Captain Klinefelter obtained his steersman a pass on the A. T. Lacey,
which left two days behind the Pennsylvania. This was pleasant, for
Bart Bowen had become captain of that fine boat. The Lacey touched at
Greenville, Mississippi, and a voice from the landing shouted:
“The Pennsylvania is blown up just below Memphis, at Ship Island! One
hundred and fifty lives lost!”
Nothing further could be learned there, but that evening at Napoleon a
Memphis extra reported some of the particulars. Henry Clemens's name was
mentioned as one of those, who had escaped injury. Still farther up the
river they got a later extra. Henry was again mentioned; this time as
being scalded beyond recovery. By the time they reached Memphis they
knew most of the details: At six o'clock that warm mid-June morning,
while loading wood from a large flat-boat sixty miles below Memphis,
four out of eight of the Pennsylvania's boilers had suddenly exploded
with fearful results. All the forward end of the boat had been blown
out. Many persons had been killed outright; many more had been scalded
and crippled and would die. It was one of those hopeless, wholesale
steamboat slaughters which for more than a generation had made the
Mississippi a river of death and tears.
Samuel Clemens found his brother stretched upon a mattress on the floor
of an improvised hospital--a public hall--surrounded by more than thirty
others more or less desperately injured. He was told that Henry
had inhaled steam and that his body was badly scalded. His case was
considered hopeless.
Henry was one of those who had been blown into the river by the
explosion. He had started to swim for the shore, only a few hundred
yards away, but presently, feeling no pain and believing himself unhurt,
he had turned back to assist in the rescue of the others. What he did
after that could not be clearly learned. The vessel had taken fire; the
rescued were being carried aboard the big wood-boat still attached to
the wreck. The fire soon raged so that the rescuers and all who could
be saved were driven into the wood-flat, which was then cut adrift and
landed. There the sufferers had to lie in the burning sun many hours
until help could come. Henry was among those who were insensible by that
time. Perhaps he had really been uninjured at first and had been scalded
in his work of rescue; it will never be known.
His brother, hearing these things, was thrown into the deepest agony and
remorse. He held himself to blame for everything; for Henry's presence
on the boat; for his advice concerning safety of others; for his own
absence when he might have been there to help and protect the boy. He
wanted to telegraph at once to his mother and sister to come, but the
doctors persuaded him to wait--just why, he never knew. He sent word of
the disaster to Orion, who by this time had sold out in Keokuk and
was in East Tennessee studying law; then he set himself to the all but
hopeless task of trying to bring Henry back to life. Many Memphis ladies
were acting as nurses, and one, a Miss Wood, attracted by the boy's
youth and striking features, joined in the desperate effort. Some
medical students had come to assist the doctors, and one of these
also took special interest in Henry's case. Dr. Peyton, an old Memphis
practitioner, declared that with such care the boy might pull through.
But on the fourth night he was considered to be dying. Half delirious
with grief and the strain of watching, Samuel Clemens wrote to his
mother and to his sister-in-law in Tennessee. The letter to Orion
Clemens's wife has been preserved.
MEMPHIS, TENN., Friday, June 18, 1858.
DEAR SISTER MOLLIE,--Long before this reaches you my poor Henry--my
darling, my pride, my glory, my all will have finished his blameless
career, and the light of my life will have gone out in utter
darkness. The horrors of three days have swept over me--they have
blasted my youth and left me an old man before my time. Mollie,
there are gray hairs in my head to-night. For forty-eight hours I
labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised but
uncomplaining brother, and then the star of my hope went out and
left me in the gloom of despair. Men take me by the hand and
congratulate me, and call me “lucky” because I was not on the
Pennsylvania when she blew up! May God forgive them, for they know
not what they say.
I was on the Pennsylvania five minutes before she left N. Orleans,
and I must tell you the truth, Mollie--three hundred human beings
perished by that fearful disaster. But may God bless Memphis, the
noblest city on the face of the earth. She has done her duty by
these poor afflicted creatures--especially Henry, for he has had
five--aye, ten, fifteen, twenty times the care and attention that
any one else has had. Dr. Peyton, the best physician in Memphis (he
is exactly like the portraits of Webster), sat by him for 36 hours.
There are 32 scalded men in that room, and you would know Dr.
Peyton better than I can describe him if you could follow him around
and hear each man murmur as he passes, “May the God of Heaven bless
you, Doctor!” The ladies have done well, too. Our second mate, a
handsome, noble-hearted young fellow, will die. Yesterday a
beautiful girl of 15 stooped timidly down by his side and handed him
a pretty bouquet. The poor suffering boy's eyes kindled, his lips
quivered out a gentle “God bless you, Miss,” and he burst into
tears. He made them write her name on a card for him, that he might
not forget it.
Pray for me, Mollie, and pray for my poor sinless brother.
Your unfortunate brother,