Elizabeth S. Thompson, -1852
Elizabeth S. Thompson (?-1852)
and two of her five children, Mary and Eugene, were among the seventy-two people who perished when the Hudson River steamboat, Henry Clay, caught fire and ran ashore on July 28, 1852. The Captain had ordered the safety valve on the boilers tied down and was illegally racing another steamboat at the time of the tragedy.
Mothers and children sitting in the ladies' saloon were separated from husbands and fathers who, after dinner, had gone to browse around the other parts of the boat. The blaze of flame prevented passengers on the promenade deck from reaching those in the rooms below. Families were separated without knowing the location or fate of their loved ones. They could only see the fierce flames burning up the center of the boat, bellowing a dark, black smoke that quickly crawled its way across the floor of the decks. With the fire came a heat so intense that the already hot summer temperatures were elevated to a point that could be likened only to that of hell.
