Death by Fire and Ice: The Steamboat Lexington Calamity by Brian E. O’Connor (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 2022, 232pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-68247-804-2; $29.95hc) In his new book, Death by Fire and Ice: The Steamboat Lexington Calamity, Brian O’Connor details a maritime disaster that took the lives of all but four of a complement of 147 and places it in the context of the times, leaving little to the imagination in either case. Three years after passage of the federal Steamboat Act of 1838. the Lexington disaster in New York’s East River on 13 January 1840 revealed in graphic detail the deficiencies in that legislation. Steamboat boiler explosions caught the attention of the public and those charged with regulating commercial steamboat safety, but the Lexington boiler did not explode. It was likely, however, to have caused or abetted the destruction of the vessel and its passengers and cargo. Most of O’Connor’s narrative relates events before and after the cataclysm, but his description of the event itself is graphic. He tells the reader a great deal about the passengers and crew that were headed for disaster and death. Henry James Finn was the father of twelve; Robert Blake, the president of the Wrentham Bank, was the father of six; Mary Russell “had celebrated her wedding the day before” she embarked on the Lexington. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow escaped the disaster by missing the boat because a meeting with the publisher of his recent poem, “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” ran late. The men, women and children lost that night to fire and freezing water were human beings, not statistics, and O’Connor’s rendering emphasizes that reality. Fire began either in the stowed bales of cotton or the wood of the boat’s hull. When the alert was sounded, the bales were aflame. One of the survivors, the navigator, testified that the fire was not large and he thought it would be brought under control quickly, but the fifty fire buckets aboard were not at hand and the fire-fighting pump would not function with the boat moving under power. Captain George Child did not stop the vessel, probably with the hope of getting it to shore. The untrained and SEA HISTORY 182, SPRING 2023
poorly led crew were unable to suppress the flames, and the fire spread out of control. The loss of three lifeboats due to mismanaged deployment left the passengers to choose between searing heat that would kill them or freezing water that would likewise do the same. Four men survived, three by floating atop bales of cotton. O’Connor’s exegesis is comprehensive. He lays the groundwork for the disaster with essays on the history of the steam engine, from Thomas Savery’s atmospheric water pump through the advances of Thomas Newcomen and James Watt to Robert Fulton’s Clermont and the emergence of steam-powered water travel in the United States. He explains the economic, political, and social milieu in which passenger and freight-carrying boats operated
before setting out the dangers involved in the operation of primitive steam equipment and how they applied to the Lexington. The findings of the coroner’s inquest and the harsh verdict of the jury added to the clamor for remedial legislation. Political conflict and ambiguous decisions by the Supreme Court delayed Congressional response until passage of the Steamboat Acts of 1852 and 1871. In the interim, thousands were killed and maimed in steam-powered boat calamities. Death by Fire and Ice, well written and documented, is a laudable addition to the annals of transportation, maritime disasters, technology, and human interest. David O. Whitten Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina
The time was October 1991. The ship was Anne Kristine, the oldest continuously sailing vessel in the world. What awaited them was Hurricane Grace, the southern end of what came to be known as “The Perfect Storm.” “Nelson Simon’s memoir… is the kind of character-driven, stormbattered, seafaring yarn Joseph Conrad would have loved. Or written.” – Alice McDermott, winner of the National Book Award Available from most online booksellers or directly from Independent Publishers Group at ipgbook.com
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