The wrecked Gazelle was rebuilt and operated for a few years, first briefly as the unpowered barge Sarah Hoyt and then, with boilers installed, as the steamer Señorita.

[6] Gazelle departed at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and Friday of each week, bound for upriver points, including Butteville, Champoeg, Crawford's Landing, Weston, Fairfield, Salem, Cincinnati, Independence, Washington, Albany, and Corvallis, Oregon.

[9]During one trip, Gazelle stood by to assist as the sidewheeler Oregon, owned by the same company, was sinking after hitting a snag just below Salem.

Suddenly Oregon broke free of the snag, drifted downstream, ran up on a sandbar and sank so deeply that only a part of her upperworks were visible above the water.

On the way back down, Gazelle ran over a log and broke some paddle buckets, which, however, was not serious damage, and was actually one of the strengths of the paddlewheel design over the propeller on inland waters.

[5] On April 8, 1854, at 6:30 a.m., Gazelle had come over to Canemah from the long wharf built above the falls on the western side of the river above Linn City, sometimes called the "basin".

[9] According to contemporaneous reports, the chief engineer, Tonie (or Toner[2]), had run Gazelle across the river, and stopped briefly alongside the steamer Wallamet to take on freight.

[9][11] Captain Bennett on board Wallamet exclaimed: "My God, the Gazelle has blown up — man your small boats.

[9] Pieces of bodies were blown in all directions, including into the river and on to the shore, but most of the persons killed were found on the forward deck.

[11] Notable people who died were Samuel Townsend Burch, also known as Judge Birch, of Polk County[5] or Luckiamute[7] member of the 1849 Oregon Territorial Legislature, and James White, operator of the ferry in Salem.

[15] When word of the explosion reached Portland, the steamer Multnomah was dispatched at once with several surgeons on board to assist the wounded in Oregon City.

[16] Local citizens in Canemah opened up their businesses and spare rooms to help the wounded and store the bodies of the dead until they could be recognized and claimed.

[10] The day after the explosion, the steamer Wallamet proceeded upriver under Captain George A. Pease (b.1830 or 1831), as pilot, stopping at every landing to leave off the wounded and the dead.

[4] A number of the victims, including David P. Fuller and Crawford M. Dobbins, were buried in the Lone Fir Cemetery by its founder, Colburn Barrell in his own family plot.

[17] Jacob Kamm, an experienced steamboat man, examined the wreckage, and stated that the explosion was caused by a poor grade of iron used in the boiler and a defective pump.

[11] The coroner's jury blamed the engineer's "gross and culpable" negligence in keeping too much steam, and allowing the water level in the boilers to get too low.

[2] On June 23, 1855, it was reported that a contractor named Barnum, of Linn City, had agreed, for $1,350, to take Gazelle from the boat's moorings at Canemah, safely across the falls to the lower river.

[20] Later, in the fall of 1856, a new boiler was installed, the boat was renamed Señorita and placed on the route from Portland to the Cascades rapids.

[2][23] With the more powerful engines installed, in 1857 Señorita was used occasionally on the Cascades route, with Captain Wells in command, and, in place of Multnomah, on the run from Portland to Astoria, Oregon.

In October 1858, Señorita under Captain Hoyt, became the first steamer on the Columbia to tow more than one vessel at once, taking the bark Ork, the brig Francisco and the schooner Rosaltha upriver from Astoria to Portland.

Pitfield, praised the construction and speed of the Señorita and the other vessels of the Columbia and Willamette rivers which he had inspected on July 5, 1860.

[25] The engines from Señorita were installed in a new steamer, the Okanogan, a sternwheeler built in 1861 at the confluence of the Deschutes and Columbia rivers, upstream from Celilo Falls.

[27] She had been the widow of civil war soldier, then Lieutenant Cuvier Grover, who had rescued Ella Millar as a six-year-old child from the wreck of the Gazelle, and married her 21 years later in 1875.

[27] In May 1933, the Multnomah chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a bronze memorial plaque on a rock outcropping overlooking the Willamette River and the long-abandoned Canemah landing.

[31] In August 1939, a dramatization of the explosion, by John Hawkins, of Gladstone, Oregon, was broadcast on Portland radio station KGW.