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River Commerce 17
line in every newspaper of towns and cities along the Ohio, the Missouri and the Mississippi; in the lives of their inhabitants The River and all its works and ways bulked large. This was especially true of Cincinnati, jocularly called Porkopolis, because of its great trade in hogs* brought in from the Western and Southwestern farms and shipped from Cincinnati on the river boats.
4-Dangers and risks abounded in the river traffic, as Irwin & Foster came to realize. The newspapers of the time carried frequent headlines such as these:23
The steamboat Wyandotte was wrecked above Vicksburg on the night of the aist inst. and will prove a total loss. Thirty of the passengers and crew perished.
Dreadful Steamboat Explosion. . . boilers exploded and twenty-five persons were killed and wounded.
Steamer St. Joseph blew up and burnt to the water's edge. 15 killed,
AWFUL DISASTER—The new steamer A. N. Johnston ... exploded her boiler a few miles above Mays-ville . . . killing 50 to 60 of her passengers out of 159.
* In the year 1849, 4°°>ooo hogs were slaughtered at Cincinnati.22 |
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