THE STEAMBOAT COLLISION ON THE OHIO.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 483, 27 March 1869, Page 3

THE STEAMBOAT COLLISION ON THE OHIO.

A Burvivor of the disastrous collision between the splendid river steamers United States and America on the river Ohio sends the following account to the London Times:—Between 11 pm. and 11 30 p.m, about one mile above Warsaw, Kentucky, when all was still and quiet save the ceaseless sound of the engines and the paddle-wheels, those who were awake beard on a sudden two whistles, quickly answered by one from their own ship : then instantly the America struck the Stateß aft, on her larboard sido, between the front of the cabin and bow of the boat, crashing clean through into her baggage-room. The shock drove the petroleum barrels against the furnace, burst them, and ignited the oil. Within ten minutes both vessels were burnt to the water's edge, and one had foundered. Ten minutes! but ten minutes of what awful desolation and agony! For one moment, and for one only, was there any chance offered of escape to those on board the States; it was when she swung round upon the America after the first recoil. Many leaped or clambered from the one to the other, and were all saved: a boat was lowered, crammed with men and women from the burning States, but it was crushed by the paddlewheel, and all hands perished. Then the ships swung apart, and no words can convey any conception of the great horror of the scene that followed on board the Stateß. The roar of the furious conflagration, as with flames swollen tenfold by the driving wind, it raged from stem to stern; the waters of the Ohio one vast sheet of flame, revealing here and there a struggler for life battling on some plank or shutter with the fiery flood; the America, all ablaze, backing slowly towards the Indiana shore, with a surging crowd of human beings whom suspense and terror and grief had driven almost to madness; and, far more awful, the cries, the prayers, the heart-rending ehrieks which rose from the burning States, as the great agony of death by fire closed swiftly round the few remaining of her crew, who, sooner than plunge into the blazing waters of river, were destroyed as they stood, or sank with the sinking vessel. Nearly 70 lives have been lost. Husbands have been parted from their wives, mothers from their infants, and the incidents of the calamity are fraught with such unutterable horrors that every city for miles round seems to be plunged into profound mourning. One case came under my more immediate notice. The omnibus which took me from Louisville took also a commodore of the United States Navy whose wife had perished, and who had gone mad on receipt of the news. He raved incessantly about his poor wife, and every now and then he would spring to his feet, and cry out to us, " Pity me, pity me, for my heart is broken and my reason gone." I spare to pain your readers with the actual details of the scene during the conflagration ; they surpass in horror anything I have ever read or heard of.