The Washington Navy Yard has had its share of accidents and heartbreak over the years. As a place dedicated to the building and testing of weaponry of all sorts, this hardly comes as a surprise. So it is good to see that, in spite of the frequency of accidents, that the community has always rallied around the survivors – such as in this case, in 1859.
Explosions have always been par for the course at the Washington Navy Yard. Testing new ways of blowing things up was, after all, the order the day there. Sadly, occasionally things did not go as planned.
On the morning of July 14, 1859, a group of sailors were ordered to practice their gunnery. They were assigned to a 9-inch gun (probably one of the Dahlgren guns, though the newspaper accounts are contradictory at best when describing the actual weapon) and began shooting at a target out in the middle of the Anacostia River.
A gun crew works on a Dahlgren IX (the Dahlgren-designed gun with 9-inch muzzle) The descriptions offered in the various articles make it uncertain at best that this was the gun being described; the Dahlgrens’s main claim to fame was the fact that they were built in such a way as to not explode (National Archives)
On the second round being shot, the gun burst, splitting in two. One piece that split off the barrel, some four feet by 18 inches, was thrown 300 yards, while the carriage on which the gun rested -not a light piece of equipment – was turned upside down. Of the men clustered around the barrel, two were killed outright, while eight were injured. The only piece of good news was found by the local correspondent of the Baltimore Sun, who noted that if the explosion “had happened on board a vessel, fifty lives might have been lost.”
This was little consolation to William Nokes and James H. Wilson – the two deceased – and their families. While both were married, only Wilson had any children. The latter was a member of Christ Church, and thus had his funeral service there the day after his death. Nokes’s (or Noakes – his father is listed under that spelling in the 1860 city directory) funeral was held at his father’s house, on 8th across from the Marine Barracks. Both were laid to rest in Congressional Cemetery; in fact, the actual interments were to be held simultaneously, but a sudden rain storm kept that from happening. A number of officers and men appeared at the funerals, and in fact a number of those who had been only lightly injured in the explosion were pallbearers.
The concern over these men and their families was not limited to the funeral, however. Six days after the accident, the Evening Star reported that a “paper” had been circulated at the Navy Yard, and that $200 had been pledged to help the families of those killed. The article concluded: “This substantial sympathy is in keeping with the character of the noble hearted fellow employes of the sufferers, and affords an excellent example for the benevolent minded in other portions of the city.”
This was not the end of it, however. The following month, the Workingmen’s Association of the Washington Navy Yard chartered the steamer Mount Vernon for an excursion to Glymont, Maryland, on the Potomac River halfway to the Chesapeake. Included in the $1 ticket were meals, as well as music from “Withers’s Celebrated Brass and String Band.” And each ticket admitted “a gentleman and ladies.” Nonetheless, the Committee of Arrangements seemed sure to make a tidy profit, all of which was to go to the widows and orphans of the recent disaster.
Sadly, this also ends the historic record for the families. Only Norval Nokes, William’s brother, reappears: As the dedicatee of a march by John Philip Sousa, an honor he received as the head of the Marine Barracks.