This disaster occurred ‘at six o’clock, A. M., on the first day of July, 1855, about ninety miles below Louisville, on the Ohio river. Every person on board, except those of the crew who had been appointed to keep the night watch, were in their berths. Three boilers exploded at the same moment, demolishing the whole of the upper works forward of the wheel house, and hurling many of the sleeping crew and passengers into the water, without any premonition of danger. The steamer was under way at the time of the accident, and the engine had been working steadily without intermission, for two hours. There were about fifty cabin passengers, exclusive of eight ladies, one child, and a nurse, who, together with the officers, crew and deck passengers made a sum total of one hundred and thirty persons.
The explosion produced a deafening report and the wreck immediately took fire. “Then,” says an eye-witness, “was presented a dreadful harrowing scene, such as no pen can describe, no imagination conceive. Many persons were blown into the river, a few of whom swam ashore; many fell on the boat, and were mingled in awful confusion with the fragments of the wreck; all was lit up by the blazing timber, which, in that dead hour of the night, cast an unearthly gleam on the hideous spectacle. To the spectator, to whose harrowed sight were visible the blackened bodies of the dead and the expiring agonies of those who struggled in the water, and on whose ears rung the groans of those who were expiring on the wreck, the scene was one of the most terrific and heart-rending description.”
The second mate, Peter Edds, ordered the anchor to be thrown overboard as soon as possible, and the steamer dragged for two miles down the stream. The scene of the disaster was near some wood-choppers’ cabins, on the Kentucky shore. These people, as soon as they discovered the misfortune which had befallen the Lexington, came in their skiffs, and took off the surviving passengers. The ladies generally were saved. The males, with very few exceptions, were more or less injured.
KILLED.-W. C. Larkins, Madison, Ind.; Mr. Phillips, Liberty, Mo.; Henry Lewis; John Taylor, colored porter; Thomas Baldwin, and William Harrison, colored; James Miller, second clerk, Nashville; M. H. Fairchild, bar keeper; P. Willis, second engineer, Smithfield; M. Bernard, pilot; Samuel Lowery, colored; two brothers, names unknown; Mr. Haines, carpenter; a German deck hand; a colored fireman, and eleven others, names unknown, making a total of about thirty five.
WOUNDED.-Capt. Throop, Col. Bales and Thomas Payne, Louisville; Thomas Gibson, first mate; E. G. Davidson, first clerk, Paducah, Ky.; Sneed Strang, pilot, J. B Johnston and M. Twigg, Nashville; S. W. Anderson, assistant engineer; D. Harris, Cincinnati; Henry, colored boy; J. Gardner, King’s Landing, Ky.; P. Flynn, Auburn, N. Y.; J. Johnson and A. Badger, pilot, St. Louis; W. P. Johnston, Madison; T. Ryan, St. Louis; Capt. Thomas White, Louisville; Mr. McElroy, Lebanon, Ky; J. Hall, Liberty, Mo.; Charles Squire, and others, names not mentioned.
The boat turned bottom upward, and sunk near Stephensport. The steamer D. A. Given took charge of those passengers who had been carried to the Kentucky shore by the wood choppers. It is remarked as a singular circumstance that few persons were scalded by this explosion. Most of the wounded were badly bruised or had their limbs broken. Many were drowned, of whom no account will ever be given, as the books and papers, and all the baggage, except that in the ladies’ cabin, were destroyed.
Capt. J. V. Throop, the commander of the Lexington, has been engaged on the river for twenty-five years. He is a prudent and experienced officer, and this is the first accident that ever befel a boat under his command.