steamboat wrecks on the mississippi river steamboat wrecks on the mississippi river

"And the entire center of the boat erupted like a volcano.". Badger State (1844) steam paddle. The earliest steamboat disaster in Arkansas waters may have been the Car of Commerce, which suffered a boiler explosion north of Osceola (Mississippi County) on the Mississippi River in 1828, killing twenty-one people, while the deadliest was the loss of the Sultana near Marion (Crittenden County) on April 27, 1865, in which as many as 1,800 were [18] Louden, a former Confederate agent and saboteur who operated in and around St. Louis, had been responsible for the burning of the steamboat Ruth. ", Jerry Potter, lawyer and author of The Sultana Tragedy. In his book River of Dark Dreams, historian Walter Johnson writes that the table of contents of Lloyds bestseller was sort of a nightmare poem of alphabetized Americana: a catalog of 97 major and hundreds of minor boat disasters. Leyhe's father and uncle established the Eagle Packet Co., and Leyhe began working on the Mississippi River when he was 18. Since the US government was paying steamboat captains a dividend to carry the prisoners back north, Captain Hatch and the captain of the Sultana worked out a deal whereby Hatch would guarantee a large load of ex-prisoners for the Sultana in exchange for a kickback of the government funds from Captain Mason. Nathan Smith eased the coal-burning steamer downstream through a narrow bend 80 miles below St. Louis. (Post-Dispatch), Capt. Slate is published by The Slate Persac, Marie Adrien (Artist). Potter, Jerry. Since most steamboats of the time were constructed of wood covered with paint and varnish, fires were a significant concern. An estimated four hundred people were on board the Princess when it pulled out into the current of the river after 9 a.m. Because the boat was late, high boiler pressure had been maintained during the stop, and second engineer Peter Hersey was reported to have declared that he would make it to New Orleans on time if he had to blow her up. As a portent of the looming catastrophe, the Mississippi River was veiled in a dense fog. But there were many other reasons the event didn't get much attention at the time. On March 26, 1915, while the Alice Miller was laid up at Vicksburg, fire broke out in the kitchen, and the boat was destroyed. The men located around the twin openings quickly crawled under the wreckage and down the main stairs. Marion, across the river from Memphis, Tenn., is near the spot where the 260-foot side-wheeler came to rest. On the other hand, the Sultana was an American steamboat carrying almost 100 percent American passengers, including almost 2,000 recently released Union prisoners-of-war returning home to their families. A USS Abeona Andy Gibson (steamboat) USS Antelope (1861) USS Arizona (1858) B USC&GS Baton Rouge (1875) USS Black Hawk (1848) C USS Cincinnati (1861) City-class ironclad CSS Colonel Lovell In his book, he builds a strong case against the boat's captain and co-owner, J. Cass Mason. Then, once some laws were passed, they were generally ignored. The steamer registered 1,719 tons[2] and normally carried a crew of 85. At least thirty-nine passengers and crew members died in the accident. (You can unsubscribe anytime), Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection, Steamboat Princess. Bad storms hit the river in the summer. The vessel was heading from St . St. Louis' biggest party ran for seven months and was such a success it even made money. In the early 1900s, the Mississippi River shifted about two miles to the east, leaving the wreck under about 15 feet of Arkansas soil. Long before Kanesville or Council Bluffs were settlements on the Missouri river, the steamboat the Western Engineer arrived in the area in 1819. During the Civil War steamboats carried Iowa soldiers, weapons and food supplies to army posts. More passengers boarded at Baton Rouge including a number of politicians fresh from the state legislative session that had just ended early for the holiday. Barrels of flour were emptied on the ground, and the terribly burned victims were rolled in it and placed in the shade. [4]:2931, Leaving Vicksburg, Sultana traveled downriver to New Orleans, continuing to spread the news of Lincoln's assassination. Each fire-tube boiler was 18 feet (5.5m) long and 46 inches (120cm) in diameter and contained 24 five-inch (13cm) flues which ran from the firebox to the chimney.[3]. Through the corruption of Captain Reuben Hatch, a Union officer at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the captain of the Sultana, James Cass Mason, those 2,000 ex-prisoners were crowded onto a boat with a legal carrying capacity of only 376 passengers. Look for details such as clothing, technologies or buildings in old photographs to learn more about the past. A Look Back The day the Golden Eagle steamboat sank in 1947. GES: I think the reporting of the Sultana disaster in April and May 1865 was pretty accurate. While researching those numbers, I ran across other myths and legends that were incorrect or misleading, while at the same time verifying many of the stories. The term steamboat is used to refer to smaller, insular, steam-powered boats working on lakes and rivers . A series of maritime disasters, occurred over the next 120 years before the Coast Guard assumed enforcement responsibility. All 25 soldiers were rescued, historians say, and the Fogelman home became a refuge for Sultana survivors. Throughout the war, Captain Hatch had shown incompetence as a quartermaster and competence as a thief, bilking the government out of thousands of dollars. Steamboats traveled into Iowa border waters even before Iowa was legally open for settlement. The collision startled Marga Sachse, a passenger from St. Louis, who said she "felt a jar, and the ship lurched.". At around 2:00AM on April 27, 1865, when Sultana was about seven miles (11km) north of Memphis, its patched boiler suddenly and violently exploded, killing 400-500 men instantly. Constructed of wood in 1863 by the John Litherbury Boatyard [1] in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sultana was intended for the lower Mississippi cotton trade. Knowing that Mason needed money, Hatch suggested that he could guarantee Mason a full load of about 1,400 prisoners if Mason would agree to give him a kickback. Tucson: Fireship Press, 2009. Although the mechanic wanted to cut out and replace a ruptured seam, Mason knew such a job would take a few days and cost him his precious load of prisoners. ", Ancestry.com, Texas Death Certificates, 19031980, Jennings, Pat "What Happened to the Sultana? (The whole book is digitally available via the Library of Congress, on the Internet Archive.). In 2012 and 2015, the river was low sufficient to additionally expose the USS Inaugural. The story of the Sultana isn't well-known even among people who live along the Mississippi. Paskoff, Paul F. Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 18211860. Capt. Soldiers from Kentucky and Tennessee were among the first to die, he says, "because they'd been packed in next to the boilers. An interview with author Gene Eric Salecker. [15][full citation needed], The official cause of the Sultana disaster was determined to be the mismanagement of water levels in the boilers, exacerbated by the fact that the vessel was severely overloaded and top-heavy. [10] In 1880, the United States Congress, in conjunction with the War Department, reported the loss of life as 1,259. [22], In 1903, another person reported that Sultana had been sabotaged by a Tennessee farmer who lived along the river and cut wood for passing steamboats. It was part of the museum's River Room. [33] The museum is only temporary until enough funds can be raised to build a permanent museum. The owners of the Effie Afton decided to take the railroad companies that had built the bridge to court. Although the patched boiler was not the cause of the disaster, it was certainly indicative that the Sultana had faulty boilers. It was the last wooden-hulled passenger boat to travel the Mississippi. MADISON, Wis. (AP) A freight train derailed along the Mississippi River in southwestern Wisconsin Thursday, possibly injuring one crew member and sending two cars into the water, officials said. Nashville: Land Yacht Press, 2000. Barrett was a veteran of the MexicanAmerican War and had been captured at the Battle of Franklin. By that standard, the loss of the Golden Eagle was a minor event. I think reporting was much more accurate, and less political, than it is today. However, the explosion of her boilers just above Memphis on 27 April 1865 put a terrible end to that endeavor. The Tricky Missouri River and the Steamboat Bertrand, The First Bridge Over the Mississippi and the Effie Afton, Majestic Riverboat Reigned on the Mississippi, Simulated travel guide describing travel conditions in Iowa from 1830 to 1879, Personal accounts from a steamboat captain describing life on the Mississippi transporting lumber, Article describes the history of steamboats in Iowa City in the 1800s, Transcribed official records, newspaper clippings, historical accounts and diary entries about life on the Mississippi River, Transcribed official records, newspaper clippings, historical accounts and diary entries about life on the Missouri River, Audio story about the last riverboat gambling cruise of the Mississippi Belle II in 2007, Ginalie Swaim Ed., Steaming Up the River,. Since then, he says, studying the Sultana has become an obsession. [4]:7985, While the Sultana burned, and the men on the steamboat were either already dead or fighting for their lives, the southbound steamer Bostona (No. 19th-century American steamboat that sank on the Mississippi River in 1865. "They had survived war," O'Neal says. The vessel measured 260 feet (79m) long, with a 42 feet (13m) width at the beam, displaced 1,719 short tons (1,559t), and had a 7-foot (2.1m) draft. Burning of the Orline St. John, near Montgomery, Alabama, March 2, 1850. GES: I am a bit ambivalent about that. As stated in the 1903 newspaper article, the log was mistakenly taken by Sultana. We turn the clock back to April of 1993 and present excerpts of the original reviews from Joe Pollack. Fogelman's ancestors didn't have any boats to reach the trapped soldiers, so they improvised. He has conducted interviews with some 75 high-profile people, including historians, government officials, combat veterans, journalists, explorers, and Hollywood stars. Although sediment settled in the bottom of even the flue boilers, it was never thought to be much of a hazard. Her four boilers were interconnected and mounted side-by-side so that if the boat tipped sideways, water would tend to run out of the highest boiler. The early morning of May 18, 1947, was dark but quiet, the Mississippi River 10 feet below flood stage. (Post-Dispatch). Some survivors were plucked from the tops of semi-submerged trees along the Arkansas shore. However, as I said, a person still needs to go to a resource location such as a museum archive to get the basic facts. An engraving of the Sultana explosion, published in Harpers Weekly, May 20, 1865. A Hancock County native died Sunday evening from injuries she sustained in a boat crash on the Jourdan River, Coroner Jeff Hair confirmed to the Sun Herald. By August 1872 the count of steamboats under the Burlington Railroad Bridge was 147, while the 1,108 engines and trains crossed over that bridge during the same month. The disaster of the Princess near Baton Rouge in 1859 was a tragically typical example. A sunken casino boat has been uncovered in the Mississippi as severe drought pushes water levels in the Memphis section of the river to record lows. I do not feel that it lets would-be historians off the hook as long as they go the extra mile and gather the basic facts, etc., through diligent leg work. An estimated 1,800 people died, but few today have heard of this disaster. I copied everything I could find, even though I may never use the material. Freight and cargo were much more profitablealthough the movement of animals could be a backbreaking, smelly proposition! The current was calmer and the channel was deeper. BNSF Railway says two of three locomotives and "an unknown number of cars carrying freights of all kinds" derailed onto the banks of the Mississippi River around 12:15 p.m. Crews are now working . "The Arabia sank. 1, a wooden model barge, and Vessel No. A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels.Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. or S/S (for 'Screw Steamer') or PS (for 'Paddle Steamer'); however, these designations are most often used for steamships.. Cardinals latest, deflating loss compounds concerns, Man shot, killed near Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis, What was Andrew Knizner thinking? Tubular boilers were discontinued from use on steamboats plying the Lower Mississippi after two more steamboats with tubular boilers exploded shortly after the Sultana explosion. HEROINE. He has conducted interviews with some 75 high-profile people, including historians, government officials, combat veterans, journalists, explorers, and Hollywood stars. GRAND TOWER, ILL. It was the first trip of the season for the Golden Eagle, an antique steamboat with twin stacks, gingerbread woodwork and a splashing sternwheel. The Mississippi was not as dangerous. When the boat tipped the other way, water rushing back into the empty boiler would hit the hot spots and flash instantly to steam, creating a sudden surge in pressure. More and more government documents are coming online every day, so it is now quick and easy to make a search for needed information. GES: I agree wholeheartedly. A BNSF Railway freight train traveling along the banks of the Mississippi River derailed near Ferryville, Wis., shortly after noon Thursday, the company said. 0:04. The Sultana's captain and its chief engineer also allowed a mechanic to make a quick and inadequate repair to a damaged boiler, Potter says. Sometimes these snags stuck out of the water. [4]:33,3435,38,4041, While the paroled prisoners, primarily from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia,[4]:226290 were brought from the parole camp to Sultana, a mechanic was brought down to work on the leaky boiler. It was just weeks after the Civil War ended, Potter explains, and the vessel was packed with Union soldiers who'd been released from Confederate prison camps. On his trips up and down the river, Odis often took his wife, Rosa, along. How do you feel about that? It happened near Memphis, Tennessee, almost in the very heart of the United States, and yet very few people have ever heard about it. web oct 10 2017 it was the steamboat sultana on the mississippi river and it could have been prevented in 1865 the civil war was winding down and the . At the same time, dozens of people began to float past the Memphis waterfront, calling for help until they were noticed by the crews of docked steamboats and U.S. warships, who immediately set about rescuing the survivors. Via History.com The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killing 1,700 passengers including many discharged Union soldiers. Traveling by steamboat on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers was common in the 1800s. Trees along the river bank were almost completely covered until only the very tops of the trees were visible above the swirling, powerful water. Unlike many of the nautical discoveries in. In writing my first few books I literally had to go to the U.S., state, and military archives to do my research. In Malta Bend, Missouri, there's one that sank loaded down with expensive and rare trading . Her two side-mounted paddle wheels were driven by four fire-tube boilers. Many of these boats were salvaged soon after the accident and rebuilt, but some remain in or near Iowa rivers. "The war had just ended a few weeks before," he says. And, in fact, when the boats used the regular flue boilers, the sediment in the water was not too much of a problem. The flaming hull drifted onto a shoreline sandbar and grounded. However, Courtenay's great-great-grandson, Joseph Thatcher, who wrote a book on Courtenay and the coal torpedo, denies that a coal torpedo was used in the Sultana disaster. The broken wood caught fire and turned the remaining superstructure into a raging inferno. Eventually, the group settled on meeting in the Toledo, Ohio area. And it was very cold. In 1859, the Blackhawk made 29 round trips between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo on the Cedar River. Why should potential readers care? However, the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army overturned the guilty verdict because Speed had been at the parole camp all day and had not personally placed a single soldier on board Sultana. A sister boat to the famous Natchez, the Princess had undergone a thorough retrofitting the previous summer and was said to be one of the fastest and most luxurious craft on the Mississippi River. The boat was 260 feet long and had an authorized capacity of 376 passengers and crew. "The wind blew the fire to the rear, burned that out," Frank Fogelman says. Given as the "John Lithoberry Shipyard" on Ohio Historical Marker 1831 (1999) on the Ohio River at Sawyer Point. Lake Geneva. Aunt Letty (1855) steam paddle. The few steamboats still gliding along the rivers today are usually carrying tourists on short trips. A couple billed as "a genuine giant and giantess" arrive in St. Louis for a visit. On April 21, Sultana left New Orleans with about seventy cabin and deck passengers and a small amount of livestock. He is currently a freelance writer living in Annapolis. ", 15th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, "Sultana: A Tragic Postscript to the Civil War", https://www.nationalboard.org/SiteDocuments/General%20Meeting/Jennings.pdf, "The Sultana Disaster (Coal Torpedo theory)", http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/civil-war-sabotage/, Sultana museum in Arkansas memorializes 1,169 people who died in river, "Surviving the Worst: The Wreck of the Sultana at the End of the American Civil War", "Blues in the Water, by King's German Legion", "Ardent Presents: Cory Branan "The Wreck of the Sultana", "Remember the Sultana | Film Threat - Part 2", Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1865, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sultana_(steamboat)&oldid=1152358259, Articles with incomplete citations from April 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Initially Capt. That is a sunken ship almost every 3 miles! At 0200 on 27 April 1865, when the boat was seven miles above Memphis, her boilers exploded. 1, which tends to become brittle with prolonged heating and cooling. I then decided that since it had been 25 years since the publication of my first book, I needed to put out a new book on the Sultana. Catchers once in a lifetime lunge saves Cardinals, The world watches (and makes donations) as St. Louis bald eagle raises eaglet from a rock, Governor threatens to keep Missouri lawmakers in session over transgender rules, Barat Academy in Chesterfield to close after years of financial troubles, Four young people die in Old Monroe head-on crash, Court records online include private information for thousands of Missouri residents, Archdiocese releases third draft of proposed changes to St. Louis parishes. [4]:7479. That day, he says, the water was moving very quickly and contained a lot of trees and other debris. The Eclipse was a steamboat that struck a snag on the Mississippi River near Osceola (Mississippi County) on September 12, 1925; a deckhand and a passenger lost their lives in the accident. The St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, April 29, 1865, states that the "steamer Sultana left New Orleans on Friday evening the 21st, with about seventy cabin passengers, and about eighty five employees on the boat. "Somebody had came by and notified us. In later years the steamboats pushed huge rafts of logs from the forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota to sawmills farther down the river. The Directorypadded out the bloody prose of the disaster descriptions and the repetitive awfulness of the illustrations with current business and travel information about the Mississippi Valley. Who Was John Wilkes Booth Before He Became Lincoln's Assassin. Captain Mason of Sultana, who was ultimately responsible for dangerously overloading his vessel and ordering the faulty repairs to her leaky boiler, had died in the disaster. Highlights of the Mississippi River Cruise: Round-trip from New Orleans Length: Five days Price: Starts at $2,405 per person Enjoy a complimentary overnight in New Orleans before embarking on. GES: I began to dispel the myths and untruths surrounding the Sultana shortly after the Naval Institute Press published my first book in 1996. The preliminary crest of 19.61 . Iowa is the only state with four border rivers, the Mississippi, Missouri, Des Moines, and Big Sioux. (Post-Dispatch), The Golden Eagle moored on the St. Louis riverfront in May 1946. [4]:50,5556 Although Sultana had a legal capacity of only 376, by the time she backed away from Vicksburg on the night of April 24, she was severely overcrowded with over 1,953 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, over 70 fare-paying cabin passengers, and 85 crew members, for a total of 2,130 people. Nathan Smith of Normandy, Mo., the pilot of the Golden Eagle when it sank on May 18, 1947, as he prepared to testify two days later at a Coast Guard hearing on the accident in downtown St. Louis. The train . [4]:72 Sultana subsequently arrived at Memphis, Tennessee, around 7:00 PM, and the crew began unloading 120 tons (109 tonnes) of sugar from the hold. On April 27, 1865, the steamboat Sultana exploded and sank while traveling up the Mississippi River, killing an estimated 1,800 people. Bates, both eight-footers, arrive a, On April 18, 1949, at Verhagen Hall at St. Louis University a priest just back from a year of study at Harvard completed an exorcism after hea. "They had survived prison in one of the most hideous places the South had. Under reduced pressure, the steamboat limped into Vicksburg to get the boiler repaired and to pick up her promised load of prisoners. After days in flood stage, the Mississippi River appeared to be at crest in Lansing, Iowa Friday evening as the river has spent hours below the max daily crest. Without a pilot to steer the boat, Sultana became a drifting, burning hulk. GES: Goods and materials were by far the most important and more profitable cargo to carry. The coal-burning steamboat was on a trip to Nasvhille, Tenn., via the Ohio and Cumberland rivers, when it sank at Grand Tower Island 80 miles below St. Louis on May 18, 1947. Even amid the horrendous chaos, rescue efforts began immediately. Aurora (1902) steam screw. Yet Captain Mason of the Sultana, and Captain Reuben Hatch, the chief quartermaster at Vicksburg, saw no problem in crowding as many men as possible on board the boat, hoping to reap the biggest profit possible. Potter, the lawyer and author, grew up around Memphis, but didn't learn about the tragedy until the late 1970s, when he saw a painting of the ship in flames. The lure of huge profits led steamboats to travel in unsafe river conditions and at unsafe speeds. FERRYVILLE - A train derailed along the Mississippi River Thursday afternoon in southwest Wisconsin, leaving several cars overturned and jumbled along the bluff and two cars floating . Men in skiffs from both riverbanks rescued people clinging to debris. [citation needed], By the mid-1920s, only a handful of survivors could attend the reunions. By 1857, St. Paul had become a bustling port, with over 1,000 steamboat arrivals each year by some 62 to 99 boats. When the Princess pulled up to the wharf in Baton Rouge early on the morning of February 27, 1859, it was already late. Immediately, Captain Mason grabbed an armload of Cairo newspapers and headed south to spread the news, knowing that telegraphic communication with the southern states had been almost totally cut off because of the recently-ended American Civil War. The event remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history (the sinking of the Titanic killed 1,512 people). Effie Afton Hits the Bridge. The Sultana was especially helpful to the Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant as he moved to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, and open the Mississippi River to Union navigation. Designed to carry both freight and passengers, packet boats ranging from palatial Mississippi River sidewheelers to the smaller steamers common on rivers like the Cumberland or the Tennessee played a central role in the development of the inland rivers economy. Passing boats and bystanders on both sides of the Mississippi helped pull survivors from the muddy water. And many of them were saved by local residents, like John Fogelman an ancestor of the city of Marion's current mayor, Frank Fogelman. By Lieutenant Commander Ralph P. Dillon, U. S. Naval Reserve. Lawmakers voted 85-12 Monday to approve legislation that would exempt . 5) was built in February 1863, but she was used extensively throughout the last two years of the Civil War to carry Union troops and supplies on the Cumberland and the Mississippi Rivers to aid in the collapse of the Confederacy. An outfield in flux. It's estimated between 300 and 400 boats have sunk along the Missouri River. [4]:146147,168176, Passengers who survived the initial explosion had to risk their lives in the icy spring runoff of the Mississippi or burn with the boat. [4]:24 On April 26, Sultana stopped at Helena, Arkansas, where photographer Thomas W. Bankes took a picture of the grossly overcrowded vessel. [4]:129 Eventually, the hulk of Sultana drifted about six miles (10km) to the west bank of the river and sank at around 7:00 AM near Mound City and present-day Marion, Arkansas, about five hours after the explosion. William H. "Buck" Leyhe of St. Louis at the wheel of the Golden Eagle steamboat in April 1939. Hunter, Louis C. Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. Sometimes the boilers exploded. The Golden Eagle's new St. Louis-based owners left it to the river's mercy. The steamboat had left the St. Louis levee two days before a seven-day round trip to and from Nashville, Tenn. (Edward J. Burkhardt/Post-Dispatch), The crippled Golden Eagle settled and listing in the Mississippi River at Grand Tower Island after sunrise on May 18, 1947. Subscribe with this special offer to keep reading, (renews at {{format_dollars}}{{start_price}}{{format_cents}}/month + tax). He was company president for many years and sold the company in 1946. Its sister craft included the Spread Eagle and the Bald Eagle. Many of the stories that the newspapers got from survivors were not always correct (one man said that there were people from every state in the Union on boardnot so), but they were reporting what they were told. And finally, at the end of the war, the Sultana would have played a significant role in transporting former Union prisoners-of-war back to the North. One of the most horrific accidents occurred in 1838, when the Moselle, a fast and nearly new Ohio River steamboat, exploded off Cincinnati. The last of the southern survivors, and last overall survivor, was Private Charles M. Eldridge of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry Regiment, who died at his home at age 96 on September 8, 1941, more than 76 years after the disaster. Find out more about what this space is all abouthere. Is it a good thing? James Cass Mason, King's German Legion "Blues in the Water" tells a stylized version of the, This page was last edited on 29 April 2023, at 19:15. An aerial view of the striken Golden Eagle at Grand Tower Island in the Mississippi River on May 19, 1947. Sultana launched on January 3, 1863, the fifth steamboat to bear the name. The Corp of Engineers in a report issued July 3, 1934 listed 36 types of steamboat wrecks on the Missouri River alone. GES: Readers should care about the Sultana since it was the greatest maritime disaster in American history. by Kelby Ouchley Courtesy of The Historic New Orleans Collection Steamboat Princess. [19][20] Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, the inventor of the coal torpedo, was a former resident of St. Louis and was involved in similar acts of sabotage against Union shipping interests. As shown in my book, when steam navigation of American waterways first began, there were very little, if any, laws for safety. The Mississippi River has changed course several times since the disaster, leaving the wreck under dry land and far from today's river. The train derailed in Crawford County at about 12:15 p.m. Two of the train's three locomotives and an unknown number of cars . Many of the paroled prisoners had been weakened by their incarceration and associated illnesses but had managed to gain some strength while waiting at the parole camp to be officially released. She also carried a crew of 85. There were 10 passengers on board. In 1857, The Nebraska City Advertiser newspaper listed 46 steamboats traveling the Missouri, with 12 more being built. To the left are the smokestacks of the Union Electric Co. plant at Cahokia. FS: In the course of your story, you declare that It is now possible to write a work of historical nonfiction without ever leaving home. How do you actually feel about that?