Steamboat Disasters on the Western Waters (Abridged, Annotated)

According to James Lloyd, the 1856 publisher of this guide, “The price of this volume is so small, that every man, woman and child, should have a copy for reference…”However true that may have been, they might not have wanted to refer to it while ACTUALLY RIDING ON A STEAMBOAT.The largest portion of the book is taken up with detailed accounts of horrific steamboat accidents involving boiler explosions, collisions with other ships, capsizing, and damage from river detritus. In one instance he records a conflagration that consumed twenty-three steamboats in New Orleans in 1849.It reads extremely well and a modern equivalent might be 1955 classic, “A Night to Remember” about Titanic, only with scores of wrecks instead of one. In some of the cases, criminal charges were brought against crew members for negligence or because they blew up a boiler while racing another steamboat while carrying 300 passengers.It makes fascinating reading of an era long gone and Lloyd did a very creditable job of cataloging scores of accidents. Why he felt this would be appropriate reading for children while traveling is something we can never know.