"The Wreck of the Old 97" was an American rail disaster involving the Southern Railway mail train #97 on September 27, 1903 while en route from Monroe, Virginia, to Spencer, North Carolina. It was pulled by 4-6-0 locomotive 1102. The engineer was Joseph "Steve" Brody. The railway company was fined $100 for every 30 minutes that the mail was delayed so mail trains were encouraged to proceed as fast as possible. Due to excessive speed the train derailed at the Stillhouse Trestle near Danville, Virginia where the train careened off the side of the bridge, killing eleven on board personnel and injuring seven others. The ballad was sung to the tune of "The Ship That Never Returned", written by Henry Clay Work in 1865. Originally, the lyrics were attributed to Fred Jackson Lewey and co-author Charles Noell. Lewey claimed to have written the song the day after the accident, in which his cousin Albion Clapp was one of the two fireman killed. Throughout the 1920's a number of people claimed to have written the lyrics. Copyright ownership was eventually granted to the Victor Talking Machine Company by the US Supreme Court. An account of both the incident and the song is included in Katie Letcher Lyle's book Scalded to Death by the Steam. It is #777 in the Roud Folk Song Index. Collector Paul Shue relates that when Vernon Dalhart and Carson Robison went to New York to record this song, they had only an odd number of songs prepared. They recorded "The Prisoner's Song" "The Prisoner's Song", as the B side and it made the record a best seller. It was recorded by Roy Acuff, Pink Anderson, Johnny Cash, Vernon Dalhart, Lonnie Donegan, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Flatt & Scruggs, G. B. Grayson & Henry Whitter, Woody Guthrie, Frank Hutchison, Pete Seeger, Kate Smith, Hank Snow and many others.