Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1871-08-04
Frightful Boiler Explosion.
76 KILLED AND 1875 WOUNDED.

AS the Staten Island ferry boat, West
field, was starting from her dock at foo
of White Hall street, New York, mex
the battery, at half past l o'clock, Sun
day afternoon with heavy load of pas
sengers, composed mostly of the usua
class of Sunday excursionists, to the mum
Der of about 800, her boiler burst, with q
tremendouse explosion, shivering the whole
of the upper works of the boat into
a thousand pieces, and laying open the
whole forward part of the hulk from the
very keel The spectacle on the ill
fated vessel after the explosion was be.
yond description, A great yawaing
abyss stretched from abaft the engine
room close to the stern, and the deck
seemed to have opened like sepulcher
to swallow its precious human freight in
to the dark hold beneath. The dead
and dying were lying about in every di-
reciion among the debris of broken tim
beers, splinters and heavy machinery.
From amidships to cutwater the boat
presented vast hold filled with frag-
ments of spars, beams, flooring, bulwarks
and fragment of iron. How many bod
les still lie beneath the ruins in that fear
full hold, it is impossible to tell. They
are bringing them out every hour. Many
persons, and as in the case of Prof. Mar
chi Chemvier of Brooklyn, were blown
bodily into the river, falling into the
water. Some have been hauled out by
boatmen with hooks and otherwise, and
a large party is now engaged in drag
ging the bottom, constantly finding bod
les.
AS reporter rushed down Broadway
toward the ferry, he met carriage with
a person terribly wounded inside, sup
ported between two men, and small
wagon with a woman stretched upon its
floor, apparently dead. Then followed
one and another of the great fire depart,
ment wagons, filled with a horrid freight,
torn and muddy bundles of clothes, with
here and there bloody head raised
avove the level of the mass, which was
difficult to mark as humanity. Follow
ing the tract of one of these wagons,
which +nrpad domn Doarl stroot o,J fol
lowing the stream Of people who were
rushing like mad from Broadway, the
reporter walked through Pearl into New
street, to the first precinct station house,
where the wagon stopped. A vast crowd
filled the street, tanning up on to the
steps to the houses on the opposite side,
and clinching on the ratings and win
dows of the houses. The popularity of
this vast assemblage was the perfect
stiffness. There was no conversation,
and the only sounds were the hoarse
shouts and orders of the police and
firemen, who sought to drive the crowd
back from the passage-way by which the
bodies were carried in.
Unrepelled, the reporter passed into
the front room of the station house,
shouldering and pushing his way through
the crowd. In the center of the room
stood poor woman, with her clothes
torn away from her shoulders, and cot
ton sticking to fearful burns on her breast
and arms, from which the water with
which they had been recently washed,
.dripped, mixed with blood. A knot of
people had been collected by her groans
as the doctor sponged and dressed her
wounds, and beyond this crowd, in the
front room, lay II bloody and besmirched
corpses. In chairs behind the railing
sat two men and a woman, fearful to
behold, with bloody and scalded hands
and faces, and one man internally
wounded, who had fallen to the floor.
and lay there curled up in agony.
The room in the rear of this was very
lily lighted and almost dark, and in eve
ry corner some victim in every shape
was sitting or lying moaning and gestic-
ulating with skinless, bloody hands, and
striving to artieulate with scorched, scald-
ed lips and blacxened tongues. A doc
tor was bending over an old woman up
on stretcher on the floor, who scream
ed with agony at every touch and move
ment, and another woman sat in a chair,
blackened and mutilated in fearful
manner, begging for cup of water.
Wounded men lay about the floor in
pools of their own blood, and the fumes
of wine and brandy which had been ad-
ministered to them mingled with the sick
ening odor of charred flesh. Men, women
and children, still alive, would be brought
in scorched, bruised and mutilated to such
a degree that it seemed almost impossi-
BILE that life could remain. Around the
corpses in the front room the crowd was
constantly recruited from the people who
came in.
/ The explosion was terrific. John
Mayer, the pilot, was thrown from for