The Gold Dust, which took Clemens downriver from St. Louis to Vicksburg,exploded her boilers at Hickman, Kentucky on August 7, 1882.
Mark Twain reprints an account of the explosion of the Gold Dust as chapter 37 of Life on the Mississippi. A New York paper reported forty- seven persons were scalded and seventeen missing.
LOGES, MAX L. “The Life and Death of the ‘City of Baton Rouge.’” Mark Twain Journal 42, no. 2 (2004): 2–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41641543.