six hundred and forty-seven lives were lost in this disaster. As this was in war-times, when the battle-field losses centered human interest, the destruction of the Sultana, rivaling that of the Royal St. George in England, was scarcely mentioned in the annals of the day.

Some of the worst explosions on the Mississippi were:

Year	Name of Boat	Deaths.
1830⁠	Helen McGregor⁠	60
1838	Moselle	125
1838	Oronoco	100
1846	H. W. Johnson	74
1849	Louisiana	150
1850	Anglo-Norman	100
1852	Glencoe:	60
1859	Princess	70
1861	Ben Sherrod	80
1862	Pennsylvania	150
1864	Sultana	1,647
1871	W. R. Arthur	60

Only two years ago the W. T. Scovel was blown up at Gold Dust landing. She was taking on freight when the boilers exploded. Many of the timbers were blown hundreds of yards, and some of the persons aboard were hurled almost as far. The pilot-house and the front part of the cabin were smashed to splinters, and the hull of the boat was so badly damaged that she began to sink. The death roll was estimated at sixteen, while as many more were injured.