5 December 1872 • Hartford, Conn. (New York Tribune, 7 Dec 72, UCCL 00841)
Sir: This Missouri case is a bad business.2explanatory note You know that none but sailors can untackle a ship’s boats, & get them into the water right side up; & you know that at a perilous time the frantic passengers won’t give the sailors a chance to do this work successfully. Now, don’t you believe that if every vessel carried several life-rafts (like the life-stages of Western steamboats)3explanatory note lashed upon their upper decks, with axes cleated to them which the insanest passenger could use in cutting their fastenings, that many lives would be saved? If the rafts were thrown overboard, & the crazy passengers thrown after them, the sailors might then work at the hampering &Ⓐemendation complicated tackle of the boats with some method & some show of success. They could launch them right side up, & go & take the people from the rafts.
In time of danger you cannot successfully launch a boat, even on the quiet waters of the Mississippi, until you have driven all the human cattle into the river first. I’m an old boatman & I speak by the card.4explanatory note
enclosure: 5explanatory note
Twelve persons were saved in one boat and four in another; all the rest were of no account in the rescue of the drowning, burning people. If there had been skillful management by the ship’s crew, there might have been little or no loss of life. But the boats were unskillfully handled and dangled in mid-air, pouring their passengers into the sea, or were shattered against the side of the ship. Five or six boats were not enough for a passenger steamship like the Missouri, and though it is true that a heavy sea was running at the time, it is a disgrace to science and civilization to say that it is impossible to lower safely a boat under such circumstances. Organization and discipline would have done wonders in this particular, even though the boats were insufficient. If there is no tackle or other machinery by which a boat can be got from a ship’s deck to the sea alongside without wreck or swamping, in humanity’s name let ingenuity and skill be brought to bear on that single point before we hear of any more inventions to increase speed or alleviate the mere discomforts of the sea-voyage.
Clemens’s letter was printed as part of a 7 December New York Tribune story, “The Missouri Disaster,” under the subheading “Mark Twain on Launching Ships’ Boats,” with the Tribune’s preface: “Mr. Mark Twain, in a private letter which we venture to publish below, incloses the following extract from a Tribune editorial on the Missouri disaster, and adds the appended comment” (7 Dec 72, 5; for the enclosed “extract” see note 5). Whitelaw Reid had become managing editor of the newspaper, under Horace Greeley, in mid-1869, and Clemens had since maintained a friendly relationship with him, benefiting from his willingness to publish Clemens’s letters to the editor on topical subjects of his own choice. In addition, Reid had often made complimentary mention on the editorial page of Clemens, who undoubtedly found such endorsement from the country’s most prestigious daily newspaper very gratifying. Since May 1872 Reid had acted as editor in chief of the newspaper, with John Hay as his second in command, freeing Greeley to pursue his campaign for the presidency. Defeated on 5 November, Greeley resumed the editorship, but fell ill almost immediately with inflammation of the brain and died on 29 November, precipitating a fight for control of the newspaper which Clemens would follow closely. Reid was the editorial heir apparent, but owned virtually no stock in the paper and lacked the financial means to buy enough of a share to secure his position. The crisis was not resolved until 23 December (see 10 Dec 72 to Nast, n. 4click to open link, and pp. 261–62; L3 , 265 n. 1; L4 , 227–29, 270–72, 288–93, 382–86, 417–18; Baehr, 105–16, 119–22; Vogelback 1954, 374–77; New York Tribune: “A Card,” 15 May 72, 4; “Re-election of Grant,” 6 Nov 72, 1; “A Card,” 7 Nov 72, 4; “Mr. Greeley’s Last Hours,” 30 Nov 72, 1).
On 22 October 1872 the steamer Missouri, traveling from New York to Havana, burned at sea during a gale. Only one of its lifeboats was successfully launched, and of the eighty-nine passengers and crew on board, only sixteen survived. In early December, a court of inquiry found that “the Missouri was not provided with a sufficient number of boats, and such boats as she had were so secured as to be found difficult to be lowered,” and that “on the alarm of fire all was confusion; that there was no discipline, no organization, or combined effort to save life; that each man acted independently to save his own life, and that no attempt was made to save the life of the female passengers” (New York Tribune: “The Missouri Disaster,” 5 Dec 72, 2; “Horrors of Travel,” 31 Oct 72, 1; “The Burning of the Missouri,” 1 Nov 72, 1; “A Voice from the Sea,” 5 Dec 72, 4).
Strictly speaking, the steamboat “stage” was a “hanging gangplank for reaching from boat to shore,” not an independently maneuverable raft (Bates, 119). But seamen used “floating stages, and stages suspended by the side of a ship, for calking and repairing” (Whitney and Smith, 5:5887; CU-NEWS, 267).
To “express oneself with care and nicety” (OED, 2:888), as, for example, in Hamlet: “We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us” (act 5, scene 1).
The actual enclosure, a clipping of part of an editorial in the Tribune of 5 December entitled “A Voice from the Sea” (4), has not survived. Its text is reproduced here in a line-for-line transcription. The Tribune reprinted the clipping, with only trivial differences, along with the present letter.
“The Missouri Disaster,” New York Tribune, 7 Dec 72, 5. With his letter, Clemens enclosed a portion of a New York Tribune editorial (5 Dec 72, 4). The actual clipping does not survive; the text printed here is a line-for-line resetting of the article. Copy-text for the letter and enclosure is a microfilm edition of the newspaper in the Newspaper and Microcopy Division, University of California, Berkeley (CU-NEWS).
L5 , 241–243.