Baton Rouge tri-weekly gazette & comet. [volume] (Baton Rouge, La.) 1865-18??, 1866-02-06
STEAMBOAT EXPLOSIONS, &C.

u6ullcS, HaVo IuelT peTlouiClIle5 III
this country. Some five or six Of
these disasters have occurred within
a few days recently, attended with
fearful loss of life and property. In
our last, we published kilograms Civ
ing accounts Of the blowing up of
the steamers Miami and Missouri,
since then, the details of two similar
catastrophes have reached us, which
we insert below. Besides these. we
hear of another having occurred on
the Alabama river at Selma. Add
to this, the explosion of a locomotive
a few days ago on the New Orleans
and Jackson Railroad, by which
some seven lives were lost, and we
have a chapter of accidents sufi-
GENTLY numerous and appalling to
enable any one whose sensibilities
can be reached, to "sup on horrors"
for a brief time at least-say for
about nine days-when, perhaps, a
fresh dish may be served up, las is
the case nearly every day at the
North, from the frequency of their
railroad disasters to keep up a pleas
ant little run of sensational items in
the papers and afford a neve failing
topic for street and table talk. Mean
while, the thousands who are killed,
scalded, wounded, mutilated II drown-
ed, through the reckless conduct of
steamboat captains, engineers and
pilots, railroad managers, conductors
and engineers, are left to their fate,
with no one to care, for there is
always, of course, nobody to blame
in such cases.
The remarkable coincidence of
time at which so many of those dis
a~sters, all of the same nature, occur,
has given rise in some ~philosophic
brains, we understand, to a queer
notion. 1t is, that these disasters
are influenced by some peculiar at
mospheric agency. If so, some ana
Lying process ought to be instituted,
by which the dread and dangerous
elements in the ETHEREAL regions, could
be "jugged' or bottled up and laid
aside out of harms way, and labelled
"poison" or something else that's
dreadful. At any rate, and by all
manner of means, let thorough search
be made for those agglomerated
masses Of noxious animalcule that
press down SO heavily on steamboat
and locomotive boilers causing them
to collapse !; apd when caught, apply
to them the microscope and scalpel'
to the end effectually Of segregating
them and removing from each par
ticular head hal unruly "bump Of
causality," ere they be allowed to 60
scot free and mingle again in their
regions of space. This opera
ton would save a vast amount of
fruitless investigation into the minor
of those terrible accidents on
and railroads, which some folks
are foolish enough to ascribe to wan
ton recklessness, imbecility or crimi-
nal Indifference to safety of life and
property.
The New Orleans Pacayume Of last
Saturday afternoon, has the following,
relative to the explosion of the tug
boat Baltic:
Terrible Erplosion.-The city was startled
this morning by the news of the explosion
of the tug boat Baltic, which occurred at
about 5 o'clock. The Baltic was lying
attached to q coal barge, at the foot Of
street, at the time the explo-
sion took place. The explosion was ter
rife; the hull of the boat sunk, and moth
ing remains of the Baltic but what was
on shore by the force of the explo-
There were few persons on board at
the time; and, at the present writing, we
give as far as we can learn, the following
as the loss of life and injury sustained by
sad disaster Capt. W. L. Smith, Of
the Baltic, was thrown on board of the
Champion, lying near by, and
injured. He died while being con
veyed to his residence, on Craps street,
Third District. The pilot and engineer
were slightly injured, and the cook and
first mate are missing. Four negroes,