Today’s Heart-Rending Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Given the large number of steamboats operating out of New York harbor in the 19th century, the city saw its share of steamboat calamities. One of the worst involved the steamboat Henry Clay in 1852. Just minutes after getting underway on a trip up the Hudson River, a fire broke out in the boiler room. What happened next was described in excruciating detail by a local minister in a sermon delivered shortly after the tragedy. “We take a position on the eastern shore of the Hudson,” began Rev. D. M. Seward, “on a bland and beautiful day in summer. A steamer passes along, her flags gaily streaming in the wind…” Aboard one could see crowds of jolly passengers enjoying the trip, “none of them dreaming that this hour of sunshine and gladness brings with it the last moments of their early life.” But suddenly there is dense smoke pouring from the steamer, which turns toward the shore at full speed.
It is a moment of awful suspense. The burning steamer rushes onward with fearful momentum and thrusts her prow, fast and deep into the sand! Oh, what a scene of dismay, of distress, of inexpressible agony succeeds. Scores and score are imprisoned by the flames; between them and the shore intervenes, here the raging fire, and there a depth of water, which it requires a swimmer’s skill to pass. Helpless women, trembling between two deaths, draw back from the water with a shudder, and cling to the burning vessel, until the unpitying flames, marching up to their last refuge, cruelly force them off. Timid, lovely children left protectorless, in the wild dismay of the moment, strive to clamber over the deck, and cry piteously for help, until the fierce flame wraps them about as a winding sheet, and their stifled sobs are hushed in death. Many leap overboard at once in frantic desperation, and in their wild and violent struggles force one another down to an instant grave. Stout and brave swimmers are there; they bring some safe to shore, and return again on their heroic errand, but now they are drawn beneath the surface by the desperate grasp of the drowning, and are seen no more.
Hearken! What wails of anguish and terror pierce the skies. Mothers in heat-rending tones crying for the children that have been torn from their grasp; sisters and daughters vainly struggling in the waters, imploring assistance in the final notes of terror and despair; husbands frantically calling upon wives, and fathers upon children. A moment longer, and those dying cries and struggles are over. The dreadful work of death is finished… transpiring under the very shadow of our homes…
In all, sixty people perished that afternoon aboard the Henry Clay.
Culled from: Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum
If you’re wondering why anyone would shirk from water when faced with fire, keep in mind that back in the 19th century most poor urban residents didn’t have access to swimming pools and, therefore, never learned to swim. Plus, the thick dresses that were in fashion during the time didn’t exactly lend themselves to physical exertion or buoyancy.
They really knew how to write and speak back then. Really vivid and heart-rending description there.