Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1902 — OHIO RIVER HORROR. [ARTICLE]

OHIO RIVER HORROR.

SCORES LOSE LIFE IN FIRE OR WATER. Between Fifty and Seventy-five Persona Are Killed in Steamboat Disaster—Panic Increases the Horror—Destruction of the City of Pittsburg. Suffocated as they slept, entrapped in their bertha ind burned or forced panicstricken into the river and drowned, over three score persons lost their lives Sunday morning in the destruction by fire of the steamer City of Pittsburg, near Turner’s Landing, not far from Cairo, 111. Those on board the steamer numbered about 150 and the death H-wt may reach seventy-five. Captain Phillips estimates the loss of life at between fifty and sixty. Accurate information probably never can be secured, for the steamer’s passenger list, the only record of the human lives she carried, was destroyed. Large Crew and Many Passengers. The steamer, a big side-wheeler plying between Cincinnati and Memphis, left the former city Wednesday night with thirty-one passengers and took on many others on the voyage down the river. She carried a crew of seventy. So far only a few bodies have been recovered. The work of death in this disaster, one of the most shocking in the history of river navigation, was a matter of but a few minutes. The fire was discovered a few minutes after 4 o’clock in the forward hold of the steamer. All the passengers were sleeping, as were all the members of the crew except a few watchmen and the men at the engines. As quickly as possible runners were sent through the narrow passages in the cabin shouting an alarm to the endangered sleepers. Within a few seconds the whole steamer was alive with frightened passengers in the midst of a rush for life Which began in panic and ended in horror. None took time to put on more than night clothes or to save any valuables from their staterooms. The supply of life-preservers was soon exhausted after scenes of awful struggling, and there was a rush for windows and railings ft> the hope that a leap into the water might avert death in the flames. Meanwhile the members of the crew had launched one boat, and into thia were put the women and children who had been able to reach the deck before the burning of the stairways cut off that means of escape. Force was necessary to check the rush for the yawl, and in spite of heroism shown by the officers their work might have gone for naught if the ropes that bound the yawl to the steamer had not been severed by the flames just as the small craft was filled to the danger point. About twenty o> thirty persons were taken off in this way. Straggle in Water. Those who were left on the boat anc} were still alive Then jumped into tht water, joining their struggling fellows who at the first alarm had sought thers a refuge from the flames. Screams and pitiful appeals for help were heard on every hand as those of the unfortunates who could not swim felt in their lessening strength a warning of their fate. Many passengers clung by finger tips to the burning boat with bodies submerge ed until, overcome by fire or water, they sank to death. Wesley Neeley, a fisherman, rescued two from the wheelhouse. One was a man and the other a woman. The latter clung to the boat until her hands were burned. The boat was insured for $30,000, most of the policies being held by Pittsburg agents.