Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1884 — LOST IN A FIERCE GALE. [ARTICLE]

LOST IN A FIERCE GALE.

Awful Work of a Cyclone on the Ohio River, Near Hudson, Kentucky. A Passenger Boat Upset, and Seventeen Passengers find a Watery Grave. [Evansville (Ind.) special. A tornado lasting fully an hour struck this city at 8:30 this morning. When the storm ceased and a view of the damage done was had it presented a terrible sight. The city had been raked from one end to the other. Not a manufactory in it entirely escaped injury. Most seriously damaged are the Evansville Cotton Mills, loss, |i#,ooo; woolen mills, about $;,ooo; Rodker Plow Works, $10,000; Armstrong Furniture <- ompany, about $»,000. A large school building in course of construct on, and which needed but a roof for completion collapsed totally. On every street cellars are flooded, trees and fences leveled, and telegraphic and telephonic communications almost entirely suspended. Hundreds of small dwellings and stables are razed to the ground, and families left without shelter. The scene on the river was awe-inspir-ing. Waves lashed themselves into unspeakable fury, and, dashing twenty and thirty feet high, small steamers and tugs were broken from their moorings and grounded, or blown up river to sand-bars, where they were grounded. The Louisville and Nashville transfer barge, with six cars, was blown from the railway dock and went hard aground on a bar two miles from where it started. The steamers Josh V. Throop and 811verthorn were oaught by the wind, chimneys blown overboard, and boats otherwise badly riddled. T» James Blackman was blown out in the river and swamped. But the most horrible and saddest news of all is the sinking of the transfer steamer Belmont and seventeen passengers who were on board. The Belmont left here at 7:30 this morning with a south-bound passenger train on a barge. About eight mileq below here the storm came up, and part of the passengem, horror-stricken, fled from the cars to the steamer for safety. /The barge was torn from the steamer and driven in shore hard aground, while the cyclone seized the steamer and capsized it, the boat going down bottom upward. The pilot, cook, and engineer jumped on the barge as the steamer went down. All the others were in the cabin, and unable to escape. The only officer of the boat lost was John H. Smith, the captain. Those lost are as follows: Mrs. w. S. Lyon and daughters; Miss Laura Lyon; Mrs. Sarah Bryant; E. C. Roach and son; Capt. John Smith, of Evansville; Mrs. John Hay, of Owensboro, Ky.; Mrs. Addie Murray, baby, and niece; Mrs. Laura Morton, of Briarfleld, Ala.; Mrs. Woodville, Henderson, Ky.; another white lady, name unknown; Mrs. Arthur Hamilton, colored; the 12-year-old daughter of Emma Bell, colored: a colored man, name unknown, with a boy ana girl. Those who remained in the cars on the arge were compelled to sit down with idle hands and watch the death of their companions. In conversation with one of the survivors he said: “It was such a scene as 1 shall never forget. We were trying to get on the bank. The women were huddled in the cabin, some weeping, others sitting quietly, fearing the worst, yet prepared for the inevitable. Suddenly, without warning, the boat careened on her side, the guy ropes to the barge snapping. I jumped for the barge and just reached it when I hurd a gurgle, and looking around, the boat had gone down head first,and there was nothing visible but the bottom." The boat lies in fourteen feet of water and will be a total loss. She was built in Pittsburgh in 1881, cost $22,000, and was Insured for SIB,OOO. She has been running as a transfer packet about a year and a half, and has weathered several gales.