On a cold and wind swept Spring evening in the year of 1832, the passenger and cargo laden Steamboat Brandywine caught fire and burned to the water line. It was the first major fire disaster of a steamboat and the death toll certainly rivals our modern airplane disasters.

One hundred and fifty-five years has nearly passed and this story has all but vanished from our collective memories. However, at the time it was the biggest news stories to ever hit the newly established counties of Hart (1819), Edmonson (1825) and Grayson (1810).

The first part of this information comes from a letter written by Edd (Edward) Pace Sanders of Smiths Grove, Kentucky to Walter R. Sanders of Litchfield, Illinois. The letter was written March 3, 1949 and Edd Pace Sanders is in his eighties. It is, in the truest sense of the word, a folk tale presentation of the Brandywine disaster. This is not a complete letter since the letter dealt with several other areas of conversation.

"You asked about Joseph Sanders who married Betty Guinn. You are mistaken, it was Jim Sanders who married her. She was Henry Catrials (Cottrell's) daughter. There were two children born to them. One named Polly and the other named Sally. Polly married Frank Thompson and Sally married Barry Bratcher. Jim and Littleon Arterberry (Littleton Atterberry) went to New Orleans with a boat load of tobacco. They sold the tobacco and started home of the Brandy Wind (Brandywine)steamboat somewhere between Natchis (Natchez) and New Orleans the boat caught fire. It run onto a sandbar in the middle of the Mississippi River & stuck. There were 600 People on that boat. 40 escaped and the rest of them drowned. Arterberry escaped and Jim drowned. After that the former Betty Caderel (Elizabeth Cottrell) Sanders married Moses Guinn. I know nothing of the other Sanders you asked about."

The next account of the disaster was written in 1856 in Lloyd's Steamboat Directory and Disasters and is found on pages 102 and 103 of this book in the Mississippi Valley Collection Libraries at Memphis state University, Memphis, Tennessee.

The Steamboat Brandywine, Capt. Hamilton, left New Orleans on the evening of April 3, 1832. Her place of destination was Louisville, Kentucky. Her voyage was prosperous until the evening of the 9th, at 7 o'clock. When the boat was about thirty miles above Memphis, she was discovered to be on fire. Among the lading, it appears there were a number of carriage wheels wrapped in straw , as articles of that kind are usually put up for transportation on the river. The wheels were piled on the boiler- deck near the officers' rooms, and under the hurricane roof. It is supposed that the fire was communicated from the furnaces to the highly combustible envelope of these wheels; the wind blew hard at the time, and the sparks were ascending very rapidly through the apertures in the boiler-deck, which were occupied by the chimneys, these not being very closely fitted to the woodwork. It appears too that the Brandywine was racing with the Steamboat Hudson at the time the fire broke out; and, that for the purpose of producing more intense heat, and thus accelerating the boats speed, a large quantity of resin had been thrown into the furnaces. This fatal ruse was resorted to because the Brandywine had been compelled to stop and make some repairs, and the Hudson, in the meantime, had gained considerable headway. Soon after the Brandywine had resumed her course, the pilot who was steering discovered the straw covering the carriage wheels was on fire. Strenuous efforts were made to extinguish the flames and to throw the burning wheels overboard, but it was found that their removal allowed the wind to have free access to the ignited mass; from which cause, as Capt. Hamilton reports the fire began to spread with almost incredible rapidity; and in less than five minutes the whole boat was wrapped in a bright sheet of flame.

The state of affairs on board may be imagined, when it is understood that the Brandywine was crowded with passengers, and the only means to escape from a death of fiery torture which presented itself was the yawl, in which scarcely a tenth part of the affrighted (sic) people could be conveyed to the shore at a single trip. But even the faint hope of deliverance which this single mode of escape offered them, soon terminated in disappointment and despair. In the attempt to launch the yawl, it was upset and sunk. The heat and smoke had now become so insupportable, that not less than a hundred persons, made desperate by fear and suffering, threw themselves into the river.

The number of passengers on board, according to some reports, was not less than two hundred and thirty; of these, only about seventy-five were saved; the rest were either drowned or burned to death. Among those who perished were nine women, and about an equal number of children.

As soon as all hope of extinguishing the flames was abandoned, an attempt was made to run the boat on shore, but she struck on a sandbar, in nine feet of water, and a quarter mile from the nearest bank of the river, where she remained immovable, until she was burnt to the waters edge. Those passengers, and other persons belonging to the boat, who had the good fortune to escape, saved themselves by swimming, or floating on detached pieces of timber to the nearest island. It is reported to the honor of Capt. Hamilton and his crew, that they remained on the burning boat to the last possible moment, exerting themselves to the utmost to save the lives which had been entrusted to their charge.

In this case as in several others which have been noticed, the number of victims cannot be ascertained with any degree of precision. The following list of the killed, although it is the most complete account that we could obtain, does not, in all probability, comprise more than one-third of the real number.

CABIN PASSENGERS -- H. Hiyard, H.h.Davenport, _________ Fowler, and Robert Stothart, Nashville; Mrs. Walker and child; Mrs. Sparks; three colored women, and several children.

DECK PASSENGERS -- L. Hamilton, Joseph Ford, Abner Osborne, Byce Jackson, B. Williams, Joseph Leonard. L. Flourney, ________ Ralls, B. Murell, Martin Cozine, John Meyers, H. McMillan, Edward Bebee, John Mortimer, E. Wright, ________ Marell, John Adams, and brother, W. Downes, Cincinnatti; James Saunders, A. Stansbury, J. Knock and Adam Abrams, New Orleans; Mrs. Johnson, Philadelphia; Miss Thompson, Baltimore; Miss Hettie Jones, Cincinnatti; William Peters, St. Louis; W. WIlliams, Chicago; Henry Hull, Detroit; James Ott, Hartford, Connecticut; D. French, New York; S. Michael, Missouri; E. Banks, Kentucky; J. Carter, Natchez; Z. Shires, Boston; B. Colt, Memphis; Miss Blanton, Mississippi; Mrs. Williams; three children of Mrs. Thompson, and Edna Johnstone, Louisiana; and three slaves belonging to the boat.

The number of wounded could not have been less than seventy, some of whom were severely injured, and died, in consequence, soon after. Of course those who escaped to the island, some of who were badly burned, or otherwise injured, that the survived only a few hours.

The next account of the Brandywine disaster comes from "Steamboats of the Western Rivers", by Louis C. Hunter and Beatrice Jones Hunter, Harvard Press, Cambridge, 1949.

The first major disaster by fire was the burning of the Brandywine in the Spring of 1832 a short distance above Memphis while in route from New Orleans to Louisville. AT least ten western steamboats had been destroyed by fire before the Brandywine, but in no instance wee more than a few lives lost. In this case the fire was believed to have started in some straw packing by a spark from the chimney. A high wind spread with flames so rapidly that within several minutes the entire boat was ablaze. The pilot headed the boat for shore but ran aground on a sandbar with fifty yards still to go. The yawl was sunk in an attempt to launch it, and only those on improvised floats were able to reach shore. As usual in river disasters the total loss of life could not be determined. The several accounts agree that the number saved was about seventy-five; estimates of the total number on board varied from 200 to 230.

The next account of the Brandywine disaster comes from Collin's County History "Annals Of Kentucky" and partly from local tradition told by descendants of those involved.

In the early Spring of 1832, James Sanders and others from Hart, Grayson and Edmonson Counties made a trip down river to New Orleans with either a flat boat load of produce or a raft of logs.

He arrived at New Orleans in the first days of April, sold his logs or produce, and took passage on the steamboat Brandywine fro the trip back up river.

About nightfall on the evening of February 8, the Brandywine put into wharf at Memphis to take on Cordwood for fuel.

At the wharf also refueling was the Hudson. The officers of the two boats, both headed up river, agreed to a race.

Steamboat racing was a popular sport and whenever possible, one boat would compete against another.

When underway again, the Hudson quickly took the lead by a mile or more. By piling on the firewood to a point just short of exploding the boilers, the Brandywine finally began to gain on the Hudson.

It must have been an impressive sight; the engines of the Brandywine chugging at top speed, the sparks and the bright red coals blowing from her funnels, the windows of her passenger deck all lit by lamps. But tragedy was soon to strike, for the cargo deck of the Brandywine was partly loaded with carriage wheels manufactured in New Orleans and burning coals from the overheated furnaces blew into the cargo, the burlap blazed immediately and within minutes the entire cargo deck was engulfed in flames.

The pilot made a heroic effort to run the doomed Brandywine from the main channel to the river bank and might have succeeded had she not run aground on a sand bar several hundred yards from shore, and here 25 miles above Memphis on April 9, 1832, the Brandywine burned.

Sixty-one people, most of them Kentuckians, were drowned or burned to death; among them James Sanders. A man named Atterberry, from Hart County, survived the disaster and brought the sad news of James's death to his widow, Elizabeth.

It was known that James was a strong swimmer and should have made it ashore, but Atterberry speculated that the drowning victims must have held onto James and took him down with them. Atterberry exhibited bruises on his arms where drowning people had clutched him and reported he had to literally fight them off.

Among the few survivors, he said, were the captain and his wife who had accompanied him on that trip. The captain had saved her by pushing her ashore on a piece of timber.

The weather was near freezing and Atterberry said the survivors could not have made it but for the fortuitous accident that the exploding boilers blew fire into a dead tree on the bank and from this they were able to build a fire to dry themselves.

An additional comment was offered by Barry Downs in his genealogy book, "The Sanders Family: First Family of the Forks."

Downs stated that, "The companion of James, Mr. Atterberry, was one of the few survivors...and told Betsy that he owed James Sanders $20.00 and gave the widow a $20.00 gold piece. There was speculation that Atterberry made the story up about the debt in order to get Betsy to take the money as Betsy would not have accepted charity.

This story of this disaster has all but vanished and those directly involved in this incident died long ago. Though only a passing step in the stairway of history, this disaster's death toll rivals that of our modern airline disasters.

Thanks go out to Janet Jensen for her through research on this subject!