The Steamboat Saluda: The bell tolls for Savannah
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Steamboat travel was essential in the United States for our development.
In the years after 1811, when the first steamboat ventured down the Mississippi River to New Orleans from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, more than 1,000 steamers roamed the rivers in mid-American. River travel was a thriving business, nestled in between the stagecoach and railroads for decades as a vital transportation step heading west.
The rivers were natural, unchanneled and hazardous. According to a 1897 District Engineering Report on the Missouri River found in a 1975 article written by Fred Slater, 300 steamboats were identified as being “done in,” from St. Louis to Fort Benton, Montana.
Snags were the main culprit, with logs floating and embedded in the Loess soil capable of peeling apart the wooden hull of a paddle boat like a can opener.
Historian Rudolph J. Gerber in 1858 quipped, “of all the variable things in creation, the most uncertain are the actions of a jury, the state of a woman’s mind and the conditions of the Missouri River.”
It was reported 193 vessels went down by those snags, 25 others engulfed in fire, 26 cracked up on ice, 11 struck rocks, 10 pilots hit bridges, 11 boilers exploded, one collided with another ship while two capsized in storms. If it was so dangerous, with many of these boats losing numerous passengers, why would the industry be flourishing? The answer is money!
If you could make just two trips of 20 days up the river and back with passengers and merchandise, your boat was paid for. Just think of the profits to be made if you were able to run all season or a couple years!
Old friend and Missouri Air Guard Commander Jerry Brown from Whiteman Air Force Base -- once semi-retired before successfully running and becoming mayor of Lexington, Missouri -- called me one day.
In his “Let's get it done,” voice, he said:
“Bob, who do you know in Savannah? They have our bell and we want it back!”
I wondered what in the world was he talking about?
The Saluda was a steamer headed from St. Louis to Council Bluffs when it had trouble due to ice and a swift current navigating the horseshoe bend at Lexington, Missouri. Failing twice, the captain docked the boat for a couple days until the River calmed down.
Five days later, with the ice gone, frustrated and now behind schedule, our impatient captain ordered the engineer to stoke the boilers.
“Let on all the steam you have, we are going to make that bend even if the boilers blow us all to hell!”
How prophetic. The boat paddles didn’t make three rotations before the unimaginable happened. It was Good Friday.
The worst steamboat accident on the Missouri River was viewed by many from shore who knew the ship had trouble rounding the curve and came to watch the new effort. The St. Joseph Gazette on April 14, 1852, led with this gruesome headline:
“Awful Calamity”
“Explosion of the Steamboat Saluda”
“135 Lives Lost”
The explosion destroyed ⅔ of the boat and rocked Lexington. The paper went on, “Human blood, just warm from the heart, trickled down the banks and mingled with the waters of the Missouri River.”
The explosion sent debris onto both shores of the river, including the ship's heavy 3-foot-wide cast iron bell and a 600 pound safe. A few passengers on the top deck who were thrown into the water and survived tried to swim to shore, but many were injured and drowned. Body parts of others littered the wharf. Lexington was in shock.
The scope of the disaster consumed the town. The small community of 1,600 rallied with the humanity that we hope lives in each of us when confronted with a calamitous unexpected disaster. Several post stories describe the care given, mass funerals, sacrifices and local adoptions of the newly-orphaned from the Saluda. No one had ever come close to experiencing a tragedy on this scale.
Savannah, Missouri, was barely getting started as a town in 1852. Schools, churches and shops were starting to pop up as settlers moved into this fertile area of the now open Platte Purchase.
Prince L. Hudgins was a newly-minted minister of the yet-to-be-built First Christian Church. He was charged to head to St. Louis and purchase windows, doors, furniture, a pulpit and all things needed for a new church building, including a bell.
Materials purchased were delivered by steamboat, unloaded at Amazonia and wagoned to Savannah. Everything but a bell.
Back to St. Louis Hudgins ventured, again he could not find a bell his parishioners could afford. On his way back home, the pastor divinely met a fisherman outside of Lexington who earlier that summer had found and rescued the Saluda’s bell embedded in mud on the banks of the “Mighty Mo.”
According to Kathy Ridge, genealogist at the Andrew County Museum, “It was a transaction made in heaven.”
The minister bought the massive bell for $17.50, including a $1.50 fee for loading the monster onto his steamship heading north.
The bell impressively was located in the tower of the First Christian Church for decades, calling believers to worship from as far as four miles away.
It has since been moved to the Church’s newer location just off Savannah’s square in a permanent courtyard exhibit on the church’s property, with an engraved story about the Saluda.
Years ago when I asked Jan Glenn -- executive director of the Andrew County Museum -- the expected question, she grinned.
"About every 20 years or so someone representing Lexington comes up trying to buy our bell, you’re the latest.”
“So Mister Mayor, NO, Savannah has had the Saluda’s bell for over 150 years and like the Mona Lisa, it’s not for sale!”
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Bob Ford’s History will appear in each edition of the Weekender, Midweek and Corner Post. More of Bob’s work can be found on his website bobfordshistory.com and videos on YouTube and TikTok.
