The steamboat Ben Loder was the largest to ply Seneca Lake and was employed as a tow boat pulling lines of freight barges. On this day one of her boilers exploded without warning during a voyage on the lake and its second engineer and two firemen were killed. After this accident the Ben Loder was completely overhauled and continued in service till she was completely destroyed in a dockside fire on July 19, 1861. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Steven Harkey, It Started with a Steamboat: An American Saga, (Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2007), 43.