07/30/2023
It took eight hours to travel by steamboat down the Hudson River from Albany to Manhattan. By 1852 steamboats were steadily losing passengers to the railroad, which could make the 150-mile trip in half that time. There was a lot of pressure on the steamboat operators to make the trip as quickly as possible, and particularly to make it faster than rival steamboats.
One of the premier steamboats on the Albany to New York City run was the Henry Clay. Even though the railroad was faster, in the early 1850s travel by steamboat was still regarded as more genteel and many of the passengers who boarded the Henry Clay on July 28, 1852 were among the most prominent citizens of the area.
The steamboat Armenia was the Henry Clay’s principal rival and she was also making the run to Manhattan that morning. The owners and captain of the Henry Clay were determined to beat her there.
It was common for steamboats to race each other on the river so there wasn’t anything unusual about the race that broke out between the Henry Clay and the Armenia. But passengers would later testify that the captain of the Henry Clay was being reckless and that they had protested, demanding that the racing stop. At one point along the way the Henry Clay and the Armenia collided. There wasn’t much damage to either vessel but it was enough to cause the Armenia to back off and quit racing. The Henry Clay pressed on, as fast as she could go.
In hindsight it seems the racing probably wasn’t responsible for the disaster that followed, although an enraged public believed otherwise. At some point the Henry Clay caught fire midship, probably because a door to a boiler wasn’t shut tightly. Soon the middle of the ship was engulfed in flames, with the crew herding the passengers to the aft (rear) of the vessel. The captain steered his ship toward the shore and ran it aground, bow (front) first. Those on the front of the ship were able to escape. Of those on the back of the ship, about 80 drowned or died in the fire. It was the worst steamboat disaster in Hudson River history. The Armenia came up after the ship ran aground and assisted in rescuing many of the Henry Clay’s passengers.
With eyewitness accounts of the racing appearing in the press, there was a public outcry for justice. Following an inquest, New York authorities charged the captain and the ship’s owners with murder.
Fortunately for the defendants, the federal government claimed jurisdiction over the case. The federal prosecutors reduced the charges to manslaughter and when the trial occurred, the defendants were acquitted. But the notoriety of the case led Congress to pass steamboat safety legislation that contributed to a drastic reduction in the number of steamboat travel deaths. Among other things, the bill outlawed steamboat racing.
Among the distinguished passengers who died in the disaster were Stephen Allen, former mayor of New York, the famous landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing, Maria Hawthorne, sister of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Caroline DeWindt, granddaughter of President John Adams.
Of the many tragic stories from the disaster, the story of the Bailey family is one of the saddest. Jacob Whitman Bailey was one of America’s leading scientists and naturalists and was a distinguished professor at West Point. He and his wife Maria were aboard the Henry Clay that morning with their 15-year-old daughter Maria and their 9-year-old son William. Jacob and his son William survived the disaster, but his wife and daughter perished. Neither Jacob nor William ever recovered from the shock of witnessing the deaths of their wife/daughter, mother/sister. Jacob died less than five years later, at age 46. William went on to become, like his father, a prominent scientist and professor, but the trauma of the disaster left him with a weakened constitution and poor health for the rest of his life.
The Henry Clay steamboat disaster occurred on July 28, 1852, one hundred seventy-one years ago today.
