A tragedy on January 30, 1866 was just the first for capt. Jesse Y. Hurd, it would end with his death. He was the captain of the sidewheeler Missouri which ran from St. Louis to New Orleans and sometimes made side trips to Louisville, Kentucky. It was on one of these trips that she met her end when her boiler exploded near
Newburg, Indiana, some reports claim she was racing the SS Dictator and this may well have been true as this was a common, but dangerous practice.

The details of the explosion are few other than it occurred at around 2am and the ship sank near the mouth of the Green River across from Robertson's Saw Mill. The Dictator removed the survivors, which included capt. Hurd. Reports give the number of deaths as sixty-five, this included Catherine Hurd, the captain's wife, whose scalded body was discovered by the crew of the SS Armada, underwater still in her bed. His two sons, Harry and Arthur, were also on board. Harry would die from his injuries, Arthur, badly burned would recover.

This tragedy was compounded when capt. Hurd's brother, captain Jacob S. Hurd was killed ten days later when the boiler on his ship, the W. R. Carter exploded north of Vicksburg, Mississippi on Feb. 9, 1866, with him one hundred and twenty-four others perished. Both ships had tubular boilers which were fuel saving, but
dangerous. These boilers would be outlawed within days of the the W. R. Carter disaster.

For Jesse Hurd there was one more tragic death, his surviving son Arthur. He contracted swamp fever in
Louisiana and died on Sept. 28, 1867. Captain Jesse Hurd died of some kind of illness less than a month later
on Oct. 23, 1867. I have no evidence of this, but perhaps he just gave up the will to live as almost no man
could endure such terrible tragedy and heartache.

© 2008 Michael W. Pocock
MaritimeQuest.com