When rescuers arrived at the scene of a devastating steamboat explosion south of Sacramento in September 1864, they discovered a horrific sight.
“The river was strewed with pieces of the wreck and human forms blackened, scorched, and blistered, some dead and others writhing in agony on the splintered decks” The Sacramento Bee, then The Daily Bee, reported.
“Shrieks of agony met the ear” as rescuers aboard the steamboat Antelope set to work, according to the account…