The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-12-25
THE ONLY "JIM BLUDSOE."
Oliver Fairchild Was Hays Hero and
He Died Many Years Ago.
New York Tribune.)


The occasional rumor of the death in
the Mississippi valley or in the far
west of the alleged original Jim Bud
soc, who, according to newspaper dis
patches published in recent years, must
have been an exceedingly ubiquitous
individual, has had another renaissance
recently in the obituary notice, widely
copied throughout the country, of one
Captain W. P. Lamothe, the only truth
iii the notice probably being that this
doubtless estinable mariner of inland
waters no longer lives. There was only
one real Jim Blud5oe, engineer "of the
Prairie Belle" and it is a great many
years ago that the present secretary of
state said of him: Wall, no; [ can't
tell whar he lives. Because he don't
live, you see."
The real Jim Blddsoe, who gave his
life that others might live, was no
mere fancy, but a veritable hero, who
persisted in a burning steamer precise
~ as related in one of the best known
poems in the English tongue. Secre-
tary Hay knew the original Jim Blud-
soc of the Prairie Belle, who, in real
life, was Oliver Fairchild, and when
years afterWard he went on the editor
ial staff of the New York Tribune, the
Il
New Orleans, called to see him in his
newspaper Office and talked with him
over the incident. Oliver Fairchild, the
engineer, the father of the young man,
had lost his life under just such cir
cumstances as related in the poem.
while sticking to the engines of the
steamer Fashion, plying between Mem
phiS and st. Louis. The Fashion had
independent horizontal engines, each
Il y III
common on all of the western and
southern river steamboats,. This ar
rangement of independent wheels was
adopted in order that one could be
stopped or reversed, while the other
was kept going ahead, the better to
navigate the vessel in the tortuous
twistings of the eccentric channels and
bends of the rivers. The engineer of
such a steamer was second in impor-
tance aboard to the pilot alone, and it
required an active, resourceful man to
fill the position, especially in times of
Gs,nger. or when another steamer was
overtaken and a race ensued. Such
race with the Movaster, it will be re-
megnbered, caused the catastrophe TIA
the Prairie Belle. Every one is famil-
lar with the skilful word picture of the
flaming steamer making 'for the willer
bank ON the right" and Jim's en-
pnaIlC reIuSal TO leaVe MS pOSt.
About the time that Mr. Hay was
temporarily in charge of the Tribune,
a controversy arose between Mark
Twain and himself over what appeared
to be a technical incongruity in the lit
tie classic, Twain holding that an en-
gineer could not have performed the
heroism ascribed to him, as the steer
ing of the vessel was altogether the
pilots duty Mark Twains hypothesis,
based upon his own extensive expert
ence as a river pilot, might ordinarily
have carried conviction, had not Mr..
Hay had tine unassailable argument of
historical exactitude on his side; for.
as matter of fact, the steering gear
of the Fashion had been quickly de-
stroyed almost at the beginning of the
fire. The tiller ropes had burned away
as soon as the flames from the over
heated furnaces swept upward through
the vessel, and the engineer, in the
fiery hell below, became the sole hu-
man bing possessed of the power to
turn her towards the bank and keep
her there. Secretary Hay veraciously
described the incident, even to the dec
laration that 'Bludsoe's ghost went UP
alone in the smoke of the Prairie
Belle" Every one else was saved but
Oliver Fairchild, the engineer. and no
real Jim Bludsoe has lived since that
night.