Boiler Explosions and Steamboats

Trains Magazine Steam & Preservation
1

Hello all,

This might be a bit out of the realm of railroading, but here we go:

Some time ago I was asked by a visitor (To the museum at which I volunteer.) why steamboats always had boiler explosions, while they were (somewhat) less frequent on railroads of that time.

Through some reasearch/observation I found some major things that stuck out at me:

  1. It was commomplace on the river boats to tie the safeties down for exra pressure and speed.

  2. Boilers were nary taken proper care of, and clean water for them was non-existent, with it being taken directly from the river.

  3. Boilers were smaller than you would think, only about 2-3 feet in diameter, with two large flues. The fires were burned inside of these, putting direct heat on them.

  4. I could find no refrences to water-sight glasses used in steamboats, and the large tubes meant there was little room between the top of the crown sheet and the top of the boiler.

Any other ideas on what else contributed to this?

If you know more about these kind of things or found anything wrong with my findings, please correct me. I am no expert in any way, shape, or form.

2

Pre-Civil War steamboats tended to be built on the cheap, both structurally and on the powerplant side. Add the factor of incompetant handling, both on the bridge and in the en-gyne room, throw in a few bottles of what what then called “Old Popskull” (hey, the railroads weren’t the only ones who had problems with liquored-up employees) and it was a standing invitation to a boiler explosion, shipboard fire, or any other catastrophe.

I’m painting with a broad brush, mind you. Some boats were expertly built and handled and had long, long lives like the “Mary Powell”, once called “The Queen of the Hudson”, but others…

3

It has been at least six years since I read my edition of The North American Railroad, its Origins, Evolution, and Geography by J. Vance. I’m pretty darned sure he mentioned this problem with steamboats in perhaps the first or second chapter because trains became direct competitors for both steamboat and barge traffic, whether on the rivers or on the canals. I recall wondering what could have possessed paying passengers to step foot on those river boats by the way he described their various problems.

-Crandell

4

It was a boiler explosion on the paddle wheeler “The Sultana” in 1865 that killed around 1,200 returning Union P.O.Ws. that led to standards of boiler construction and the adoption of the ASME code. The company called “The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company” where I used to work was instrumental in getting strict safety standards applied to boiler construction. Also in safety devices that couldn’t be tampered with.

5

None of the transportation options in the 19th Century were very appetizing from a comfort and safety standpoint.

6

One factor, present in steamboats but not on rails, was the situation where competitors would race each other, both boats in sight of one another. This wasn’t just for bragging rights. The first boat in got the pick of the cargo going out.

That’s where overfiring the boiler and tying down the safety valves took over from common sense and self-preservation.

The number of places where trains of two rival rail lines could race were far fewer, and the races were far shorter (a few miles just outside Chicago, versus Natchez to Memphis and beyond.)

Chuck

7

How is it that steamboats got up rivers that today I have trouble getting my bass boat up? Like the Allegany River in PA which had boats going all the way up the NY Boarder.

8

Steamboats re-used engines out of earlier boats (short lived, all - the hulls often failed structurally after five years or less of service because of shallow draft keel issues) - and once inside the structure of the boat were never removed until the boat failed or was retired.

9

Note that there were wing dams and such to try to maintain a deep (6+ foot) channel. With the passing of commercial traffic, those structures weren’t maintained - on rivers which often flooded.

As for day-to-day operation of a pre-Civil War steamboat, find a copy of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. Among other things, you’ll learn where Sam Clemons found his pen name.

Chuck (long ago blue water engineer cadet)

10

You can also find his comment on the purity of the water found at St. Louis.

When he returned to the river after an absence of twenty-one years, he fell into a conversation with a young man in his hotel in St. Louis when the young man complained about the water in his glass, saying that if he had some clean water he could wash what he had been given to drink. Mr. Clemens then commented, in his narrative, the the water was the same as it had been when he left the river–it still carried mud from the banks of the Missouri, and had about an acre of land in solution in a tumblerful of water.

As was commented earlier in this thread, it is no wonder that the boilers were so fouled by the water put into them.

In

11

The rivers are just as dirty (if not more so) today as they were 160 years ago.

We just don’t notice it because of the often overlooked purification plant. Thank goodness for that!

Things sure have changed, St. Louis now has some of the purest drinking water in the country!

12

Until the development of the Besmer Process for making steel the wide spread use of it was just not available. The 20th Century is the age of steel, the 19th Century was the age of iron.

Iron boilers of questionable metalurgy and foundry practice varied widely in quality. I don’t know how they had the nerve to run them even with the low steam pressures they used.

For example of steel quality, United States Military rifles, 1903 Springfields were withdrawn from service in the First World War owing to the bursting of the recievers due to poor quality steel and poor quality foundry practices used to manufacture them. These rifle recievers cannot be safely used and are still around today.

The steam boiler of iron construction and the re-use of used steam powerplants are two different issues. The powerplant engine from a used steamboat would be just as useful if salvaged. I’m talking cylinder, crosshead, rods, guides, paddle wheel etc. The iron boilers probably went in the water hot and exploded anyway.

An interesting account of the engineering of the period can be found in the book about the British Steamship used to lay the first trans Atlantic telegraph cable, The G**reat Eastern.

James Dugan recounts an 1859 boiler explosion at sea,

"The Great Eastern ran up twelve knots…Off Hastings, ‘there was throughout the whole vessel a sound of most awful import.’ The forward funnel blew out of the ship, followed by the sibilants of escaping steam. The mirrors in the grand saloon, which the passengers had just left, ‘were shattered into ten thousand fragments.’ Captain Comstock ran out on the paddle wheel guardwalk to look at the explosion hole in the side…The scene was hidden in clouds of steam. Glass, ornamentation and bits of wood fell like hail. Captain Harrison ran from the bridge and yelled for six men to follow him. He went hand under ha

13

That’s still a common practice for the remaining steam powered vessels. The American Queen and Mississippi Queen both had old engines installed in them, as did the Natchez down in New Orleans.

14

Speaking of reusing engines, I wonder what was done with the engines on the Delta King*,* which is now a fast boat–fast to the dock in Sacramento, but still in use as a hotel (my wife and I spent a night there six and a half years ago. The Delta King and the sister boat, the Delta Queen were built for, and used, in overnight service between Sacramento and San Francisco.

The staterooms are small–and I understand that orignally they were much smaller.

15

Ah, Dr. D! The 1903 Springfields! NOW you’re talkin’ about something of which I’m intimately familiar. Those who don’t care to hear the story are free to leave, those who are, stick around, there’s a bit of firearms history comin’ at ya!

What Dr. D referred to are what collectors call the “Low-Number Springfield”, Model 1903 rifles, rifles produced by Springfield Armory with serial numbers below 800,000, and rifles produced by Rock Island Arsenal with numbers below 285,000.

What happened was this: Prior to World War One there hadn’t been a problem with the '03 rifles wherever they came from, and what few defective rifles there were were caught during the proof-test firing using 70,000 PSI test rounds. When the US entered the First World War and production was stepped up, often with in-experienced employees the problems with rifle recievers began. Again, most were caught during the test-firing phase. So, the heat-treatment of the reciever was changed, quality control was made more stringent, and the problem disappeared. Failures of low-number rifles in the field were typically caused by bore obstructions, either cleaning patches left in the bore, cosmoline not being removed, or sometimes even an 8mm Mauser cartridge being used.

I’ve got a Model 1903 rifle built by Rock Islan Arsenal in 1908. It shoots just fine. Mind you, when I do shoot it I don’t use it as a test-bed for nuclear powered handloads, nor do I use any 30-06 ammunition I consider questionable. I use it with commercial American made 30-06 ammo, or US produced M2 ball ammo.

As an aside, the early '03’s were made the same way their predecessor rifles, the Krag-Jorgensens were made. No-one says don’t shoot the Krags.

I should add none of the low-number guns were removed from service. Those that were out there stayed out there, right into the World War Two era, being rebuilt numero

16

I am not entirely certain. I do know that some parts were removed some years ago to repair the Queen’s engines. Also, the calliope was recycled from a wrecked showboat Water Queen that sank on the Kanawah River. Doc Hawley wanted it for the Queen but found it had been salvaged by another calliope enthusiast and had to pay a pretty penny to get him to part with it.

17

An interesting discussion. On Google Books I found a publication called The Safety Valve, Vol 8 (evidently a professional journal for persons in the steam boiler profession) which had a page devoted to brief details of various boiler explosions. By far the most numerous situations were industrial boilers, followed by threshing machines. Locomotives, traction engines and boats were modest in number by comparison.

Dave Nelson

18

The Delta Queen’s engineering plant is intact and wouldn’t require much to reactivate.

Sadly, a couple of Congressmen are making sure that won’t happen, despite consensus on proposed safety enhancements to mitigate any perceived risks here for what has been an extremely safe vessel over the decades.

Edit: And obviously, I should be more careful with what I read since that vessel wasn’t the subject of the question. But since the Delta King still appears on the national register, I imagine it’s safe to assume that her steam plant remains in place.

Its removal would likely lead to her delisting (Although I see that the Queen Mary is on it despite much of the heart of the ship, including much of her engineering spaces, being destroyed and a fair bit of modification to her exterior as well.).

19

The era of the steamboat was a time where their explosions were comonplace, and not well documented.

By the time boiler explosions were finally regularly documented, the era of steamboats was over, meaning there would be fewer of these events to be put in the book.

Dave, what was the date of publication for this work?

-S. Connor

20

When I.K. Brunel’s “great babe” the Great Eastern was scrapped in the 1880s, the skeleton of a rivetter and his helper were found in between the double hull skins. Or as legend would have it. It was a hard-luck ship and was far ahead of its time.