Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1883 — STEAMER HORROR. [ARTICLE]

STEAMER HORROR.

The Pilot Explodes on the California Coast—Eighteen Lives Lost. Some of the Victims Blown Inland, and Landed Lifeless on Terra Firma. I A shocking disaster is reported by tele- ; graph from San Francisco. Tito stern-wheel ■ passenger 6teamer Pilot, plying along the bay, was blown to pieces by the explosion j of one of her boilers, and fifteen of the pas- j sengers and crew lost their lives. The par- ' ticulars of the sad affair are embraced in the j following dispatches from SanFzancisco: Officers of the steamer Donahue reported that j in passing Donahue Landing they noticed the j Pilot coming down the creek in midchannel, and a few minutes afterward saw no sign of the incoming steannA A message was sent to Petaluma directing that a relief train with physicians and mm e? for the wounded be immediately dispatched i o Lakeville. When the relief train arrived the surgeons on board found little to do, as of all those ; know n and believed to be on board none but the Captain and two others (one the pilot) ! could he; found. They were discovered iin the fields, seriously injured, the I Captain the least of the three. Search was ; was made in every direction in the sand ! dams near the bank, and, one after another, i four men were found, all more or less j seriously injured- some -with an arm or leg ; broken in the fall One was but slightly in- ! jured, having fallen in long grasses Out of | these he managed to scramble on higher and | drier ground. Had he been more senously ' injured he would have been drowned by the | high tide. Last reports show that eight are | killed, seven wounded and ten missing, i Most of the latter are probably dead, but | the bodies have not yet been found. The | names of the passengers cannot be definitely i ascertained, as no names are recorded at the i points of departure. It is thought many of the passengers who k escaped scalding ' and mangling were j drowned, as the boat sank immediately after j the explosion. The explosion is attributable to defective boilers. Those persons who witnessed the explosion from the steamer Donahue, say that it was almost-^unny to see the way the smoke-stack went ftp. It seemed, as they say, to leave the vessel in advance, and shot up in the air over 810 yards, coming down • again within a few feet of the vessel. ! Matthews, late of Sonoma Mountain, on ; his way to Arizona, lost four children, and ; another will die. His wife is crazy. A BTKANGE INCIDENT. The most extraordinary incident in connection with the disaster was the finding of Mrs. George I*. AlcNear, a passenger, about a mile and a half from the Beene of the explosion. She was standing in the mud and was still alive, but unconscious. It is presumed she struggled through the mud and weeds for that distance in search of relief. She was immediately removed to Lakeville, but died a few minutes after her arrival. UNRELIABLE, BUT INTERESTING. In Brooklyn lives a girl who eats daily three pounds of candy. A Tuscan girl has gone to Join the Mexican troops now fighting the Indian?. A girl in Canandaigua swam four timei across the lake without resting once ( In Westchester county lives a beautifnl girl who has raised peventy-two broods ol chickens so far this season. Six lovely maidens of Troy, N. Y., hav« built a raft on which they intend to spend the summer floating up and down the Hudson riven A Newabk girl put an artificial rattlesnake in her Boston conßin’s room to frighten him He is now dangerously ffl with brain fever. A vebt wealthy New York girl has adopted a Japanese baby of 2 years She paid #3.00C for him, and has named him James A Garfield. , ~ A Texas girl has gone into a convent jfo l six months and given out word that she. ji dead, just to test her lover and see if he Wui marry some ©he else.