1838 ship sinking in North Carolina, US
The Steamship "Pulaski" disaster was the term given to the June 14, 1838, explosion on board the American steam packet "Pulaski", which caused her to sink off the coast of North Carolina with the loss of two-thirds of her passengers and crew. About 59 persons survived, and 128 were lost. Her starboard boiler exploded about 11 p.m., causing massive damage as the ship was traveling from Savannah, Georgia, to Baltimore, Maryland; she sank in 45 minutes.
The disaster.
The packet steamer "Pulaski", bound for Baltimore, Maryland, departed Charleston, South Carolina on June 14, 1838, under Captain DuBois, with a crew of 37 and 131 passengers on board.
That night at about 11 p.m., when the ship was off the coast of North Carolina, the starboard boiler exploded, destroying the middle of the ship. Some passengers were killed immediately. Knocked out by the explosion, the first mate Hibbard assessed the small boats and put three in the water. Because two had been overexposed to sunlight, they were in poor condition, and one sank immediately. Ten persons got in one boat and eleven, including Hibbard, in another. They started rowing away from the sinking ship, which went down in 45 minutes. Others clung to makeshift floats made from the wreckage.
Survivors.
Among the 128 persons lost in the sinking was William B. Rochester, a former member of the United States House of Representatives from New York, and Jane (Cresswell) Lamar, wife of banker and shipper Gazaway Bugg Lamar of Savannah, five of their six children, and a niece. Her husband and their eldest son Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar were the only members of the immediate family to survive.The "Delaware Gazette" newspaper later ran a story about the fortunes of two alleged survivors: Charles Ridge, left penniless after the shipwreck, became engaged to heiress Miss Onslow, whom he had saved from the shipwreck. However, neither of these persons was listed among the survivors in a June 27 "North-Carolina Standard" article published two weeks after the wreck.
Search for wreckage.
In January 2018 divers reported that they believed they had found wreckage of "Pulaski" off the North Carolina coast. This was confirmed several months later, when salvage divers recovered items from the wreckage.
References.
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