The
Confederate States Laboratory, which produced ammunition, had an explosion
March 13th 1863 killing 40 and injuring 23 others.
The
Confederate States Laboratory was an ordnance factory, which was located on
Brown’s Island in the James River near Richmond, Virginia. The Laboratory was started by Confederate
Captain Wesley Smith in 1861. They made
cartridges, caps, fuses, grenades, signal rockets, and primers for the
Confederate Army. Smith started by hiring
just few workers, getting them well trained and then hire more as needed. Most of his workers were female aged 9 to 20. They turn out on average about 1,200
cartridges in a day.
On March 13th
1863 sometime before noon the roar of the explosion was heard in Richmond,
Virginia, but it wasn’t until dark smoke appeared that people headed to the
island. The Richmond Examiner wrote in
its paper, “A tide of human beings, among them the frantic mothers and kindred
of the employees in the laboratory, immediately set towards the bridge leading
to the island, but the Government authorities, soonest apprised of the
disaster, had already taken possession of the bridge, and planting a guard of
soldiers, allowed passage to none except the workmen summoned to rescue the
dead and wounded from the ruins.”
The building;
in which the explosion occurred, was blown to pieces. Once the flames were put out around 12 bodies
were removed from the wreckage. Out of
the rest of the women all were in agony, with their hair and clothes burned
away, many blinded, many unrecognizable.
Out of these another 28 would die within days. Several of the women who were on fire, jumped
into the river, where one drowned. One woman
whose clothing was on fire ran toward another building where large amounts of
gunpowder were stored, but was luckily stopped by a male employee, saving many
more lives.
The
explosion is blamed on 18 year old Mary Ryan an Irish immigrant. Witnesses say she was trying free a primer
which was stuck to a varnishing board, by rapping on a table. The primer went off and blew her to the ceiling;
she came down and then was blown up again.
She died at her father’s home later and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery
in Richmond, Virginia. The Laboratory
was back up and running by December 1863.
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