Norfolk City Virginia USGenWeb Archives Obituaries.....McCarrick, Patrick H. October 27, 1865
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Robert Woolfitt http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00034.html#0008401 August 7, 2023, 10:26 am

The Day Book (Norfolk, VA) October 28, 1865
About fifteen minutes past three o’clock yesterday afternoon, the business 
portion of the community was startled by a loud explosion which appeared to come 
from the direction of Town Point. Soon afterward the rumor spread through the 
city that a steamboat boiler had exploded, and that all on board had perished. 
An investigation developed the following facts:
The Steam Tug Coinjock, Capt. Pat McCarrick, jr., was employed as a tender to 
the mad machine, and was returning from one of her trips with one of the dumping 
lighters towing astern. On the Tug, at the time, was Capt. McCarrick, Mr. Wm. 
Foster, engineer, a colored man as deckhand, and Mr. Thomas Patton, jr., Agent 
of the Boston line of steamers. When the Coinjock was within about three hundred 
yards of Chamberlain's wharf, the boiler exploded, and in an instant the air was 
dark with the debris of the upper portion of the steamer. Parties on the wharf, 
who had their attention called to the point by the report inform us that they 
saw the bodies of two men elevated full thirty feet in the air, and then saw 
them fall, along with the fragments, back into the water.
In a very short time a number of boats, from the shore, and the vessels around, 
reached the scene, but the steamer had gone down, and only the body of Wm. 
Patton was found. The body of this gentleman was horribly mutilated, having been 
torn all to pieces by the force of the steam, or the flying fragments.
The Coinjock was a small steamer, being less than twenty tons burthren, and had 
been afloat only about six weeks. Her hull was new, having been built at the 
shipyard of the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal Company, in this city. Her boiler 
was not new, but had been thoroughly overhauled, and recently subjected to one 
hundred pounds hydraulic pressure.
Captain McCarrick was a young man of some twenty-two or three years of age; is 
the son of Capt. P. McCarrick, of the steamer Eolus, of the Eastern Shore and 
Matthews line, and was a midshipman in the late Confederate Navy. He had but the 
day before assumed command of the Coinjock and had hardly become familiar with 
his charge before he met his violent and untimely end. He was a young man of 
considerable intelligence, of many rare and estimable qualities, of fine 
promise, of considerable experience in steam¬boat matters, and like his father, 
a general favorite wherever known. He has been spared through all the exciting 
and bloody scenes of a four years’ war, and now, upon the very threshold of 
usefulness, and at the first step in civil life, he has been suddenly called 
from time to eternity. His afflicted parents have the unaffected sympathy of the 
whole community.
Of Mr. Patton, who had merely gone aboard for the purpose of taking a trip to 
the flats, that he might sei the workings of the dumping lighters, or of Mr. Wm. 
Foster, we know nothing, nor have we been able to ascertain the name of the 
colored man who lost his life at the same time. At sunset yesterday, 
preparations were being made to drag for the bodies of Captain McCarrick, Mr. 
Foster, and the colored man, but with what success we are unable to say at this 
writing.
The hull of the steamer went to the bottom instantly; and, in a moment after the 
explosion, the surface of the water, for a hundred yards around, was covered 
with the splinters and pieces of joiner's work. The largest piece we saw was a 
portion of the roof, and that was scarcely four feet square. Of course, the 
cause of the explosion is, and must forever remain unknown, but the supposition 
is that the water was lower than it should have been, and while the boiler was 
heated a volume of cold water was injected, and steam formed so very rapidly 
that the boiler could not withstand the pressure. 




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