Bayou Sara, LA Steamer CLIPPER NO. 1 Explosion, Sept 1843 - Terrible Explosion

TERRIBLE STEAMBOAT EXPLOSION.

The last Southern mail brings accounts of a most terrible steamboat explosion at the town of Bayou Sara, on the Mississippi River -- by which fourteen persons were killed -- ten others missing, believed to be killed -- nine wounded. The Louisiana Chronicle extra of the 20th September furnishes the following particulars:
It has become our mournful duty to record one of the most terrible catastrophies which has ever happened on the Mississippi.
Yesterday, at about a quarter past 10 o'clock, as the steamer CLIPPER NO. 1 was backing out from her moorings at our landing, she blew up with an explosion that shook earth, air and heaven, as though the walls of the world were crumbling to pieces about our ears. All the boilers bursting simultaneously -- machinery, vast fragments of the boilers, huge beams of timber, furniture and human beings in every degree of mutilation, were alike shot up perpendicularly many hundred fathoms in the air.
On reaching the greatest height, the various bodies diverged like the jets of a fountain in all directions falling to the earth, and upon roofs of houses, in some instances as much as two hundred fifty yards from the scene of destruction. The hapless victims were scalded, crushed, torn, mangled and scattered in every possible direction, many into the river, some in the streets, some on the other site of the Bayou nearly 300 yards -- some torn asunder by coming in contact with pickets and posts, and others shot like cannon balls through the solid walls of houses at a great distance from the boat. All in front of the wheel-houses appears as though swept by a whirlwind. But any thing like an adequate description of the scene of wreck and ruin is utterly out of the question.
On reaching the spot under whip and spur, we immediately bent our steps towards the temporary hospital hastily prepared for the reception of such as might be found to retain a spark of life. The scene was such as we hope never to look upon again.
The floors of the two large waterooms were literally strewn with the dead and dying, and others pouring in as last as it was possible to convey them -- praying, groaning, howling and writhing in every possible contortion of physical agony. In the midst of this confusing din, up to their armpits in oil and cotton and bandages, we found our praiseworthy physicians -- like good Samaritans doing good -- quietly and silently, but with the energy and activity apparently of fifty pair of hands -- now washing a burn, now dressing a wound, and then splintering a fractured limb. Indeed our citizens generally, every, man and mother's son, appeared only anxious as to how they might render most service to the poor sufferers -- white and black, without distinction.

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