Steamboat Monmouth disaster
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The steamboat Monmouth disaster of October 31, 1837, killed approximately 311 Muscogee people who were being forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland in the southern United States to the Indian Territory, in present-day Oklahoma.[1] The deaths were the result of a nighttime boat collision on the Mississippi River just north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.[2]
The U.S. Army ("the Alabama Emigrating Co. through the agency of Col. W. A. Campbell")[3] hired three steamboats at New Orleans, the Yazoo, the John Newton, and the Monmouth,[2] to move the "Upper Creeks" band of Muscogee to the Great Plains.[4] Some 700 passengers were put on board the Monmouth.[4] En route from New Orleans to the Arkansas River, near Prophet Island (now Profit Island, 30°35′28″N 91°17′41″W / 30.5910°N 91.2948°W), in drizzly dark conditions, the negligently crewed Monmouth collided with a steamer called Warren that was towing a ship called Trenton[1] or Tremont.[5] The steamboat was apparently violating traditional navigation rules of the river and veered unexpectedly into the path of the Warren.[2][6]
Casualties
According to a contemporary report "the hull sank and the cabin floated downstream in two parts."[3] The destruction of the Monmouth resulted in the drowning deaths of the ship's fireman, the ship's bar-keeper, and an estimated 311 Native American passengers.[1][6] The owners of the steamboat said there were 693 passengers aboard and the loss of life was only 230 with "many of the survivors badly injured."[3] The survivors were picked up by the Yazoo, the John Newton, and the Warren.[3] The bodies of the Muscogee dead were buried in mass graves near Port Allen.[2]
The Monmouth was reportedly a little over a year old, meaning she was launched sometime in 1836.[3] The death toll from the Monmouth would stand as the Mississippi River's worst transportation disaster until the American Civil War.[4] The loss of life in the Monmouth disaster contributed to the overall death toll of the Trail of Tears.[2]