EXPLOSION OF THE GREAT GUN ON BOARD THE PRINCETON MAN-OF-WAR: THE
KILLED AND WOUNDED.
On the morning of the 28th of February, a company of some hundred
guests, invited by Commodore Stockton, including the President of
the United States, his cabinet, members of both Houses of Congress,
citizens and strangers, with a great number of ladies, headed
by Mrs. Madison, ex-presidentess, repaired on board the steamer
man-of-war Princeton, then lying in the river below the city, to
witness the working of her machinery (a screw propeller), and to
observe the fire of her two great guns--throwing balls of 225 pounds
each. The vessel was the pride and pet of the commodore, and having
undergone all the trials necessary to prove her machinery and her
guns, was brought round to Washington for exhibition to the public
authorities. The day was pleasant--the company numerous and gay.
On the way down to the vessel a person whispered in my ear that
Nicholas Biddle was dead. It was my first information of that event,
and heard not without reflections on the instability and shadowy
fleetingness of the pursuits and contests of this life. Mr. Biddle
had been a Power in the State, and for years had baffled or balanced
the power of the government. He had now vanished, and the news of
his death came in a whisper, not announced in a tumult of voices;
and those who had contended with him might see their own sudden and
silent evanescence in his. It was a lesson upon human instability,
and felt as such; but without a thought or presentiment that, before
the sun should go down, many of that high and gay company should
vanish from earth--and the one so seriously impressed barely fail to
be of the number.
The vessel had proceeded down the river below the grave of
Washington--below Mount Vernon--and was on her return, the machinery
working beautifully, the guns firing well, and the exhibition of
the day happily over. It was four-o'clock in the evening, and a
sumptuous collation had refreshed and enlivened the guests. They
were still at the table, when word was brought down that one of
the guns was to be fired again; and immediately the company rose
to go on deck and observe the fire--the long and vacant stretch in
the river giving full room for the utmost range of the ball. The
President and his cabinet went foremost, this writer among them,
conversing with Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy. The President
was called back: the others went on, and took their places on the
left of the gun--pointing down the river. The commodore was with
this group, which made a cluster near the gun, with a crowd behind,
and many all around. I had continued my place by the side of Mr.
Gilmer, and of course was in the front of the mass which crowded
up to the gun. The lieutenant of the vessel, Mr. Hunt, came and
whispered in my ear that I would see the range of the ball better
from the breech; and proposed to change my place. It was a tribute
to my business habits, being indebted for this attention to the
interest which I had taken all day in the working of the ship,
and the firing of her great guns. The lieutenant placed me on a
carronade carriage, some six feet in the rear of the gun, and in
the line of her range. Senator Phelps had stopped on my left, with
a young lady of Maryland (Miss Sommerville) on his arm. I asked
them to get on the carriage to my right (not choosing to lose my
point of observation): which they did--the young lady between us,
and supported by us both, with the usual civil phrases, that we
would take care of her. The lieutenant caused the gun to be worked,
to show the ease and precision with which her direction could be
changed and then pointed down the river to make the fire--himself
and the gunners standing near the breech on the right. I opened
my mouth wide to receive the concussion on the inside as well as
on the outside of the head and ears, so as to lessen the force of
the external shock. I saw the hammer pulled back--heard a tap--saw
a flash--felt a blast in the face, and knew that my hat was gone:
and that was the last that I knew of the world, or of myself, for
a time, of which I can give no account. The first that I knew of
myself, or of any thing afterwards, was rising up at the breech
of the gun, seeing the gun itself split open--two seamen, the
blood oozing from their ears and nostrils, rising and reeling near
me--Commodore Stockton, hat gone, and face blackened, standing
bolt upright, staring fixedly upon the shattered gun. I had heard
no noise--no more than the dead. I only knew that the gun had
bursted from seeing its fragments. I felt no injury, and put my arm
under the head of a seaman, endeavoring to rise, and falling back.
By that time friends had ran up, and led me to the bow--telling
me afterwards that there was a supernatural whiteness in the face
and hands--all the blood in fact having been driven from the
surface. I saw none of the killed: they had been removed before
consciousness returned. All that were on the left had been killed,
the gun bursting on that side, and throwing a large fragment, some
tons weight, on the cluster from which I had been removed, crushing
the front rank with its force and weight. Mr. Upshur, Secretary of
State; Mr. Gilmer, Secretary of the Navy; Commodore Kennon, of the
navy; Mr. Virgil Maxey, late United States chargé at the Hague; Mr.
Gardiner of New York, father-in-law that would have been to Mr.
Tyler--were the dead. Eleven seamen were injured--two mortally.
Commodore Stockton was scorched by the burning powder, and stunned
by the concussion; but not further injured. I had the tympanum of
the left ear bursted through, the warm air from the lungs issuing
from it at every breathing. Senator Phelps and the young lady on
my right, had fallen inwards towards the gun, but got up without
injury. We all three had fallen inwards, as into a vacuum. The
President's servant who was next me on the left was killed. Twenty
feet of the vessels bulwark immediately behind me was blown away.
Several of the killed had members of their family on board--to be
deluded for a little while, by the care of friends, with the belief
that those so dear to them were only hurt. Several were prevented
from being in the crushed cluster by the merest accidents--Mr. Tyler
being called back--Mr. Seaton not finding his hat in time--myself
taken out of it the moment before the catastrophe. Fortunately there
were physicians on board to do what was right for the injured,
and to prevent blood-letting, so ready to be called for by the
uninformed, and so fatal when the powers of life were all on the
retreat. Gloomily and sad the gay company of the morning returned
to the city, and the calamitous intelligence flew over the land.
For myself, I had gone through the experience of a sudden death,
as if from lightning, which extinguishes knowledge and sensation,
and takes one out of the world without thought or feeling. I think I
know what it is to die without knowing it--and that such a death is
nothing to him that revives. The rapid and lucid working of the mind
to the instant of extinction, is the marvel that still astonishes
me. I heard the tap--saw the flash--felt the blast--and knew nothing
of the explosion. I was cut off in that inappreciable point of time
which intervened between the flash and the fire--between the burning
of the powder in the touch-hole, and the burning of it in the barrel
of the gun. No mind can seize that point of time--no thought can
measure it; yet to me it was distinctly marked, divided life from
death--the life that sees, and feels, and knows--from death (for
such it was for the time), which annihilates self and the world. And
now is credible to me, or rather comprehensible, what persons have
told me of the rapid and clear working of the mind in sudden and
dreadful catastrophes--as in steamboat explosions, and being blown
into the air, and have the events of their lives pass in review
before them, and even speculate upon the chances of falling on the
deck, and being crushed, or falling on the water and swimming: and
persons recovered from drowning, and running their whole lives over
in the interval between losing hope and losing consciousness.