Hot Springs weekly star. (Hot Springs, S.D.) 1892-1917, 1895-02-01
New Orleans Packet State 81
Missouri Goes Down.
sTRIKEsA BOOK
Thirty Of the Passengers and
Grew Are Drowned.
panic-stricken People rrample Each
Other to Death In Their Frantic
Efforts to Escape-One Of the Yawls
Overcrowded and Sunk.
Die in eiRht Of Shore.

Die In Sight Of Shore.
The great Cincinnati and New Orleans
steamer State of Missouri went to the bot
tom Of the Ohio River at Wolf Greek, sew.
enty miles below Louisville, KY, at 6
o'clock Saturday night and it is reported
that thirty people met death. The steam
boat was n of tho largest steamers be-
longing to the Cincinnati and Memphis
Packet Company, and was a new boat
worth 100000. She left Louisville, KY,
lt 10 O'Clock Saturday morning, bound for
New Orleans, with twenty-three passen-
gers and a crew, making seventy-eight
people. She Ind about half a cargo Of,
furniture, nails. acids, etc., and ran
smoothly until her dreadful accident that
sent many souls to eternity.
The trip was uneventful until the dreai-
ed point known as the horseshoe bend,
near Alton, Ind, was reached. Here the
pilot slowed down. as the current was
very swift, and turned his wheel so as to
avoid an obstruction known us Bullock
rock. The rudders failed to respond to
the wheel and there was a grinding,
crashing sound. The boat soon filled and
sunk.
The shock was terrific and the boat
trembled from bow to stern. Consterna-
ton seized upon the passengers and in a
moment they were frantic. Without re-
gard to consequences they rushed to the
upper decks in the hope of delaying the in
evitable, as the boat was rapidly sinking.
Women and children were trampled upon,
but it is believed all got out of the cabin.
Then the scramble for seats in the yawls
began. It was q fight for life, in which
many combatants are believed to have
gone to their death. The first yawl
launched was sunk within twenty feet Of
where 1t struck the water. It is believed
everyone in it was drowned in sight of the
sffrighted people huddled together on the
linking steamer. A second yawl was then
pushed of. It contained four women.
This is believed to have reached shore.
Just when there seemed some hope that
BY means of this yawl the passengers
could be saved, the steamer gave another
terrific lurch and literally broke into
pieces, and in ten minutes from the mo-
ment the rock was struck nothing but the
hull remained. The cabin, texas and
pilot-house floated away, dragging down
into the water everyone upon it. The
lighter freight was washed from the main
deck, and on this men, women and chill
dren chung us best they could, many, how.
over, only to fall back into deaths icy em-
brace. Several succeeded by this means
In getting into the willows and trees and
were rescued by farmers and passing
steamers.
In less than ten minutes from the time
the boat struck she had gone down. At
Rockport and Owensboro. as well as ut
all intermediate points, the bank is lined
with skiffs picking up pieces of furniture
and watching for dead bodies, but the cur
rent is too swift for small craft to get
out fur. -Four passengers were saved by
clinging to a mule which swan ashore.
The passengers were all ticketed through
to New Orleans.
The State of Missouri was built at Mad.
ison, Ind, in 1890, by the Kansas City
syndicate, for the Missouri River trade,
at q cost of $4,000. She was one of q
trio Of fine steamers built by the same
company-thc State of Kansas and the
A. L. Mason being the others. She was
250 feet long, with a forty-four foot beam
and six foot hold. She was never launch-
ed on the Missouri, but placed on tho
Ohio and Mississippi, plying between
Cincinnati and New Orleans, with occa-
sional trips to st. Louis.