The disaster we are about to record, took place on the Ohio river, a short distance above Carrollton, April 2, 1852. The Redstone was a small boat, about three years old, and was built at Pittsburgh for the Brownsville Slackwater Navigation. At the time to which we now refer, she was plying in the Madison and Cincinnati trade, in opposition to the regular line of Madison packets. She left Madison about noon on the day aforesaid, with thirty or forty passengers on board, and had stopped above Carroliton to take in a Mr. Scott. His parents accompanied him to the shore, and were looking at him when the boat began to move off; a moment after, they were horrified by seeing him blown high in the air, and then fall into the river. Two boilers exploded-one of them was blown on shore, and, in its course, prostrated a sycamore tree two feet in diameter. The trees and the shore, for hundreds of yards, were lined with shreds of clothing, sheets, blankets, and other vestiges of the wreck. A man’s boot, ripped and torn, was picked up more than six hundred yards from the wreck, whither it had been blown, no doubt, from the foot of some unhappy victim. A passenger who had got on the boat at Milton, was taking a drink at the bar, and, after paying for it, was returning his purse to his pocket, when he was blown into the river and drowned. A lad from Madison was on board with his two little sisters; lie was drowned, but the girls were saved. A Mr. Claxon, of Carroliton, was on the boat, and was blown ashore, but, strange to tell, he did not receive the slightest injury.
The following are the names of some of the persons killed :-E. U. Crossman, printer; E. N. Durbson, of New Philadelphia, Ind.; Mr. Coons; Rev. Henry A. Scott, (the young man whose parents stood on the shore and witnessed his death); Lewis Berry, of Brownsville, Pa., first engineer; Joseph W. Berry, of same place, second engineer; E. P. Durbin, Lawrenceburg, Ind.; M. Smith, Petersburg, Va.; seven cabin boys, names not known.
BADLY WOUNDED.-Thomas W. Pate, captain; Sydney Longly and Charles M. Jackson, pilots: Samuel Fritz; George Breck, second cook ; Henry Boezi, six firemen, and four deck hands.
SLIGHTLY WOUNDED.-Geo. Collard, mate; John Wilson, carpenter; Christman Wilson.
Twenty bodies, recovered from the water, were too much disfigured to be recognized. The boat was so completely shattered by the force of the explosion, that she immediately sunk in twenty feet water.
The captain was mortally wounded. This accident was thought to be the result of criminal negligence, as there was scarcely any water in the boiler at the time of the explosion. The engineer had stopped that part of the machinery, called the “doctor,” which supplies the boilers with water, in order to produce “a high head of steam.” In this he succeeded, and his life was the forfeit of his temerity and the recklessness with which he exposed the lives of others to unnecessary peril.