It’s time for another ghastly tale from our troubled past, this one courtesy of Joy Kemnitz who sends a clipping from the November 5, 1868 issue of the The Sweetwater Forerunner, Sweetwater, Tennessee. As Joy says, “They really don’t pull any punches in the old article descriptions” – and that is why the Comtesse loves them so!
A Train on the O.&M. Rail-Road Blown to Atoms.
Special dispatch to the Louisville Journal.
CINCINNATI, Oct. 30.–One of the most horrible railroad accidents that has occurred in this vicinity for some time past, took place at Gravel Pit, a station distant about eighteen miles from this city, on the Ohio and Mississippi road last night about 8 o’clock. A special freight train left this city at 6:25 last evening in charge of Mr. Mills Howe, conductor, and Jos. Gardner engineer. Reaching Gravel Pit about 7 1/2 o’clock, the train was stopped on the main track for the purpose of taking in wood for the engine.
Shortly after the train stopped, while the brakeman was passing the wood aboard the tender, the engineer oiling the engine, the fireman piling the wood as it came on board, and the conductor and a party of little boys who had gathered about to see the locomotive standing alongside the engine, a powerful freight locomotive exploded her boiler with a report that was heard for miles around, and with such force that it killed the conductor, fireman, and one of the boys outright, and wounded two more of the boys, who have since died.–The engineer and a brakeman named Henry Howe, brother to the conductor, were also injured quite severely.
So terrible was the force of the explosion that the engine was shattered into fragments, some of which were blown to the Kentucky side of the river, a distance of nearly a mile, while others, large and small, have since been picked up around the scene of the accident within a radius of a thousand yards. The wood in the pile alongside was sent flying in the air in every direction, and a stationary engine used for sawing the wood and the house that enclosed it were blown to fragments.
The conductor was lifted up and thrown against the wood pile, struck in the face and body with several fragments of the boiler, and so fearfully mangled and burned by the escaping steam as to be almost unrecognizable. Both legs were broken and his body crushed to jelly, and his face and neck gashed and skull crushed. The fireman, John Malone, who was standing near the fire doors in a position to feel the full force of the explosion, was also horribly mangled and died instantly. His limbs were broken, body covered with cuts and bruises, and his skull blown off and brains spattered all over the river side of the water tank.
One of the boys named John Smith, son of one of the employees of the road, residing at the gravel pit, was blown a long distance of 300 yards against a gravel bank and instantly killed. He was about twelve years of age. His brother, a few years younger was also blown a long distance, together with the flying wood, and so badly injured that he has since died. The boy, Thos. Murphy, about fifteen years old, was lifted up and thrown a distance of fifty feet against a wood-pile, which fell on his body, completely hiding it from view. He died in a few minutes after being taken from the debris. His little brother, about six years of age was blown a distance of forty feet into a lot of tall weeds, where he was found crying lustily, but slightly injured.
Mr. Gardner was knocked down and badly injured in the head, shoulder, and hip.
Henry Howe, the brakeman, had his hip and knee crushed, and received internal injuries, which, it is feared, will prove fatal. Several other person were bruised by the flying fragments. The trucks of the engine were not moved from the track, nor the tender moved more than three feet backwards. the force seems to have acted from below, lifting the boiler up and scattering the fragments in all directions.
