Passengers are Really Scared but no Injuries

NEW LONDON, Conn., March 13, 1893 – The steamboat City of Boston of the Norwich line, for many years the “Queen of Long Island Sound,” ran into the big three-masted schooner Charles W. Church in the lower harbor this morning shortly after mid- night. The steamers starboard smoke stack was knocked overboard. Its steam chest was ripped open, and its seventy passengers were badly frightened. The accident occurred in a thick fog, with a driving rain and a stiff southeast gale.

The steamer was running at a low rate of speed when the of the schooner was sighted. In a moment the Captain saw that he must either decide to transfix his boat on the schooner’s flying jibboom or else try to steer clear of the schooner. If he undertook the latter course the wind was blowing the Boston so rapidly toward the schooner that its flying jibboom would rake along the staterooms on the hurricane deck, either forward or aft, and shatter them into a thousand fragments. That was not to be thought of. He decided in favor of transfixing his own boat, as successful pilots have done under similar circumstances before. He selected the ” amidships section ” of the boat as the place to sustain the shock, it being most remotely situated from the staterooms, and the framework about the paddle-wheels being heavy. Capt. Hurley pulled two bells to back the boat a little, and waited but for an instant, when the steamboat’s starboard smokestack, just above the boiler, was pierced by the flying jibboom, which bored away through it, ” tearing it up by the roots,” so to speak. staving off the top of the steam chest and ripping steam-pipes and chains here and there in the most ruthless manner. The next instant the two vessels were enveloped in clouds of screeching steam, creating an unearthly din, and scaring every one on board half out of his wits.

* Noteworthy

1639 – Harvard College is named after clergyman John Harvard.

1933 – Great Depression: Banks in the U.S. begin to re-open after President Franklin D. Roosevelt mandates a “bank holiday”.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

1988 – The Seikan Tunnel, the longest undersea tunnel in the world, opens between Aomori and Hakodate, Japan.

1991 – The United States Department of Justice announces that Exxon has agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

2008 – Gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.