The Moselle was a riverboat constructed at the Fulton shipyard, in Cincinnati, Ohio. between December 1, 1837, and March 31, 1838.Lloyd (1856), page 93. The Moselle was considered one of the fastest river boats in operation at the time, having completed a record-setting two-day, sixteen-hour trip between Cincinnati and St. Louis.James T. Lloyd, Lloyd's Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters,... (Cincinnati, Ohio: James T. Lloyd & Co., 1856), pages 89–93: "Explosion of the Moselle, near Cincinnati, Ohio, April 25, 1838"; see page 89. On April 25, 1838, the Moselle, piloted by Captain Isaac Perin, suffered a boiler explosion just east of Cincinnati, killing 160 of the estimated 280–300 passengers.Cincinnati Views: Ohio River: Steamboats, p. 5 (Note: This page includes illustrations of the steamboat Moselle before, during, and after its explosion on April 25, 1838.)The following report estimates 150 dead among at least 280 passengers: Report of the committee appointed by the citizens of Cincinnati, April 26, 1838, to enquire into the causes of the explosion of the Moselle, and to suggest such preventative measures as may best be calculated to guard hereafter against such occurrences (Cincinnati, Ohio: Alexander Flash, 1838), page 22.
During a brief stop at Fulton to take on additional passengers, Perin decided to keep the boilers at full steam in order to impress onlookers. The boat had just pulled away from a dock near the neighborhood of Fulton, when all four boilers simultaneously suffered a catastrophic failure resulting in the destruction of most of the ship. The remaining section drifted approximately 15 minutes / 100 yards before sinking to the bottom of the Ohio river.Lloyd (1856), page 90. Negligence may have been a factor in the explosion: many eyewitness reports claimed that Captain Perin had been racing another riverboat, the Ben Franklin (1836) at the time of the explosion, and therefore the pressure in the boilers was excessively high.Lloyd (1856), page 91.Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio... (Norwalk, Ohio: State of Ohio, 1898), vol. 1, page 760.
References
External links Frederick Dwight s survivor of the disaster [.p.165